It is estimated that 5.4 million Anstralians get sick annually from eating contaminated food and that up to 20% of this illness results from food handling behaviour. A study was undertaken to investigate the efficacy of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) including past behavior in predicting safe food handling intention and beviour. One hundred and nine participants completed Questionnaires regarding their attitudes, perceived behaviourral control (PBC), subjective norm, intentions and past behavior. Behaviour was measured 4 weeks later. The TPB predicted a high proportion of variance in both intentions and behavior, and past behavior/habit was found to be the strongest predictor of behavior. The results of the present study suggest interventions aimed at increasing safe food handling intentions should focus on the impact of normative influences and perceptions of control over their food handling environment : whereas interventions to change actual behavior should attempt to increase hygienic food handling as a habitual behaviour