Partnership for Food Safety Education

FightBAC!

COVID-19 Food Safety on Social Media

By Karen Blakeslee, Kansas State University Research and Extension; Londa Nwadike, Kansas State University/University of Missouri; and Levy Randolph, Department of Communications and Agricultural Education, Kansas State University College of Agriculture

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Extension Food Safety units at Kansas State University (KSU) and the University of Missouri (MU Extension) used a variety of community outreach channels to distribute food safety information. Our primary channels included news stories, radio spots, public workshops and events, print brochures, and social media.

Social media, such as Facebook, was used to a lesser extent with content focusing on basics such as canning green beans in July, how to have a safe summer picnic, and preparing game meats in the fall.

Concerned about food safety during the pandemic, many families relied on social media for information. We saw social media quickly emerge as the public’s main source of information and, unfortunately, misinformation. Some erroneous social media posts suggested that washing produce in bleach was necessary to kill the virus, for example.

As its primary public outreach during the pandemic, KSU and MU Extension increased their distribution of accurate, evidenced-based information on social media channels, primarily Facebook. Most of the posts included information from and/or linked to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as KSU and MU Extension. 

Through state and local cooperative extension groups and community groups sharing KSU and MU Extension posts, our reach exponentially expanded. One post on proper disinfection reached more than 9,600 users across various Facebook pages! 

To gauge the effectiveness of our social media efforts, we surveyed 120 of our users to learn if they: 

  • Gained any new knowledge from the posts
  • Used the food safety practices suggested in our six highest performing posts


We learned that social media was an effective way to convey information that would improve consumer food safety practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the number of people reached for each post did not appear to correlate with the percentage of respondents saying they would use that safe food handling practice.

Here are the survey results of respondents who said they would definitely or probably use the food safety behaviors suggested in social media posts: 

  • Handwashing (100%)
  • Washing produce only with water (92%)
  • Essential grocery shopping tips (80%) 
  • Using general food safety practices (65%)
  • Washing hands before eating takeout food (43%)
  • Disinfecting surfaces (41%)


Based on the survey data and experiences with social media postings, we gained valuable tips on how to increase reach and improve families’ safe food handling and hand hygiene behaviors. In addition to providing information on reach and other metrics from two university extension services, we gained data on effective ways to improve the delivery of consumer food safety information. 

UPCOMING PRESENTATION

Friday, March 12
1:20 p.m. to 1:40 p.m.

During the conference, we will present the results of our IRB-approved survey conducted with Kansas State University and University of Missouri Extension social media users. Participants will 1) gain ideas for potential social media posts and images 2) learn how they can conduct a simple survey of their social media users to determine their knowledge gain and food safety behavior changes. In addition to  reach and other metrics from two university extension services, we will include information on effective ways to improve the delivery of consumer food safety information.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

The 2021 Consumer Food Safety Education Virtual Conference, March 9-12, 2021, sponsored by the non-profit Partnership for Food Safety Education, is the only conference in the U.S. dedicated to consumer food safety education. For more conference information and to register, please visit fightbac.org/virtual.

It’s a Home Baking Bonanza!

Not unlike a delicious yeast bread, consumer spending on home baking rises during the holiday season. Cookies, cakes, pies and breads are delicious traditional goodies for winter holiday celebrations. 

According to NCSolutions, household spending on sweet and dessert items have been high throughout the COVID-19 pandemic — especially products used for baking. Household spending on confections, baked goods and baking supplies was up 9% in the period February 24 through September 30 when compared to the same period in 2019.*

Many Americans greatly enjoy baking at home. But not everyone is aware that mishandling raw batter or raw dough can be risky to their families’ health — especially for children! These important tips will help families keep holiday baking traditions safe.

Handle baking ingredients with care

Our favorite holiday cookies and other treats are made from scratch using raw ingredients. Two of these raw ingredients — raw flour and raw eggs — can contain harmful bacteria that can cause foodborne illness. Exposure to heat — baking — is a necessary step to make sure that foods made with raw flour and raw eggs are safe.

Eating raw dough or batter can be risky — especially for young children who have underdeveloped immune systems, putting them at risk for serious illness from bacteria like Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter and others. 

Always wash hands with soap and water after handling raw ingredients, and uncooked dough and batter.

To keep the holidays bright and happy, pay attention to these simple home handling steps for baking ingredients:

  • Raw eggs: To prevent illness from bacteria, keep eggs refrigerated at 40 °F or below until ready to use. Bake desserts containing eggs to a safe internal temperature of 160 °F as measured with a food thermometer. Wash hands with soap and water after handling raw eggs.
  • Raw flour: Follow package directions on baking mixes and other flour-containing products for correct cooking temperatures and times. Keep all raw foods, like eggs and flour and eggs, separate from ready-to eat foods. Remember, flour is a powder and spreads easily. Wash hands with soap and water after handling raw flour.


Handling these raw ingredients with care will help everyone stay healthy while baking at home.

Prevent cross-contamination while baking

Cross-contamination is how bacteria can be spread from hands and surfaces to your food.

Cut down on cross-contamination of harmful germs with these baking basics:

  • When baking at home, wash utensils, appliances and work surfaces with hot water and soap before and after they come in contact with raw dough, raw flour, and eggs or egg-containing foods.
  • Wash your hands with soap and water thoroughly after contact with raw dough and raw ingredients, like flour and eggs.
  • Your digital device is dirty. Try to keep hands off of your smartphone and tablet while you are cooking or baking. If you touch your device, wash your hands with soap and water.


Remember: Washing hands with soap and water for 20 seconds before and after handling raw ingredients is the best way to reduce the spread of germs that can make you sick.

A healthy holiday home

With the current health threat of COVID-19, you want to make sure that no one in your household gets food poisoning this holiday season. Now is the time to model food safety behavior for your children and grandchildren. Let them know that baked cookies or desserts are well worth the wait!

Do you have a favorite family cookie recipe? It’s easy to turn that family favorite into a safe family recipe — and your kids can help! The Safe Recipe Activity teaches kids how to turn a basic recipe into a safe recipe. It’s a fun, educational activity that your entire family will enjoy.

These great cookie and dessert recipes already build food safety and hand hygiene prompts into the act of baking. Give these delicious sweets a try at home!

This season will be so much sweeter if we all stay healthy. From the Partnership for Food Safety Education, we wish you a happy and safe baking season!

Shawnte Loeri is the Communications Associate with the Partnership for Food Safety Education. She enjoys baking vegan desserts with her family and friends. Shawnte can be reached at sloeri@fightbac.org.



*NCSolutions CPG Insights Tracker Shows Sustained Consumer Interest in Confections, Baked Goods and Baking Supplies, Led by 38% Higher Sales of Baking Mixes

This Thanksgiving — Simple, Safe & Sane

A Healthy Home Holiday

Keeping your family safe from a foodborne illness is more important than ever. With the healthcare system fully employed to help people who have coronavirus, it is important to stay healthy and stay out of the hospital emergency room.

The Partnership for Food Safety Education urges all Americans to follow the CDC’s guidance on holiday gatherings and plan to not congregate with people from outside of your household. COVID-19 is a very serious risk — plan accordingly.

For your household-only Thanksgiving meal, here are a few ideas for keeping it simple and setting yourself up for success:

(1) Prepare a smaller traditional turkey

  • A small turkey of 8 pounds will feed 8 people and take about 2.5 hours to roast. Remember, a food thermometer is essential to successful turkey roasting. The internal temperature of the turkey should reach 165 °F. Once it does, remove it from the oven, and let it rest for 20 minutes.
  • A bone-in turkey breast is a great option for a household meal. A bone-in whole turkey breast of 4 to 6 pounds will feed 6 people. It will take between 1.5 to 2 hours to roast and — again — it is only done when your thermometer reaches 165 °F. Let it rest 20 minutes or more before serving.


(2) Focus on favorite side dishes!

  • Choose your two favorite sides to prepare. Keep things simple, and set yourself up for success by limiting the number of side dishes you make.
  • When using delicious frozen options, remember to serve them safely by following package and preparation instructions.


(3) Follow the Core Four practices for safety

  • Clean: Every recipe begins with handwashing. Wash hands with soap and water before starting food prep — every meal, every time. Wash your hands often with soap and water throughout the day.
  • Separate: Prevent cross-contamination from harmful bacteria by separating raw meat, poultry, seafood and eggs from other foods in your grocery shopping cart, grocery bags and in your refrigerator. Use one cutting board for fresh produce and a separate one for raw meat, poultry and seafood.
  • Cook: Food is safely cooked when it reaches a high enough internal temperature to kill the harmful bacteria that cause foodborne illness. Use a food thermometer which measures the internal temperature of cooked meat, poultry and egg dishes, to make sure that the food is cooked to a safe internal temperature.
  • Chill: Refrigerate foods quickly because cold temperatures slow the growth of harmful bacteria. Keeping a constant refrigerator temperature of 40 °F or below is one of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of foodborne illness.


When home cooks follow the Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill food safety steps, they will help reduce the risk of food poisoning.

We’ve got many delicious, downloadable recipes that include basic food safety steps built right in. Join our e-mail list for reminders and resources on home food safety.

The Partnership wishes you a simple, safe and sane holiday season!

Fight BAC! on the Farm

How You Can Help Farmers Protect Our Food

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “farm”? Perhaps you picture a huge field with stalks and vegetables. Many people don’t think about farms providing safe food for our families to eat.

Food Safety on the Farm

Food safety on the farm is not usually front of our minds on a day-to-day basis. But when a food recall makes the news, we may wonder are farmers keeping our food safe? Even though recalls happen, farmers work hard to keep the food they grow safe.

Farming Food Safety Culture

There is a food safety culture on farms. The farmers work hard in many ways to keep food safe. One major way farmers do this is complying with the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011. Part of this law created the Produce Safety Rule. This rule built stricter requirements and accountability in keeping food safe for human consumption. You can learn more about the act and what the requirements on the FDA’s website.

The Rule, Farmers and Consumers (Us!)

Part of the Produce Safety Rule is that farmers must do their best to control for contamination that may be caused by animal feces. To keep animals out there are some controls that can be put into place to keep contamination to a minimum.

Barriers: Farmers will use fencing to keep animals and other unwanted items, such as trash, out of the fields. They might also post signs notifying people that the farm is private property and to keep out. While farmers are doing these things to protect the fields, it is important to understand why they are doing this.

Consumers: It may be tempting to go into a field to look at the growing plants, but it really isn’t a good idea. You might accidentally bring in contaminants on your shoes.

Pets: If you live in or are visiting an area with farms, keep your pets on a leash. Domestic animal poop can contaminate a field. Keep pets off to the side of the field. It is also necessary to pick up your pet’s waste. You wouldn’t want your dog to poop in your home garden, so don’t let them poop in the farm field either. Just remember a domestic animal’s waste could introduce bacteria that can cause contamination, and ultimately, it could lead to foodborne illness in the community.

An example of animal waste contamination is the romaine lettuce E. coli outbreak in 2019.

The bottom line? Stay out of fields, keep pets out of fields, and if you walk near a field, pick up your pet’s waste. Even if pet waste isn’t in the field, water flow could carry it into the field and cause contamination.

Help Farmers Maintain a Safe Food Supply

We all need to keep out of fields and dispose of unwanted substances in an appropriate way. Farmers will keep working hard by planning and documenting what they do to maintain a safe, healthy food supply.

Importance of Food Safety at Home

The farmers do their part to bring us safe food. However, food safety doesn’t end at the grocery store. It continues at home.

To keep your food safe at home, follow the Partnership for Food Safety Education’s Core Four Practices:

  • Clean: wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water. Keep kitchen utensils and surfaces clean.
  • Separate: keep raw meat, poultry, seafood and eggs separate from foods that are ready-to-eat, such as salad, bread and produce.
  • Cook: use a food thermometer to cook foods to the correct internal temperature that will kill bacteria that cause foodborne illness.
  • Chill: keep cold food cold and promptly refrigerate food to 40 °F or below. Keep a thermometer in your refrigerator to make sure it is at the correct temperature.

We can have confidence that modern preventive practices will soon be in place, no matter where in the world food is produced. The Produce Safety Rule, along with other FSMA-mandated rules to regulate food production, importation and transportation, will better protect us all from foodborne illness.

Melissa Wyatt is an Area Assistant Agent, Family Consumer Health Sciences with The University of Arizona. She is a BAC Fighter Ambassador who is passionate about nutrition education, food preservation and cooking classes.

Consumer Education Best of Times

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” — A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

We have seen such a dichotomy of events throughout the year that has been 2020. The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on those involved within the food system has been unprecedented. The pandemic has been likened to a hurricane that knows no shore. With the closure of dine-in restaurants, the retail grocery industry instantaneously became the primary source of food to customers in the U.S.

There have been a number of disruptions throughout the food system, from the rush on stores with food stockpiling, to the lack of product availability due to temporary facility shutdowns. The demand for home delivery and curbside pickup grew at lightspeed. The food system has been shaken, but it is resilient. With the increase of meals prepared at home, food safety awareness has never been more urgent and relevant for the customers we serve.

Over the last two decades, the Partnership for Food Safety Education (PFSE) has served as the leading voice in promoting safe food handling messaging. The “core four” messages of Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill serve as the cornerstone messages to connect with consumers.  Over the last three years, the Partnership has driven successful campaigns to millions of Americans including The Story of Your Dinner, Don’t Wing It, and most recently, the Safe Recipe Style Guide. Coupled with the appointments of strong food safety education advocates, Dr. Mindy M. Brashears, USDA FSIS Undersecretary for Food Safety and Frank Yiannas, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response, I am confident we have the best leadership to advance consumer food safety education for a brighter tomorrow!

On July 13, 2020, the FDA introduced The New Era of Smarter Food Safety, FDA’s Blueprint for the Future. Of the four core elements introduced, Food Safety Culture has the promise to positively impact food safety education for consumers spending more time in their home kitchens. Specific to developing and promoting a smarter food safety education campaign, the FDA calls out several concepts, including understanding and utilizing new technologies relevant to food safety, engaging new partners in a broad coalition to promote food safety culture, and using tech-enabled popular mediums and tools, such as smart home devices, smart phones, digital platforms, to help reach consumers with “smarter” food safety messages.

Does “smarter” food safety sound like a science-fiction experiment? Hardly. Over the last few years, major cities have been investing heavily in smart technology to help advance transportation, public safety, and environment challenges. Take a look at the investments being made by these cities across the country: Atlanta, GA; Nashville, TN; Charlotte, NC; and Lake Nona in Orlando, FL. When evaluating these smart city solutions, it is worth noting they are all people led and technology enabled. It is worth remembering this as we focus on food safety culture.

More recently on October 6, 2020, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service hosted Food Safety: Consumer Outreach and Education Today and for the Future. During this meeting, agencies, associations and business leaders provided a state of the union on leading consumer food safety education efforts. We will continue to build upon these efforts when the Partnership hosts Now You Have My Attention: Hand Hygiene & Food Safety Education for Everyone, March 9-12, 2021 at our Consumer Food Safety Education Virtual Conference. Please plan to join us for this event.

We remain in the middle of a global pandemic, and everyone should heed the CDC’s guidance related to fall and winter holiday celebrations. This year’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s seasons will likely have a deeper meaning of family and faith, and for that, we are all grateful. It is a time for giving back and serving those who may need assistance and care. 

PFSE has established itself with a differentiated, focused approach to food and health: eliminating foodborne illness by educating consumers about safe food handling. Through the strong partnerships forged with those currently participating in the Partnership and those who we’ll engage as new partners with our broad coalition to promote food safety culture, I wish you all a safe and healthy holiday season. 

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge Publix Super Markets for allowing me the opportunity to serve the Partnership along with real food safety champions on the PFSE Board of Directors. 

Through the Partnership for Food Safety Education, we can build upon these collaborative efforts to help advance food safety and health for the families we all strive to mutually serve every day. By accelerating our prevention focus with the health of all top-of-mind, we can help bend the curve on foodborne illness.

Have a wonderful holiday season, and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

All the best…Michael

Michael Roberson is Director of Corporate Quality Assurance for Publix Super Markets. He was elected Chairman of the Partnership for Food Safety Education Board of Directors in September 2020.