May 11, 2000

Early in 1999 the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, working closely with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, established the www.FoodSafety.gov web site to bring together in one location links to all government food safety web information.

All National Food Safety Initiative documents posted on the web, regardless of which Agency has the lead, can now be accessed from the FoodSafety.gov web site. A special search engine designed specially by the General Services Administration for FoodSafety.gov that searches only the federal food safety agencies helps users find documents. The FoodSafety.gov web site has grown significantly since its beginning. Each month FoodSafety.gov is visited over 40,000 times.

In the last several months, the following new sections and materials have been added to the FoodSafety.gov web site:

• Other Languages Section - provides links to government food safety documents in languages other than English. Materials are available in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. References to materials in over 20 additional languages that are listed in the USDA/FDA Foodborne Illness Education Information Center are also provided.
• Video/Audio Library - provides food safety video and audio selections that can be viewed on the web, including video news releases, public service ads, briefings, training sessions, and satellite teleconferences.
• Frequently Asked Questions - provide links to over 500 food safety questions and answers that government agencies have compiled.
• Food Safety Grants and Requests for Proposals - provides links to selected government food safety grant programs.
• State Food Safety web sits - new state, local and extension agents web sites are regularly added to FoodSafety.gov. Currently, there is material from 29 different states.

Earlier this year, the USDA/FDA Foodborne Illness Education Information Center sponsored an all day meeting between representatives of CFSAN, FSIS, CDC, NAL and the coordinators of five state Extension food safety web sites. The goal of the meeting was to enhance the coordination between federal and state food safety web sites. Some of the new FoodSafety.gov features listed above were an outgrowth of this meeting.

If you want to stay abreast of the FoodSafety.gov new features you can periodically visit the Recent Additions page which is listed on the bottom of the FoodSafety.gov home page OR you can subscribe to EdNet, an electronic newsletter for food safety educators which provides periodic food safety updates from the FDA, USDA, and CDC. EdNet, is one of the electronic information networks, listed under Other Topics on the FoodSafety.gov web site.

The Partnership for Food Safety Education, an ambitious public-private partnership created to reduce the incidence of foodborne illness by educating Americans about safe handling practices, has added the FightBAC! Spring Toolbox to its web site (www.fightbac.org). The toolbox provides a number of resources to help you -- food safety professionals, organizations, coalitions, community groups, etc.--implement effective outreach programs and educate consumers about safe food handling. Each section of the toolbox is filled with ready-to-use tools and suggested guidelines that can be downloaded and further tailored to suit your own individual needs.