Foodborne illness? There's an app for that. Using new methods and messages to communicate about food safety
With the expansion and ease-of-use of non-traditional, Internet-based communication tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube and blogs, individuals are discussing high-profile food risks .jpeg)
through various mediums. Because up to 60 per cent of adults use on online social networking site, an opportunity exists to utilize these communities to engage individuals around foodborne risks by providing information and establishing relationships tailored to specific audiences. The rapid dialogue between individuals with common food safety interests can impact belief formation and affect food decisions. Using case studies of recent outbreaks and observational studies, a catalogue of mediums and audience strategies will be presented.
Ben Chapman somehow received his PhD from the University of Guelph in 2009 under the supervision of Doug Powell. He is now an Assistant Professor and Food Safety Specialist in the Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family & Consumer Sciences at North Carolina State University, and part of NC Cooperative Extension. He will be speaking during Randy Phebus’ food science class on Friday, Nov. 13, 2009, from 12:30-1:20 in Weber 123 at Kansas State University. This talk is open to the public so any and all can attend.
For further information or to arrange a chat, contact
Dr. Douglas Powell
associate professor, food safety
dept. diagnostic medicine/pathobiology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS
66506
cell: 785-317-0560
fax: 785-532-4039
dpowell@ksu.edu
bites.ksu.edu
barfblog.com
Ben Chapman profiled at NC State (this time with notes)
Chapman got his obligatory profile as new faculty in one of the North Carolina State University publications this week; this is the bites/barfblog version.
When Ben Chapman arrived at N.C. State University in January as the new food safety specialist in the Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family and Consumer Sciences, he hit the ground running. …
Since arriving in North Carolina, Chapman has converted from a former Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan to a Carolina Hurricanes fan.
Carolina has a good hockey team and tickets are easy to get. Toronto sucks and tickets are impossible to get. Carolina has also won the Stanley Cup once in the past 42 years. Toronto has not.
He says that he spends much of his free time discussing the virtues of hockey with his wife and son (that's Jack, below, left, at a Hurricanes game in about 4 years)..
Those who can, do. Others teach. Others talk. Others bore their families.
A player himself since age 4, he has even started playing hockey here in North Carolina with a group in Wake Forest.
If he’s been playing since 4 he really should be better.
Chapman has focused on finding the best ways to communicate food safety risk to the people who need to know. He is interested in how social media like Facebook and rapid communication technologies like Twitter might improve public safety around the issue of food risk.
It also helps to stay current on all the social media for fantasy baseball/football/hockey/cycling tips.
Chapman had a sense that the bathroom posters proclaiming that “employees must wash hands before returning to work” might not produce the desired results.
It was probably the sense of smell, coming from his hands.
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Chapman even spent a semester working as a dishwasher in a restaurant to get a better sense of what the work climate was like.
I didn’t pay him enough as a graduate student and he had to moonlight.
Chapman noted that during busy times, employees tended to forget safe food-handling practices. “When it’s busy in a food-service operation, it gets really crazy,” he said.
That’s when the Pink Floyd is cranked.
In his new position, Chapman continues his quest to find the best ways of reaching food-service workers and consumers.
Go to a restaurant? A supermarket? It’s not like searching for a Holy Grail.
“We have a responsibility to get that information out there,” Chapman said. “The kind of things we’re doing here would have been hard to do in Canada — moving food safety forward.”
That’s what she said.
One way that Chapman has been moving food safety forward is helping agents develop training programs on home food preservation. Once a hallmark of extension programming through tomato clubs for girls, canning and other home food preservation techniques had largely fallen out of favor with consumers in recent years.
Ben Chapman: Defender of the can.
Simpsons, safety, aquavit, Ben and barf
Television’s The Simpson’s on Sunday began with a nice riff about foodborne illness loosely based on the Peanut Corporation of America Salmonella-fest, then quickly moved on to immigration and shared cultural values.
There was lots of aquavit.
I was first exposed to aquavit as a 16-year-old when I spent my first of five summers as a carpenter’s helper for two Danish homebuilders in Brantford, Ontario. I learned how to hammer nails efficiently using my 20-ounce Estwing, and I learned the Danish custom of drinking Aalborg aquavit – Danish schnapps, 45 per cent alcohol, I prefer the dill, above, right, over the caraway flavor – while eating pickled herring, and liver pate and beet open-face sandwiches.
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Homer says, Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Amy and I still indulge occasionally, especially during losing Kansas State football games.
Ben Chapman first started working in my lab in the summer of 2000. I didn’t know he existed until I invited him and the other lab-types over to the house in September. I brought out the Danish schnapps, and Chapman, eager to make an impression, decided to go drink-for-drink with me. About an hour later, he vomited in my ex’s rose bush.
But, no shame. Homer got hammered by the Norwegians and their aquavit (see the second video below, reminds me of Ben), my friend John Kierkegaard, one of the Danish builders, could drink me under the table.
Handwashing on South Park, restaurant inspection on the Hills, Chapman vomiting
I have a bunch of food safety images but no literate story line.
So here they are, food safety in public.
And I told Chapman I’d stop using this picture of him barfing if he ever got his PhD. I’ll probably still use it.
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Chapman gets PhD
Irony is pretty ironic sometimes.
On the three-year anniversary of me officially starting at Kansas State University, two-years after the beginning of barfblog.com, and a year after going down the baby road yet again, Chapman finally gets his PhD, and all the staff at the remnants of the Food Safety Network at the University of Guelph are fired.
Me, I just keep on truckin’ on. We’re working out the kinks with bites.ksu.edu, and barfblog.com had yet another record number of visitors today. So for the best food safety news and analysis, visit often.
