Retail Deli Safety

Non-Technical Summary: <BR>Every year foodborne illnesses devastate the lives of millions of Americans and take a significant economic toll, considering the costs of medical treatment and lost wages. Food-borne illnesses cost the United States an average of $1,850 each time someone gets sick from food, a total of $152 billion a year. It has been found that most foodborne illnesses result from food handler error which may be minimized with proper transfer of training. Proper motivation and training of employees and managers is vital to keep consumers safe. Language barriers may also exist as English may be a second language for many employees, which raises the issue of worker comprehension. Do employees really understand the concepts and procedures being taught, particularly the importance of food safety Third-party audits such as good manufacturing practices (GMP) and the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) demand verification that workers fully comprehend what they are being trained to do. The retail setting has no formal training and testing standards, relying heavily on on-the-job training and verbal corrections by supervisors with no formal process for documentation of comprehension (e.g., Go stand next to Joe and do what he does.) Just one incident of food safety noncompliance places the public (and perhaps the employees) at grave risk, while the restaurant or deli faces law suits and bad media coverage certain to follow. This proposal seeks to define appropriate training and evaluation techniques for retail workers. In the past the level of foodborne illness was used as the retail food program performance indicator; however, the occurrence of foodborne illness is grossly underreported. This makes the incidence of foodborne illness not a good measurement for performance indicators. Instead, the occurrence of foodborne illness risk factors has been selected as the performance indicator. Risk factors have been suggested by FDA after a baseline study, but gaps still exist in the risk assessment and more data is needed. The proposed observational studies as well as the deli slicer ecology study will go far to fill the gaps in the current retail risk assessment. <P> Approach: <BR> Objective 1: The literature will be surveyed for hazards related to food safety at retail to assess relative importance of hazards, gaps in data, and effectiveness of previous solutions. An on-line survey will be developed to seek input on the chosen hazards. Retail suppliers for the beta test group will be chosen to get a diverse group of suppliers, producing food products from various food categories and representing companies of different sizes. The nationwide survey will use the online survey software, Qualtrics. Objective 2: After completing the critical analysis of the existing research on retail safety, we will organize three expert Delphi panels to input on the relative importance of each hazard and the survey of retailers about their safety concerns. Next we will write a series of measurable learning objectives targeting gaps we uncover in the literature, un-met needs from retailers about addressing significant hazards and then begin to collect the training material and references for Objective 3. Objective 3: Training modules will be developed to address each of the critical hazards. Each of the new training modules will be broken down into clear, concise plans for pre and post-testing. Each participant will be given a written pretest knowledge survey covering basic knowledge of retail deli food safety, given brief instructions for launching the web-based learning and provided with a task list. Participants will be observed by a test monitor and/or videotaped during their entire session. The University of Arkansas in cooperation with the Global Campus has newly designed prep kitchens with audiotape and/or video monitoring equipment that will be used to capture the think-out-loud information. After completion of the training modules, participants will be given a written post-test knowledge survey and a profile questionnaire to obtain demographic information. Objective 4: Current literature will be analyzed for best practices for direct observation in a retail setting. Observation will be used to determine vectors for cross contamination by direct observation of deli operations. Identified vectors will then be studied in a mock deli setting using surrogates (fluorescent compounds or non-pathogenic surrogates) to determine transfer coefficients. Concurrently with this study, the ecology of slicers in use in food preparation settings will be determined by collecting samples from slicers that are being actively used in retail stores nationwide. Samples will be shipped to the University of Arkansas where the sponges will be analyzed for total aerobic count, and presence of Listeria species, Salmonella and Escherichia coli O157. Background microflora will be identified using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) to determine the general microbial ecology of the slicer on each area.