An official website of the United States government.
<ol> <li>The beliefs, incuding internalized cultural and individual models of food preparation that impede adoption of safe food handling practices, will be identified.
<li>The ecological influences on transfer of food safety training to the retail food environment will be assessed.
<li>A curriculum guide that addresses strategies to motivate and reduce barriers to adopting safe food handling practices at three of the five levels of the socioecological model will be developed.
<li>A food safety program evaluation workbook will be developed.
<li>A national satellite workshops will be conducted to teach educators how to effectively evaluate food safety training.</ol>
The methodology to complete each of the five objectives described in box 21 are as follows: <ol> <li>A series of data collection methods -- semi-structured exploratory interviews, focus groups, and a structured face-to-face interview -- will be used to identify beliefs about the five CDC risk factors for foodborne illness.
<li>A self-report questionnaire will administered to 100 NC foodservice managers to assess (1) the extent to which management has implemented policies and practices supportive of safe food handling practices and (2) the extent to which management is supportive of the enforcement of such policies.
<li>A curriculum guide, based on the findigs of objectives 1 and 2, will be prepared to describe how to train and motivate foodservice workers and managers to reduce the barriers for the adoption of practices for the five CDC risk factors.
<li>A workbook will be devloped to help extension educators plan an evaluation of their food safety program. The workbook will include: basic concepts of evaluating education program, program evaluation plans, worksheets to determine how to evaluate specific types of activities, and existing reliable an valid survey insturments.
<li>A four-hour statellite videoteleconference will be planned to introduce methods for incorporating the guidelines described in Objectives 1 and 2 and to introduce the evaluation workbook described in Objective 4.</ol>
<p>
Nearly 50% of reported cases of foodborne illness are attributed to unsafe food handling practices in the foodservice environment. These numbers could potentially increase because (1) food handlers are not knowledgeable about safe food handling practices or (2) even if they are knowledgeable, they might not be motivated to apply safe food handling practices. The primary goal of this project is to develop a dynamic food safety education and evaluation strategy targeting the retail food industry.</p>