Leading Food Safety Collaborative Steps Up Services to Health Educators
A partnership of industry, government and consumer groups working together to ensure that consumers and consumer educators have free access to evidence-based, action-able educational messages and resources—it sounds almost too good to be true. But that is just what the nonprofit Partnership for Food Safety Education is all about. If your company, agency, trade association or organization is not a partner in this effort, then now is the time to be inspired!
The partnership is convening hundreds of educators at the National Consumer Food Safety Education Conference 2014 this December in Arlington, VA, and over the past 2 years has added dozens of free resources and services to support the work of health and food safety educators.
Who Are BAC Fighters?
The partnership calls these educators “BAC Fighters” (because they fight illness-causing bacteria), and they can be dietitians, nutritionists, parents, caregivers, nurses, local, state or federal public health officials, corporate food safety professionals, environmental health professionals, food retailers, food producers and classroom teachers (Figure 1).
In addition to its commitment to convening BAC Fighters, the partnership is also committed to telling their stories. Across the U.S., BAC Fighters have an enormous impact on the health of people of all ages in their communities, reaching an estimated 7.5 million Americans each year with important food poisoning prevention programming. A blog at www.teamfoodsafety.org features stories of the creative ways health and food safety educators engage with people on the topic of food safety.
Resources
Free partnership programming resources are very important to BAC Fighters and to consumers. The partnership is probably best known as the originator of the four core, evidence-based consumer safe-handling messages of Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill, and for the original Fight BAC!® consumer education campaign released in 1998.
The partnership’s website at www.fightbac.org is a leading resource for consumers and educators alike. Recently added to fightbac.org are the Food Safe Families Action Pledge to encourage health and food safety educators nationwide to use the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Food Safe Families Toolkit; Fight BAC! Like a Producepro to support consumers in reducing risk of illness from fresh fruits and vegetables at home; and Fight BAC! at Picnic Park for kids, which includes an educator’s guide with information on how the curriculum meets core standards in schools (see “A BAC Fighter Speaks”), two simple kids’ activities, the Ten Least Wanted mini poster and a PowerPoint quiz.
The partnership released Perfect Picnic for kids for iPod, iPad and iPhone. It teaches kids about safe food handling while allowing them to build the most awesome picnic park in town by making sure their visitors have a happy and healthy time.
A BAC Fighter Speaks
“I have been using Fight BAC! materials for many years. The four food safety messages are very important and easy for the kids to remember. My students are very enthusiastic and like to share the food safety information they learn in the classroom with their families at home.” — Linda, Consumer Sciences Teacher, Allentown, PA