The failure that is Food Safety Education month
Linda Rivera (right, pic from Washington Post) is the face of everything that is wrong with Food Safety Education month.
As The Washington Post reports this morning:
In Room 519 of Kindred Hospital, Linda Rivera can no longer speak.
Her mute state, punctuated only by groans, is the latest downturn in the swift collapse of her health that began in May when she curled up on her living room couch and nonchalantly ate several spoonfuls of the Nestlé cookie dough her family had been consuming for years. Federal health officials believe she is among 80 people in 31 states sickened by cookie dough contaminated with a deadly bacteria, E. coli O157:H7.
The impact of the infection has been especially severe for Rivera and nine other victims who developed a life-threatening complication known as hemolytic uremic syndrome. One, a 4-year-old girl from South Carolina, had a stroke and is partially paralyzed.
In a baffling waste of resources, groups like the International Food Information Council, have decided that food safety education month – that apparently starts today – is all about educating consumers with sanitized messages; that if consumers were only made aware they had a role to play in food safety, outbreaks related to contaminated peanut butter, produce and cookie dough would be reduced.
Whenever a group says the public needs to be educated – in this case about food safety -- that group has utterly failed to present a compelling case for their cause.
I cringe, and remember a Lewis Lapham column I read in Harper’s magazine in the mid-1980s about how individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. Oh, and it’s sorta arrogant to state that others need to be educated; to imply that if only you understood the world as I understand the world, we would agree and dissent would be minimized.
Given all the outbreaks – produce, pet food, peanut butter, that have nothing to do with consumers, any food safety information – not education -- campaign should include what the World Heath Organization has been advocating since 2002: source food from safe sources. An evaluation of message effectiveness should also be a bare minimum and rarely happens.
An honest Food Safety Education month would include food safety stories, tragic or otherwise, and a rigorous evaluation of what has worked, what hasn’t worked and what can be improved, rather than a checklist of ineffective and often inaccurate food safety instructions with the cumulative effect of blaming consumers. Telling people to wash their hands isn’t keeping the piss out of meals.
But judge for yourselves in what I am sure is a completely spontaneous and unscripted video from IFIC on why ordinary consumers feel they should be doing more.
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/admin/trackback/153588
Was the source of the E.coli in the cookie dough ever discovered?
Doug;
We appreciate your attention to the important issue of consumer food safety. We wholeheartedly agree that food safety is a complex issue involving everyone in the food chain. It’s heartbreaking to read stories of those suffering from foodborne illness. It only reinforces the need for improved food safety practices at all levels. For the past 15 years, the International Food Information Council Foundation’s mission has focused on public education while other associations, government agencies, industry, and the like, focus on further aspects of the entire food supply. Our goal is to coordinate and complement these efforts to address food safety issues along the entire food chain.
Talking to just one group certainly isn’t enough to solve the food safety challenges we face, and education is just one element of a broad-based approach to food safety. Here at the Foundation, a large part of our work is focused on learning what consumers think, and we use that insight to come up with approaches like the tips we outline for safe food handling practices. For Food Safety Education Month in particular, we’ve teamed with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service to help increase awareness about the risks of foodborne illness and to provide practical approaches to help minimize the risk of possible contamination in the home. While our tips may not eradicate foodborne illness completely, they can help reduce it and are in line with what consumers tell us would motivate them to make smart choices about food safety. Our video that you highlight is another tool in our efforts to promote responsibility across all sectors of the food system. It is in fact unscripted. We simply asked random people “who is responsible for food safety in this country†and put the responses together into a short video clip. These efforts are just a few of many available from other institutions and organizations to help ALL food safety stakeholders – industry, government, retailers, farmers / producers AND consumers.
Certainly we’re happy that you’ve dedicated so much effort to improving food safety and we’re avid readers of your blog. The more voices there are promoting proper food safety practices at all levels, the better. We’re always happy to work with you and encourage you to check out some of our other background materials on Ag and Food Production (http://www.ific.org/food/agriculture/index.cfm); Food Safety & Defense (http://www.ific.org/food/safety/index.cfm) and even the U.S. Food Regulatory System (http://www.ific.org/publications/brochures/foodregbroch.cfm. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or would like to discuss our food safety efforts further.
Regards,
Tony Flood
Director, Food Safety Communications
International Food Information Council Foundation