| Partnership for Food Safety Education

BAC Fighter and Blogger Shares Food Safety Messages

April 26, 2015

Some information demands a share! After the Partnership for Food Safety Education’s July Knowledge Exchange conference call on poultry handling, Marybeth Feutz was inspired to share information on her blog, AgriCultured. In her post, Food Safety in the Kitchen, Marybeth shares some key points on consumer behavior from the call.

Marybeth was was especially surprised that only 20% of people believed their family could become ill from chicken prepared in the home. Her post emphasizes how important it is for consumers to keep food safe once they get it home from the store. She plans to tackle washing chicken next.

The National Chicken Council Debunks Myth

March 26, 2015

Rinsing Raw Poultry Does Not Remove Bacteria

The Partnership for Food Safety Education isn’t the only organization working to bust food safety myths! Recently, the National Chicken Council referenced Home Food Safety Mythbusters in their outreach to the media. The National Chicken Council noted the fact that rinsing raw poultry does not remove bacteria but can lead to cross-contamination. Never rinse raw meat or poultry products in order to prevent possible cross contamination in the sink and kitchen. Thanks to the National Chicken Council for doing their part to correct common food safety misperceptions and keep consumers healthy and informed!

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!

Rinse at your Own Risk!

February 26, 2015

BAC Fighter collaboration urges consumers to stop rinsing chicken

Dr. Jennifer Quinlan brought together a team of BAC Fighters from Drexel University and New Mexico State University to set the record straight on one hot button topic. They’re telling consumers: “Don’t Wash Your Chicken.”

To the estimated 90% of consumers still rinsing chicken, this declaration comes as a shock. Most will ask, “But why not?”

The Don’t Wash Your Chicken campaign has that question covered.

Using humorous video mini dramas, cooking demos, and photo-novellas with recipe cards, the campaign clearly conveys to consumers the reasons that they shouldn’t wash their chicken:

1) Cooking to 165° Fahrenheit kills the bacteria

2) Washing actually spreads the germs all around your kitchen

For any skeptics, the video mini dramas feature “germ-vision” overlays, giving viewers a visual of the slimy, green, germ splatters that will most likely result if they opt to rinse their poultry.

To soften the blow for many veteran rinsers, the campaign also reminds them that removing the rinse step actually makes cooking chicken easier and simpler. Changing behavior is not to so bad after all!

All of these education materialas are available and able to be downloaded at the website: http://drexel.edu/dontwashyourchicken/Videos-Photo-novellas/Overview/

Thank you Drexel University, New Mexico State University, and the USDA on this wonderful work to Fight BAC! ®

World Health Day Letter from the Executive Director

January 26, 2015

Shelley Feist, Executive Director of the Partnership for Food Safety Education, discusses World Health Day 2015.

The World Health Day has set aside April 7 to focus on food safety from farm to plate— the theme of World Health Day 2015. WHO says the day focuses on “demonstrating the importance of food safety along the whole length of the food chain in a globalized world, from production and transport, to preparation and consumption.”

For its’ part, the non-profit Partnership for Food Safety Education will be working through social media on April 7 to recognize and pay tribute to the thousands of health and food safety educators, teachers, and community leaders, that work to teach consumers about the importance of safe food handling to reducing risk of illness – especially for young children and other vulnerable populations.

WHO’s 10 Facts on Food Safety include that “everybody has a role to play in keeping food safe”, (Fact 9) and “consumers should be well informed on food safety practices,” (Fact 10). These are two important facts that sometimes get pushed down in priority when the food industry is focusing on production, transport, and sales of food. But these two facts are the basis for the work of the Partnership and its network of BAC Fighters in the United States.

And we agree with WHO’s statement that “People should make informed and wise food choices and adopt adequate behaviors. They should know common food hazards and how to handle food safely, using the information provided in food labelling.” But as any consumer knows, labels on food might give you some of the steps to keeping food safe (it might give you the safe end-point temperature, for example), but protecting one’s health includes preparing for handling food by first washing hands thoroughly with soap and running water whenever possible; using a food thermometer to measure if food has reached a safe temperature –not guessing based on whether it looks hot; and being aware of how actions at home might spread harmful bacteria from a raw food to a surface or to hands, and other methods of cross-contamination.

In the United States consumers benefit from a required meat and poultry safe handling label. Consumers should always take notice of the label, and encourage children to read the label with them when they prepare these products. For the full range of simple but critical steps to reducing risk of foodborne illness, consumers should turn to Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill, and to fightbac.org as a source to be informed about and involved as active partners in the food safety chain of prevention.