EHE News
Keeping food fresh and safe is a click away
Lydia Medeiros
6-23-10
Ohioans now can get the food safety information they need thanks to a new Ohio State food safety website.
Food Safety offers consumers, health professionals and people who are at high risk of food-borne illness easy-to-understand, "plain talk" information. They then can incorporate what they learn easily in their day-to-day life, said Lydia Medeiros, food safety specialist with OSU Extension and one of the leaders in developing the site.
"We focused on information that helps people build skills," said Medeiros, who is also a scientist with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and professor of human nutrition in the College of Education and Human Ecology. "Knowledge is good, but having the proper skills is the necessary factor that people need to implement their knowledge."
Sections are:
- Ask Mom, including how to properly wash hands, test meat with a food thermometer, and prevent cross-contamination in the kitchen.
- Ask the Doc, for health professionals, provides food safety fact sheets that can be downloaded and shared with patients or clients. Topics include:
- Cancer or HIV/AIDS
- Organ transplant
- Pregnancy
- Chronic conditions that make readers more vulnerable to food-borne disease
- Ask the Teacher offers access to a PowerPoint presentation educators can download to teach food safety concepts.
More materials will be added. "This is a dynamic website that will get deeper and broader as we add information to it," Medeiros said.
In addition, the site offers users a way to ask Ohio State's food safety professionals questions they can't find answers to, by e-mailing foodsafety@osu.edu or calling Ohio State's Food Safety Information Line, housed at the university's Food Industry Center, at 800-752-2751 (toll-free in Ohio), 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The website and food safety e-mail and phone line are made possible by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Integrated Food Safety Initiative; The Kroger Co., which also supports a broader food safety outreach program through its in-store educational campaign; and the Center for Innovative Food Technology, which helps support the Food Safety Information Line.
Writer: Martha Filipic, Communication Technology, OSU Extension
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