A&T Project Teaches Food Safety

July 1996

Greensboro, NC: Do you know what is lurking under that plastic lid? When was the last time you sanitized your kitchen rag? Are you aware of what is living on your hands? How safe are your food handling practices? More importantly, how safe are the practices of those handling your food?

These were just a few of the questions posed to a group of high school teachers during a recent workshop on the campus of North Carolina A&T State University. The workshop was part of an ongoing collaborative effort between A&T and The Ohio State University. The goal of the collaboration is to create a new generation of food handlers who are knowledgeable and conscientious about food safety issues and practices.

"Due to recent events such as the 'mad cow disease,' issues of food safety are becoming a greater concern," said Dr. Rosa Purcell, chairperson of the A&T Department of Family Environment and Human Sciences. "This collaboration seeks to help prevent further outbreaks by educating our young people."

The A&T-Ohio State collaboration will train educators and food service employers to effectively educate and train young adults to understand microorganisms, how they are transmitted, what makes them flourish, and how they can be inactivated and the risk of foodborne disease minimized by the understanding and application of safe food handling principles.

Under the collaboration, A&T focuses its efforts on high school teachers, while Ohio State educates food service managers. The roles will be reversed in the following year. "We hope that teachers leave our workshop with a heightened sense of the importance of food safety, and that they incorporate the information into their curriculums," said Purcell.

Workshop presenters included A&T faculty members, USDA officials, and a manager of a local fast-food chain. In addition to presentations, workshop participants took part in laboratory demonstrations and learned of ways to incorporate these demonstrations into their classroom instruction.

"It is important that the teachers have something that they can use to impress the importance of food safety on their students," said Dr. Aubrey Mendonca, a microbial food safety research scientist with the A&T School of Agriculture.

Dr. Mendonca led participants in an experiment in which they examined the importance of hand washing. To do this, participants took cultures of their hands before and after washing. The following day, they examined the cultures under a microscope t o observe the bacteria that they would have missed had they not washed their hands.

Other laboratory demonstrations included the detection of fats and sugar in foods, the effect of water content on food storage, and safe food handling procedures. Following the demonstrations, each workshop participant was given materials to enable them to conduct the experiments with their students.

"From the farm gate to the dinner plate, food safety is something that affects everyone," said Mendonca.

For more information, please contact Dr. Rosa Purcell, NC A&T School of Agriculture, (336) 334-7850.