Food and Drug Administration
Food Safety and Inspection Service
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
May 11, 2004
Healthy People 2010 Food Safety
Data Progress Review
Food Safety Education Examples
- FDA and FSIS develop and distribute materials for
consumers and various organizations on issues of food safety concern, such
as the importance of cooking foods to safe temperatures, foodborne illness
associated with raw and undercooked eggs and raw seafood, and food safety
for seniors. These materials are distributed in bulk to organizations
serving highly susceptible populations (e.g., AIDS and cancer hotlines,
voluntary health groups, day care and senior citizen centers), to agency
field staff, and through food safety exhibits at health professional
meetings throughout the year, such as the National Association of City and
County Health Officials, the National Association of WIC (Women, Infants
and Children) Program Directors, and the National Association of Area
Agencies on Aging.
- Direct mailing to newspapers and consumer magazines of
food safety materials timed to coordinate with public interests, e.g., egg
safety at Easter, safe holiday cooking in the winter season, safe picnics
in warm weather months.
- Development and distribution throughout the nation of
drop-in newspaper columns on topics of special concern -- e.g., egg
safety, listeriosis, methyl mercury in fish, and handling produce safely.
- Meetings on food safety issues with editorial staffs of
national magazines to stimulate articles such as have appeared in Family
Circle, Better Homes and Gardens, Parenting, Redbook, Parents, Woman's
Day, and American Baby.
- Development and distribution throughout the nation of
video news releases on food safety labeling initiatives, e.g., untreated
juice labeling and safe handling instructions on fresh egg packages.
- The National Coalition of Food Safe Schools
is a network of national organizations, associations, and government
agencies that have direct or indirect involvement or interest in reducing
foodborne illness in the U.S. by
improving food safety in schools. The NCFSS web site was launched in June
2001.
- Thermy™: In Spring 2000 FSIS, USDA launched a new national food
safety education campaign to promote the use of food thermometers. The
campaign theme is: "It's Safe to Bite When the Temperature is
Right!" The campaign is designed to encourage consumers to use a food
thermometer when cooking meat, poultry, and egg products. The Partnership
for Food Safety Education, The Food Temperature Indicator Association, and
a number of grocery chains and thermometer companies around the country
are cooperating with USDA in the Thermy™ campaign.
- In 2003, FSIS introduced a new educational campaign
designed to reach millions of consumers with food safety messages. The
campaign's centerpiece is the Food Safety Mobile, which travels the
country delivering food safety education and developing partnerships at
the local level. For the communities the Mobile visits, representatives from the national level are
teamed with community leaders to provide answers for consumers on national
and local issues. Partners with the USDA Food Safety Mobile come from all
over the community: universities and cooperative extension, state and
local public health, agriculture, and other government agencies, FSIS
field offices, grocery stores, schools, and many others.
- Each year FDA and FSIS develop a kit of consumer
education materials for National Food Safety Education MonthSM (September), in support of the
four key food safety practices. These kits reach some 42,000 health
educators, including FDA and USDA field staff, State and local health
department personnel, school food service directors, and school nurses and
are used in a variety of local educational activities. (A CD of one kit
is provided in this binder.)
- FDA annually provides seed funding for 14-20 grassroots
food safety education projects to FDA Public Affairs Specialists in the
field. These projects typically involve partnerships with local extension
agents, health departments, schools, media, and/or businesses and reflect
a broad range of activities, from multicultural consumer education to train-the-trainer
programs for food service workers to contests for schoolchildren.
- The Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference, a
cooperative relationship among FDA, National Marine Fisheries
Service, Environmental Protection Agency, the States, and the shellfish
industry that assures that uniform shellfish control measures are adopted,
and that those measures are enforced consistently by state regulatory
authorities, also
provides educational information about molluscan shellfish and about Vibrio
vulnificus.
Hispanic Food Safety Education
- In cooperation with Radio Unica, FDA distributed
information in Spanish and English on the four key food safety behaviors,
as well as the risks associated with undercooked eggs and raw seafood, at
12 health fairs held in major Hispanic population centers across the U.S.
- In cooperation with the California Department of Health
Services, FDA developed and implemented a program to educate the Latino
community on the dangers of eating raw molluscan shellfish because they may be contaminated with the
bacteria Vibrio vulnificus, which can cause serious illness or
death. This is a particular concern in
the Hispanic community since raw oysters are a favorite food, especially
among Hispanic males. The program centered around a fotonovela, a popular means of
communicating information in Hispanic communities. This program has been
effective among Hispanic populations in other parts of the country.
- FDA has produced a bilingual tool kit, available on the
Web, to help local health educators inform the Hispanic community about
the dangers of eating raw oysters. How to Generate Awareness of Vibrio vulnificus
of Raw Oysters with the Hispanic Community includes tools a health
educator needs to conduct a media relations and community outreach health
education campaign. The tool kit, available in a brochure format, is on
the Web at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/vv-toc.html.
School-based education programs
- The K-3 Presenter's Kit, a compendium of
games, songs and coloring materials utilizing the Fight BAC!®
character has been widely distributed to elementary schools and has proven
effective with pre-schoolers as well.
- Your Game Plan for Food Safety, for grades 4-6, includes an
award-winning video and food safety-related experiments to teach basic
microbiological concepts illustrating the importance of the four key
behaviors. Developed in partnership with the National Science Teachers
Association (NSTA), some 17,000 copies are now in use by teachers.
- Science and Our Food Supply, a supplementary
food safety curriculum for middle and high school students developed by
FDA and NSTA and is in wide use with more than 23,000 copies distributed
in response to teacher requests. In addition, FDA and NSTA host an annual
train-the-trainer program, bringing 25 middle school and 25 high school
science teachers to Washington each year for a week of food safety/food science
training, in return for which the teachers hold workshops in their local
areas on Science and Our Food Supply. To date, more than 4000
teachers have participated in the local workshops.
Hypertext updated by ear/viv July 30, 2007