| Partnership for Food Safety Education

Dedicated BAC! Fighter, Diane Van, Retires

February 26, 2015

After 26 years dedicated to raising the bar on consumer food safety education, Diane Van recently retired from the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Diane started her career as a technical information specialist on the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline. She later became manager of the hotline and led the development of Ask Karen- USDA’s nationally-celebrated virtual consumer food safety representative. Diane later was promoted to Deputy Director of USDA’s Food Safety Education Staff where she played a major role in the development and implementation of the Ad Council’s Food Safe Families campaign.

Diane has been a great friend to the Partnership for Food Safety Education and the Fight BAC!® campaign. She contributed immeasurably over the years to the Partnership’s success through participation on working groups and Partnership’s convenings.

Thank you Diane for a career dedicated to public service in consumer food safety education!

Mixing it up with Fight BAC!®

February 26, 2015

With over 20 years in public schools teaching food safety, Melissa Blaine still finds ways to get creative with Fight BAC!®. Melissa is a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher at Grant Middle School in New Mexico. Melissa has been using Fight BAC!® for years in her classrooms and she says her 6th graders love it! But she stays creative and mixes things up by adapting the Fight BAC!® handouts to challenge her kids in new ways on the four core messages: Clean, Separate, Cook, and Chill. Melissa says that the “6th graders are enthusiastic learners and want to be in the kitchen and cook, not just to eat, but to become more independent. They can use these skills in class, at home and in the future in food service jobs”.

Thank you Melissa for the 20 years you have spent Fighting BAC!®

Eat Smart, Move More…and Fight BAC! ®

February 26, 2015

Harmful BAC (bacteria) that can be in food isn’t part of anyone’s plan for a healthy body.

Virginia’s Family Nutrition Program is working to make sure BAC stays off the menu for the state’s limited – resource families. They are Fighting BAC!® every day with food safety as a required component of all FNP curricula. Teaching safe food handling is one way the FNP is teaching limited-resource families and youth how to make smart food choices. Participants are expected to demonstrate acceptable food safety practices upon completion of the program.

What’s next on the FNP agenda? Preparing to Fight BAC!® for the upcoming school year! Nutrition Outreach Instructors use food safety print materials from The Partnership for Food Safety Education to create fun and interactive kits for the Smart Food Safety portion of their 3^rd-7^th grade curriculum, Healthy Weights for Healthy Kids. BAC won’t stand a chance against these healthy kids!

The VA Family Nutrition Program strives to teach limited-resource families and youth to make healthier food choices and become better managers of available food resources for optimal health and growth. Check out their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/VaFNP.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

February 26, 2015

Rub a dub scrub: Pennsylvania’s Get Smart Drawing Competition Fights BAC! ® that could be on hands.

Kids’ hands are a favorite hiding place for harmful bacteria. It’s no surprise that many foodborne disease outbreaks start with contaminated hands. For kids, germs are out of sight and out of mind. They don’t think about invisible pathogens lurking on their hands before they put their fingers in their mouths, pick up a sandwich, or pass toys to classmates.

BAC Fighter Natalie Mueller of Pennsylvania’s Get Smart program has come up with a contest to make the importance of handwashing memorable to kids across the state. This Fall, kids will be asked to draw a picture that illustrates why it’s important to wash their hands.

Prompting kids to visualize germs on their hands will shed light on just why they are supposed to wash their hands. Kids can be as creative as they want; drawing germ-battling heroes or simply drawing everything they touched in day. A picture is worth a thousand words – especially a picture of all of the scary germs that might be on your hands! That’s a lesson that doesn’t fade quickly.

BAC Fighters without Borders

February 26, 2015

The 4 Golden Rules of Food Safety hold true no matter the location

BAC Fighter Stuart Baker, originally from London, has been working to bring the “Four Golden Rules of Food Safety” to the people of Thailand. For the past four years, Stuart has been training food handlers in Thailand’s hospitality industry about the importance of Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill with a popular interactive food safety workshop. When he’s not educating people in person, Stuart maintains a popular Facebook page where Thai chefs, hotels, and other businesses can find and download information to post on their notice boards or pass out as handouts.

Through his work with his company, Food Hygiene Asia, Stuart has reached no fewer than 2,000 Thai hospitality industry workers. That’s great progress in spreading the word on critical food safety practices in just four years. Thank you Stuart for the work you do to Fight BAC! – in Thailand!