Mr. Powell, In your first paragraph you ask "why is food safety training so apparently ineffective?" I may not be able to completely answer that question, but I believe that I can get the conversation started in the right direction. I have been involved in the foodservice industry for approximately 33 years and have been certified in Food Safety since 1989. I also instruct food safety in my place of employment. Before I go any further, I would like you to know that the next bit of information deals with why food safety training does not work and is not a representation of all the people involved. I know there are some very good and dedicated people who are doing the best they can. I have found that there is a disconnect between the Food Safety Instructor, employers and employees. Each looks at the same issue differently and none will try to understand the other. Food Safety Instructors have a tendency to go into an operation and lay down the law without understanding that some of the things they demand are beyond the ability of the employer to address. The employer in turn dismisses the entire course as unobtainable (instead of just the part they can't do) and the employee gets caught in the middle and ends up dismissing everything. Health Inspectors have their own part to play in this too. The very first certified Food Safety course I took was back in 1989 and I was very fortunate to be taught by a Health Inspector named Bill Hines. The best thing Mr. Hines did, as far as I am concerned, is he told all of us that he understood it would not be possible for all of us to achieve everything he was teaching, but with the knowledge that we would learn, we could go back to our places of employment and look at our operations and achieve what we could and for the items we could not achieve, find a way to get as close to achieving as possible. Because of this little bit of information that Mr. Hines gave to me, I have never had to worry about an inspector coming to my place of work. I know that they will work with me to make my place better, to pass on new information as it is available and sometimes to kick me in the pants when things get missed. Because the people around me see this willingness to work with the inspectors, they in turn take the training seriously. And things do get missed. We all tend to become blind to our surroundings over time. This is the best part of the inspectors visit as far as I am concerned, because my biggest worry is becoming complacent. This is when things go bad. We should all be working together to make food safer, but instead, I see a lot of people drawing lines in the sand. Some say more laws are the best way to go. I disagree. The laws we have do not work because WE will not work together. We should never worry or even care what the law is, because we should be trying to be better at what we do everyday anyways. Until we all start to work together to make things better nothing will change. In your story, the part about bare hands and toast being a critical violation, why would anyone take us seriously with stuff like that. Is there a better way to do it, yes, but the term critical should only be used for things like non-potable water and rotting food. Anyways, those are my thoughts and I hope this can help start a real discussion towards solving the problem.