| Partnership for Food Safety Education

Mobile Food Safety in Memphis—Meet BAC Fighter Jean Bridges!

June 7, 2016

We Fight BAC, Inc. of Memphis, Tennessee is a program developed by BAC Fighter Jean Bridges. Her program started as a USDA Summer Food Service Program, providing a daily meal and snack for Memphis’ disadvantaged children.

Latch-key Kids Need the Core Four

During this work, Jean and her team became concerned that the latch-key kids they were serving did not have even the most basic information about safe food handling. These youngsters were often responsible for preparing meals for themselves and siblings and were at great risk of exposing the entire family to foodborne illnesses.

Jean saw a desperate need for basic home food safety education for these kids…

Food Safety Pros Collaborate

Jean’s program now includes a donated 26-foot mobile teaching RV, staffed with trained food safety ambassadors (volunteers from the Memphis and Shelby County Health Departments and the Tennessee Food Safety Task Force). She is considering having staff become ServSafe-certified instructors and proctors as a way to help fund the outreach.

It’s All About Food Safety

The objectives of the “We Fight BAC” program are to:

Increase community awareness of food safety and prevention for low-income children and their families.
Decrease the many cases of foodborne illness that occur as a result of improper food handling and preparation by consumers in their own kitchens.
Educate children and parents about the four main principals of home food safety – clean, separate, cook and chill.
Promote USDA’s “Food Safe Families Campaign”
Increase exposure to Food Safety & Prevention websites, including:

We Fight BAC www.wefightbac.com

USDA Food Safety Education http://1.usa.gov/1tEYVOi

Partnership for Food Safety Education www.fightbac.org

Free Downloads are a Key Resource

We Fight BAC uses many of the free downloads available on the Partnership for Food Safety Education’s Fight BAC website, as well as those from government food safety education sites. She finds these free materials a valuable addition to her outreach.

Go BAC Fighter Jean! BAC doesn’t have a chance against your energy!

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BAC stage!

August 22, 2015

Soup kitchen set includes Fight BAC!® posters

The set for the Horizon Theatre’s Atlanta production of GRAND CONCOURSE by playwright Heidi Schreck takes place in a church soup kitchen in the Bronx.

BAC Fighter and former PFSE Board member, Missy Cody, was delighted to see these Fight BAC!® safe food handling posters hanging on the set when she attended the production in early April! We’re definitely for all actual and all theatrical kitchens posting Fight BAC!® food safety practices! Thank you for sharing this with BAC Fighters Missy!

California Cantaloupe Advisory Board supports consumer safe handling of cantaloupes

June 26, 2015

California cantaloupe farmers want consumers to be confident about the safety of their product.

The California Cantaloupe Advisory Board (CCAB) developed a website that uses fun and informative consumer-friendly graphics, step-by-step instructions, and how-to videos to educate consumers on proper procedures to safely handle, prepare, and store cantaloupes at home. The CCAB utilizes social media channels to communicate this information and lead people to its website for more information.

In addition to science-based food safety practices, farmers have conducted research on the best way to store and prepare cantaloupes in the home.

Here are helpful cantaloupe resources from the California Cantaloupe Advisory Board:

Denver Loves Food Safety Education

June 26, 2015

Alison Peterson, a Food Program Supervisor for the Denver Department of Environmental Health (DEH) caught up with us to share wonderful activities of the DEH that protect public health through food safety education!

Denver Department of Environmental Health Public Health Inspection Division is passionate about education! DEH is dedicated to protecting the public’s health and safety by educating the food industry. DEH regularly offers basic food safety classes for anyone interested. The target audience is the every-day food employee. Our classes provide a comprehensive overview of day-to-day food safety concepts in a food facility. We do have a heavy focus on the biological hazards of food-borne illness and how crucial hand washing is by conducting GloGerm demonstrations.

DEH has always offered basic food safety classes. Over the past few years, we have really increased our educations efforts. We developed a new Power Point presentation, complete with “real” pictures. We added more classes to the 2015 schedule including Spanish classes! We created a colorful, fun pamphlet to hand out to operators, employees, and anyone interested in attending the class! We created a “food safety instructor team” of any inspectors interested in teaching this class. We met, we discussed, we talked food safety, and we all chuckled when someone mentioned “Oh, I can definitely talk about explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting in front of a group of people!”

Our educational program has improved so much that Basic Food Safety Class attendance has skyrocketed from 10-15 participants per class to almost 50 participants! We now have a team of four instructors (and two of them also speak Spanish)! We have also received numerous requests for off-site classes and at the end of 2014, conducted 10 off-site classes! In 2015, we have already conducted 3 off-site classes too! Our initiative this year is to reach out to as many food handlers as possible. We have partnered with State Food Safety to offer an online food safety class in multiple languages!

We have received great feedback regarding the availability of this educational opportunity. Our instructors created a post-class evaluation as well, where one participant concluded that, “The sharing of “real life” experience. All the pictures and stories really help things hit home!”

Atlanta Kroger Co. Stores Add Culinary Flair to Food Safety Education

May 26, 2015

For National Food Safety Education Month, the Partnership for Food Safety Education worked with contributing partner Kroger to create a week- by- week outreach plan. We thank every participating Kroger Co. store for joining us in this effort to connect with customers on food safety in September!

Kroger’s Atlanta Division added culinary flair to safe grilling information provided by the Partnership. They offered a double dose of fun to customers: delicious recipes and useful information on food thermometers!

They transformed PFSE’s food thermometer flyer into a recipe flyer, and printed the opposite side with a deliciously tempting recipe from Kroger Chef John Szymanski.

Atlanta’s food safety manager sent 200 flyers to each Atlanta Division store – 120,000 recipe flyers in total! Both customers and store managers loved them.

Thank you Atlanta Division Kroger Stores for reminding consumers that food thermometers are a vital ingredient when preparing food at home!