bites.ksu.edu and barfblog.com are complimentary and comprehensive resources for those interested in microbial food safety – the things that make people barf.

Too many people get sick each year from the food and water they consume. bites and barfblog are designed to inform and engage people in dialogue about food-related risks, controls and benefits, from farm-to-fork.

For rapid, relevant and reliable food safety news, subscribe to barfblog.com and follow us on twitter; for a daily, or twice-daily summary, including barfblog.com posts, subscribe to bites-l at bites.ksu.edu.

Dr. Doug Powell of Kansas State University, and associates, provide credible, current, evidence-based information on food safety and make it available through multiple media. Sources of food safety information include government regulatory agencies, international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), peer-reviewed scientific publications, recognized experts in the field and other sources as appropriate.

barblog.com
barfblog.com is where Drs. Powell, Chapman, Hubbell and assorted food safety friends offer evidence-based opinions on current food safety issues. Opinions must be evidence-based — with references — reliable and relevant. The barfblog authors edit each other, often viciously.

Twitter and Facebook
Breaking food safety news items that eventually appear in bites or barfblog are often posted on Twitter and Facebook for faster public notification.

Infosheets
Food safety infosheets are designed to influence food handler practices by utilizing four attributes culled from education, behavioral science and communication literature:
• surprising and compelling messages;
• putting actions and their consequence in context;
• generating discussion within the target audiences’ environments; and
• using verbal narrative, or storytelling, as a message delivery device.

Food safety infosheets are based on stories about outbreaks of foodborne illness sourced from bites and barfblog and include the following: discussion of a foodborne illness outbreak; discussion of background knowledge of a pathogen (including symptoms, etiology and transmission); food handler control practices; and emerging food safety issues. Food safety infosheets also contain evidence-based prescriptive information to prevent or mitigate foodborne illness related to food handling.

bites-l listserv
The bites.ksu.edu listserv is a web-based mailing list that provides information about current and emerging food safety issues, gathered from journalistic and scientific sources around the world and condensed into short items or stories that make up the daily postings. The listserv has been issued continuously since 1993 and is distributed daily via e-mail to thousands of individuals worldwide in academia, industry, government, the farm community, journalists and the public at large.

The listserv is designed to:
• convey timely and current information for direction of research, diagnostic or investigative activities;
• identify food risk trends and issues for risk management and communication activities; and
• promote awareness of public concerns in scientific and regulatory circles.

The bites listserv functions as a food safety news aggregator, summarizing available information that can be can be useful for risk managers in proactively anticipating trends and reactively address issues. The bites editor, Dr. Powell, does not say whether a story is right or wrong or somewhere in between, but rather that a story is available today for public discussion; barfblog is where contributors express their evidence-based opinions on food safety issues.

Research
Researchers associated with bites and barfblog conduct an array of food safety research, including:
• effectiveness of food safety messages and media in public discussions of food safety issues, such as the risks of listeria to pregnant women, legislation related to raw milk, public availability of restaurant inspection data, and the safety of fresh produce, are evaluated through qualitative and quantitative methods;
• observational research methodologies are used to quantify individual food safety behaviors from farm-to-fork, to enhance handwashing compliance, thermometer use, food packaging information and interventions that can reduce the number of people that get sick from the food and water they consume; and,
• evaluation of food safety policy and alternatives.

Teaching
• A graduate program in food safety risk analysis – including food safety, language, culture and policy -- is being developed and will include distance-education.
• Courses are currently taught in food safety risk analysis, and food safety reporting.

Information
• Dr. Powell is the publisher and editor of bites and barfblog. Dr. Ben Chapman of North Carolina State University is the assistant editor.
• bites and barfblog are produced by a diverse team of secondary, undergraduate and graduate students as well as professionals who create multilingual and multicultural food safety and security information, including weekly food safety information sheets, and multimedia resources.
• Research, educational and journalistic opportunities are available for secondary, undergraduate and graduate students through bites.ksu.edu and barfblog.com.

Dr. Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University, is the author of 42 peer-reviewed journal articles, 10 peer-reviewed book chapters and 1 peer-reviewed book. His cv is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/powell_cv.

Links
bites and barfblog may include links to other sites, which are provided as a convenience and as an additional access to the information contained therein. bites and barfblog are not responsible for the content of any other sites or any products or services that may be offered through other sites.

Accuracy, Completeness and Timeliness of Information on the Site
The bites and barfblog folks strive to provide accurate, complete and current information. The materials on this site are provided for general information only, and any reliance upon the material found on this site will be at your own risk. We reserve the right to modify the contents of the site at any time.

For more information, please contact us.
 

Snappy title, eh? But not bad for a peer-reviewed journal article in Food Control that was published on-line today ahead of print publication.

Almost two decades ago, E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box fast-food chain in the U.S. and propelled microbial food safety to the forefront of the public agenda. However, it remains a challenge to compel food producers, processors, distributors, retailers, foodservice outlets and home meal preparers to adopt scientifically validated safe food handling behaviors, especially in the absence of an outbreak.

Readers of barfblog.com will be familiar with the details surrounding the three case studies of failures in food safety culture documented in the paper: E. coli O157:H7 linked to John Tudor & Son in Wales in 2005; listeria linked to cold-cuts produced by Maple Leaf Foods of Canada in 2008; and salmonella linked to Peanut Corporation of America in 2009.

But anyone can be a critic, so we offer suggestions to enhance food safety culture, such as food safety storytelling through infosheets (Chapman, et al., 2010). And we end with my usual plea to actively promote food safety efforts, coupling a strong food safety culture with marketing to the world.

We conclude:

Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems. It requires commitment by an organization’s leaders, middle managers and food handlers. It also must be supported and demonstrated by sharing information within the organization and with customers. The food safety failures of John Tudor & Sons, Maple Leaf Foods, Inc. and PCA are illustrative of an emerging recognition that the culture of food safety within an organization is a significant risk factor in foodborne illness (Griffith et al., 2010a; Yiannis, 2009).

Individuals focusing on food safety risks within an organization with a good food safety culture:

• know the risks associated with the foods they handle and how those should be managed;
• dedicate resources to evaluating supplier practices;
• stay up-to-date on emerging food safety issues;
• foster a value system within the organization that focuses on avoiding illnesses;
• communicate compelling and relevant messages regarding risk reduction activities and empower others to put them into practice;
• promote effective food safety systems before an incident occurs; and,
• do not blame customers (including commercial buyers and end consumers) when illnesses are linked to their products.

The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent – whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website – to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

I’ll add more as the paper becomes available, and if Chapman has anything witty to add (that takes time).

Enhancing food safety culture to reduce rates of foodborne illness

Douglas A. Powella, Casey J. Jacoba and Benjamin J. Chapmanb,
a Department of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
b Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family and Consumer Sciences North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7606, Raleigh, NC 27695-7606, USA
Received 2 August 2010;
revised 29 November 2010;
accepted 7 December 2010.
Available online 24 December 2010.

Abstract
A culture of food safety is built on a set of shared values that operators and their staff follow to produce and provide food in the safest manner. Maintaining a food safety culture means that operators and staff know the risks associated with the products or meals they produce, know why managing the risks is important, and effectively manage those risks in a demonstrable way. In an organization with a good food safety culture, individuals are expected to enact practices that represent the shared value system and point out where others may fail. By using a variety of tools, consequences and incentives, businesses can demonstrate to their staff and customers that they are aware of current food safety issues, that they can learn from others’ mistakes, and that food safety is important within the organization. The three case studies presented in this paper demonstrate that creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated food safety messages using multiple media.

Keywords: behavior change; foodborne illness; marketing; organizational culture; risk communication
 

Foodies wanting to know how clean their favorite restaurant is must file public records requests in Wicomico County.

For several years, the health department has sought to change that by posting details of restaurant inspections online. But budget cuts, combined with opposition from restaurant owners, have made that an elusive goal, said Stuart White, supervisor of community health in the environmental health division.

"I think it would promote better practices. You'd want a better grade if it would be posted," White said.

A growing number of health departments across the U.S. are initiating programs aimed at improving the transparency of restaurant inspections, said Robert Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. He said many health departments are putting information online, and others are placing scores -- in the form of letter grades, numerical scores or color-coded decals -- in plain sight at restaurants.

"It really makes the public part of the inspection work force," he said.

A study in June's Journal of Food Protection suggests cross-contamination violations -- which can lead to illnesses -- may be more widespread than previously thought, and they may occur more frequently during peak hours.

Researchers from North Carolina State University used video cameras to monitor 47 food handlers at eight volunteering kitchens and found that the workers committed an average of one cross-contamination violation an hour.

"It really changes how we think about training," said Ben Chapman, the lead author of the study and assistant professor and food safety specialist in the Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family & Consumer Sciences at NCSU. Researchers from Kansas State University and the University of Guelph in Ontario co-wrote the study.
 

Contact: Dr. Doug Powell, dpowell@ksu.edu
785-317-0560
barfblog.com
bites.ksu.edu

Posting graphical, concise food safety stories in the back kitchens of restaurants can help reduce dangerous food safety practices and create a workplace culture that values safe food.

It’s the first time that a communication intervention such as food safety information sheets have been validated to work using direct video observation in eight commercial restaurant kitchens.

“The food safety messages we’ve looked at are as effective as those ‘Employees must wash hands’ signs in bathrooms.,” said Dr. Douglas Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University and one of the co-authors on a new paper in the Journal of Food Protection. “They just don’t work.”

Powell and then graduate student, Ben Chapman, now an assistant professor of food safety at North Carolina State University, came up with the idea for food safety infosheets to promote discussion and improve food safety behaviors while playing hockey at the University of Guelph in 2003.

“Chapman and I were playing hockey a lot,” says Powell, “and there was a bar and restaurant that overlooked the one ice surface where we often engaged in after-hockey food safety meetings with our industry, provincial and federal government colleagues. We had all this food safety information, and the manager of the bar around 2003 was into food safety, so we thought, if daily sports pages are posted above urinals and on the doors of washroom stalls, why not engaging food safety information?”

As part of his PhD research, Chapman partnered with a food service company in Canada and placed small video cameras in unobtrusive spots around eight food-service kitchens that volunteered to participate in the study. There were as many as eight cameras in each kitchen, which recorded directly to computer files and later reviewed by Chapman and others.

The work built on other direct food safety observational studies conducted at Kansas State University and published in the British Food Journal in 2009.

Food safety inforsheets, highlighting the importance of handwashing or preventing cross-contamination, for example, were then introduced into the kitchens, and video was again collected. The researchers found that cross-contamination events decreased by 20 per cent, and handwashing attempts increased by 7 per cent.

Since September 2006 over 150 food safety infosheets have been produced and are available to anyone at www.foodsafetyinfosheets.com. The website has had a recent redesign, adding a search function, automatic email alerts and RSS feeds.

Katie Filion, who coded much of the video as an undergraduate student researcher, has moved from Canada and is now completing a Master’s degree with Powell at Kansas State University. She has just returned from a year of research with the New Zealand Food Safety Authority helping to design a national restaurant inspection disclosure system.

Dr. Tanya MacLurin, who collaborated on the research, was born on a farm/ranch in Kansas and received all her degrees from Kansas State University before joining the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of Guelph in 1991, where she subsequently collaborated with Powell.

The study, “Assessment of food safety practices of food service food handlers : testing a communication intervention” was authored by Dr. Ben Chapman of North Carolina State University, Dr. Douglas Powell and Katie Filion of Kansas State University, and Tiffany Eversley and Tanya MacLaurin of the University of Guelph in Canada. The study is published in the June issue of the Journal of Food Protection.

“Assessment of Food Safety Practices of Food Service Food Handlers: Testing a Communication Intervention”
Authors: Benjamin J. Chapman, North Carolina State University; Douglas A. Powell, Katie Fillion, Kansas State University; Tiffany Eversley, Tanya MacLaurin, University of Guelph
Published: June 2010, Journal of Food Protection

Abstract: Globally, foodborne illness affects an estimated 30% of individuals annually. Meals prepared outside of the home are a risk factor for acquiring foodborne illness and have been implicated in up to 70% of traced outbreaks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called on food safety communicators to design new methods and messages aimed at increasing food safety risk-reduction practices from farm to fork. Food safety infosheets, a novel communication tool designed to appeal to food handlers and compel behavior change, were evaluated. Food safety infosheets were provided weekly to food handlers in working foodservice operations for 7 weeks. It was hypothesized that through the posting of food safety infosheets in highly visible locations, such as kitchen work areas and hand washing stations, that safe food handling behaviors of foodservice staff could be positively influenced. Using video observation, food handlers (n ~ 47) in eight foodservice operations were observed for a total of 348 h (pre- and postintervention combined). After the food safety infosheets were introduced, food handlers demonstrated a significant increase (6.7%, P , 0.05, 95% confidence interval) in mean hand washing attempts, and a significant reduction in indirect cross-contamination events (19.6%, P , 0.05, 95% confidence interval). Results of the research demonstrate that posting food safety infosheets is an effective intervention tool that positively influences the food safety behaviors of food handlers.