Partnership for Food Safety Education

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National Food Safety Education Month

September is National Food Safety Education Month! 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year,
an estimated 1 in 6 people in the United States (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from eating contaminated food.

Anyone can get sick from a foodborne illness (also called food poisoning).

Learn how to take steps to help prevent food poisoning, and show others how to keep food safe.

Participate
Poultry Handling
Mythbusters
Food Delivery
Recipes
Downloads
For Kids
Learn More

Participate in NFSEM

This month let’s commit to handling food safely at home and building safe recipes! 

Ways you can participate:

Don't Wash Your Chicken!

Rinsing raw chicken can spread harmful bacteria around your kitchen. Learn more safe poultry handling steps! 

Food Safety Mythbusters

Learn more about common food safety myths that originate from family tradition and misinformation on social media.

Food Delivery

With more food being delivered than ever before, how you handle delivered foods is more important than ever! Learn how to “prep yourself” to keep great delivered foods safe.

Safe Recipes

Research shows that adding food safety instructions to recipes improves food safety behaviors at home.

The Healthy Lunch Cookbook

The Safe Recipe Cookbook

Downloadable Recipes

Safe Recipe Style Guide

Free Downloads

Food safety starts at home! Check out these free resources to help keep families healthy while cooking at home.

The Core Four Practices

Safe Poultry Handling

Go 40 °F or Below

The Story of Your Dinner

Kids Activities

Research suggests that when kids develop cooking skills while young, it may have long-term benefits in both health and nutrition into adulthood.

Safe Recipe Activity

Food Safety Activity Sheets

Coloring Placemats

Games & Recipes

Additional Resources

“Relish” in Food Safety This Summer!

July is National Hot Dog Month and National Hot Dog Day is Wednesday, July 20! This summer, people in the United States will consume millions of hot dogs at family BBQs, restaurants and amusement parks. 

What better way to celebrate than by safely preparing and cooking delicious hot dogs! 

Hot dogs carry the potential to be contaminated by the dangerous foodborne bacteria, Listeria monocytogenes. If they are not cooked and handled properly, hot dogs can cause Listeriosis, a serious bacterial infection.

The CDC estimates that Listeriosis causes about 1,600 illnesses and 260 deaths in the U.S. annually. The infection is most likely to sicken pregnant women and their newborns, adults aged 65 or older, and people with weakened immune systems. Pregnant women are especially at serious risk, since Listeriosis can cause miscarriages and stillbirths.

Here’s how you can enjoy hot dogs and protect yourself from food poisoning this summer:


To celebrate National Hot Dog Month, we’ve created three fun, safe recipes for you!


Follow these simple food safety steps and enjoy America’s favorite meal on a bun!

Melanie Safi is studying Health & Nutrition Sciences with a concentration in Foods and Nutrition. She serves as PFSE Communications and Marketing Intern in the spring and summer of 2022.

Keep Takeout & Home-Delivered Food Safe

“Why do you have baking pans in your car?,” my friend asked me.

She was observing the small metal baking pans tucked in the back pockets of the front seats.

“I couldn’t find plastic trays that fit in the pockets,” I replied.

That really didn’t answer the question, did it? My family used trays to avoid spilling food on the seats or floor of our car when we ate in the vehicle. I looked for plastic trays but they were all too large to fit in the pockets. Small cookie sheets were a good substitute. 

During the early days of the pandemic, my husband and I picked up food to eat in our car or bring home. We put many miles on our vehicle during the early months of the pandemic.

We liked to see some other scenery outside of our home. While my husband drove, I arranged the food in their wrappers on our trays.

We found a spot with a small herd of deer, and we visited them regularly. Sometimes the deer walked right up to our parked vehicle. No, the deer didn’t get to sit in the backseat and enjoy a snack on a tray. Our car is too small for that.

Most families had options when many dine-in restaurants closed during the early pandemic. We could have opted for takeout, meal delivery, grocery delivery, or cook-it-yourself meal kits mailed to your home.

When the pandemic began, most restaurants closed for a while. Some restaurants only allowed takeout and others had drive-through windows. Unfortunately, some restaurants closed permanently due to loss of revenue and staffing challenges.

According to the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry lost $280 billion in sales during the first 13 months of the pandemic. Millions of workers lost their jobs either temporarily or permanently. Others did not return to food service work.

Life has shifted in many ways during the past two years, including how we obtain our food. Fortunately, the coronavirus is not spread through food, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The virus primarily spreads through tiny droplets in the air through close contact with people.

Most of us enjoy eating food prepared outside of our home, at least on occasion, and we need to follow safe food handling recommendations. The Partnership for Food Safety Education (PFSE) recently launched Prep Yourself, a national campaign on handling delivered food safely.

Here are some key messages from the campaign for all of us to consider when using food delivery services. Most of these tips apply to take-out food also:

  • Before ordering, ask questions. What are the company’s safety standards? How do they respond if the product is delivered at an unsafe temperature or if it appears that tampering has taken place?
  • Be sure that someone is home when the food is delivered so the food can be stored properly in the refrigerator. If no one will be home, be sure to establish a safe place that is cool, shaded, and protected from pests. 
  • Encourage family members and guests to wash their hands for 20 seconds with soap and water before handling and eating food. If soap and water aren’t available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.
  • When the food is delivered, the responsibility for safe handling becomes your responsibility. Look for stickers on perishable foods that say “Keep refrigerated” or “Keep frozen” and then follow the recommendations.
  • Handle the delivered food safely. If the food is fully cooked, serve it right away or keep it hot in an oven or preheated slow cooker. Cook, refrigerate, or freeze raw foods as soon as possible. Be aware of the “danger zone” (40 °F to 140 °F). Food should be kept cold (below 40 °F) or hot (above 140 °F).


Whether it’s cooked at home or at a restaurant, my family enjoys food from around the world. We love these Slow Cooker Chipotle Carnitas, a typical dish of Mexican cuisine. This recipe includes food safety prompts from the Safe Recipe Style Guide — and it’s downloadable in Spanish language!

“Carnitas” is the Spanish word for “little meats.” Remember to wash hands with soap and water after handling raw meat.

Your family will enjoy this spicy, slightly sweet, and savory dish. Add your favorite fresh toppings, like cilantro, avocado & a squeeze of lime for freshness!

Dr. Julie Garden-Robinson, R.D., L.R.D., is a food and nutrition specialist and professor in the Department of Health, Nutrition and Exercise Sciences at North Dakota State University Extension. She can be reached at julie.garden-robinson@ndsu.edu.

** Reprinted from NDSU Agriculture Communication **

BAC Fighter Shannon Coleman Incorporates DEI into Food Safety Education

By Britanny Saunier, Executive Director, PFSE

Everyone has a role to play in food safety, whether you are a home cook, a courier for a food delivery service, a food producer, a regulator, a community educator, or a middle school science teacher. Your handwashing and food handling habits matter to reducing the risk of foodborne illnesses, for yourself and for your loved ones.

You’ve likely asked, “But how do I make a difference and actually help people practice food safety?” A key element to influencing food handling behaviors is representation. People must see themselves in food safety messaging, which includes the deliverer of the messages. Representation matters.

That’s why the Partnership for Food Safety Education (PFSE) is celebrating Black History Month by sharing the experience of community-based food safety educators like Dr. Shannon Coleman, assistant professor/state extension specialist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. She is helping to lead conversations about properly incorporating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into food safety education efforts.

Shannon graciously took the time to share her experience as an educator, her thoughts on representation in food safety, and what excites her the most about her work to prevent foodborne illnesses in her community.

How it all began

Shannon began her professional career in food safety during her doctoral program in Animal Science at Colorado State University. During her doctoral program, she studied fresh produce safety. However, Shannon’s interest in food safety was sparked after performing research in a dairy food and produce safety laboratory as an undergraduate.

Representation matters in food safety education

Shannon says representation matters because “our audience is diverse.” She is starting to incorporate cultural competency in programming, especially when working with a diverse audience. Through her work with a diverse audience, Shannon has learned to leave her assumptions at the door and think about how this information would benefit their lives.

Most challenging part of being a Black woman in the field

“The community of Black females in food safety is small, which makes it hard for us to all know that each other exists,” Shannon says.

However, through Shannon’s two networks — Iowa State University and Alabama A&M University — a group of Black female educators have developed a small community. This community has started conversations about properly incorporating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and collaborations. A few members of the group presented about DEI at the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) annual conference in summer 2021.  

Explore stories of different groups of people in food safety

As an educator for the lay audience and the classroom, Shannon has learned that stories stick with people. During lectures, she purposely shares stories about consumers who have been impacted by foodborne illness and companies who have been impacted by a foodborne outbreak.

Food safety resources for underrepresented communities

Shannon’s team is currently working on translating existing produce safety videos into Spanish language. They are also developing fact sheets. This project is a collaborative project which involves the ISU Brenton Center for Agricultural Instruction and Technology Transfer (BCAIT); Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS); Iowa Farm Union (IFU); and Davis Blasini from Cornell University Produce Safety Alliance. The Brenton Center is facilitating the video editing. Both IDALS and IFU are financially supporting this project, and Davis is serving as their expert in cultural competency.

Trend that should be further explored

According to Shannon, food preservation is always a trending topic. The North Central Food Safety Educator Network that she co-leads with Dr. Julie Garden-Robinson, has developed several resources related to the topic. As a consumer, Shannon has seen several inappropriate recipes and practices on social media. She strongly encourages people to use tested food preservation recipes.     

Most exciting part about working in food safety

Recently Shannon’s extension director mentioned that she’s had some flexibility in her current role. She has shared food safety education with diverse audiences, such as gardeners, 4-H judges, fresh produce growers, cottage food producers, and small food processors. Due to this variety, Shannon’s days and weeks are never the same, so she rarely gets bored.

Thank you, Shannon, for all your hard work in food safety education!

Dr. Shannon M. Coleman (above)

Dr. Shannon Coleman is an assistant professor/state extension specialist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. She can be reached at scoleman@iastate.edu.

Prep Yourself: Food Is On the Way!

Partnership for Food Safety Education behind first national food safety campaign for food delivery

Press Release (Aug. 30, 2021)

Responding to the increasing use of food delivery services and as National Food Safety Education Month kicks off, the Partnership for Food Safety Education (PFSE) has launched a new national campaign to help food delivery users ensure the safety of their delivered foods. Prep Yourself: Food Is on the Way, the first national food safety campaign specifically targeting users of food delivery services, seeks to encourage safe food handling at home and educate consumers on what to consider when ordering from food delivery services.

“The coronavirus pandemic kicked food delivery usage into overdrive,” said Shelley Feist, executive director of PFSE. “We’re excited to have led the expert collaboration behind these new, consumer-tested resources.  Using this campaign is a great way to start a conversation with people who want to ensure health and safety when ordering food to be delivered.”

Food delivery services include meal kits, restaurant delivery and grocery delivery. According to an April 2020 survey conducted by Statista, over one-third of both suburban and urban respondents said they used online food delivery services or restaurant apps to order food. According to the 2021 Food and Health Survey conducted by the International Food Information Council, 72% of Americans say the pandemic is changing the way they eat and prepare food. This study showed 42% of consumers are shopping for groceries online at least monthly.

“Where consumers get their food has changed, from around the corner to around the world. With foods now delivered to their homes by a variety of delivery models, empowering consumers with the knowledge they need to keep their families safe is key to the prevention of foodborne illnesses and a central tenet of FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety,” said Frank Yiannas, deputy commissioner for food policy and response at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “We are grateful for the good work done by the Partnership for Food Safety Education to provide consumers with food safety educational messages during these changing times.”

Prep Yourself: Food Is on the Way includes digital advertising, social media, and print collateral that can be integrated into food delivery service provider communications or other food safety educator communications. With a suite of downloadable resources, the PFSE encourages anyone who is interested in communicating about food safety in the delivery space to access the free materials. The PFSE will be utilizing the campaign resources throughout the month of September, National Food Safety Education Month, and beyond.

“The food industry needs resources to help communicate with consumers amid this changing landscape,” said Steven Mandernach of the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO). “PFSE’s new Prep Yourself campaign will help food safety experts and other people who deal with consumers in the food safety space reach consumers with important information about how to keep food safe at home. We’re in a new era of food safety, and it requires that everyone understand their role in maintaining the safety of our food from the farm to our tables.”

The Partnership for Food Safety Education recognizes AFDO, Instacart and Sysco for their support of Prep Yourself: Food Is on the Way. 

On Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021, PFSE and AFDO co-hosted a webinar that brought together more than 500 attendees to learn about the new campaign resources. Campaign resources and more information can be found at fightbac.org/prep-yourself. Social media content related to the campaign can be found using #prepyourself.

About the PFSE
The non-profit Partnership for Food Safety Education is the originator of science-based food safety messages and the national leader in developing and disseminating information around the linkage of food safety consumer education with positive health outcomes. Food safety and health educators, and consumers, can download free food safety education information from the Partnership’s website at www.fightbac.org. The Partnership is the creator and steward of the popular Fight BAC!® national food safety education campaign.

Download a PDF of this press release.

The 18-month process to develop Prep Yourself: Food is on the Way was led by outgoing PFSE Executive Director Shelley Feist. Shelley has served as Executive Director since 2003. She is leaving this role in September 2021 to start her own business. 

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