Food Safety Culture and the Loch Ness Monster
Dr. Darin Detwiler, LP.D.
A “FOOD SAFETY ICON" Featured in the Emmy Award-Winning Netflix documentary ”Poisoned.”
Experts, professors, industry professionals, and government agencies talk about our "Food Safety Culture" - but is it a concept that is comparable to the Loch Ness Monster? Do people talk about it, but nobody knows if it is actually out there?
In addition to internet safety, how to drive a car, how to write a resume, at other essential lessons that teens should learn sooner than later, food safety should be a required skill that society expects of young adults. Ideas such as coming of age, privilege, freedom, responsibility, spending allowances, socializing, and being a teenager - are all captured on TV or film typically as hanging out in food settings. Almost a 'right of passage' is the progression from eating at home or at school to eating with friends at the local burger joint. The classic first job as a teenager is in the food industry - either working at a restaurant or at a grocery store. At a minimum - the context of "Food" is a common ground concept for all students of any age.
So why is it that perhaps the most important lessons about the need for basic food safety understanding and the reality of foodborne illness are not included in middle school or high school curriculum?
We, as consumers, can insist that food safety education be included in public school curriculum. This point in teenagers' lives is a perfect opportunity to weave discussions or studies of food safety into a science class talking about bacteria or human anatomy or the role of time and temperature. History classes could look at the role of outbreaks, literature, democratic involvement, geography, economics, laws, and policy - all through the focus on food or food safety reform. Math classes could allow students to analyze real world data on communicable diseases that include those from foodborne pathogens. English classes could allow students to evaluate the role of literature as an influence on law and policy, such as Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle.
I know this can be done - for I have done all of this through my 15 years of experiences as a math, science, literature, and history teacher for students in grades 7-12.
Unfortunately, neither Common Core, nor state, nor district, nor school level curriculum will be developed to adequately cover the food safety culture the way families and even industry need. The reality is that the only reason why I drove the issue of including this focus was that I knew all along the true consequences of NOT including food safety as a thread. My hope is for teachers to include a focus - even if only for one lesson or one day - on food safety in their class, but to not be compelled to do so for the same reason as I did.
In 1993, my son, Riley died at 17 months old during the "Jack in the Box" E.coli outbreak. A child's deathbed is a horrible place to learn of words such as "E.coli O157:H7" and "Foodborne Pathogen" for the first time.
When I talk with other families who buried children due to foodborne illness, one common emotion that I encounter (other than loss and pain) is the shock that "this can still happen in America." Grieving parents cannot believe that "the government has not done something to prevent this after all these years,"...and that "workers aren't taught to do better."
Food Safety should not be a short course that only a few are required to take. Everyone eats food - and food services, including “drinking places,” offers the most job growth of any sector of labor in America (Morgan, 2014). Teenagers in school will be the next generation of food workers, shoppers, independent consumers, and adults cooking at home. Young adults will buy foods and eat them on the way home or soon after returning from school with no sense of urgency from influencers outside the home of the importance of steps such as washing their hands, cooking foods to the proper temperature, or preventing cross-contamination of foods.
Food safety should never have been, nor should it ever in the future be something that is learned after it is already too late. Tragically, some 3000 loved ones die every year from foodborne pathogens, leaving empty seats at family tables, as well as hopes, dreams, and passions unfulfilled. The CDC estimates that every year 48 million Americans become sick from foodborne illness. 128,000 of us will require hospitalization, leaving many families facing severe, long-term health complications (CDC, 2014).
The reality of foodborne illness and the need for a strong "Food Safety Culture" should not be elusive or as mysterious as the Loch Ness Monster. Far too many Americans live with empty chairs at the family table.
___________________________________________________
Darin Detwiler, M.Ed. is the Senior Policy Coordinator at STOP Foodborne Illness, America’s leading nonprofit, public health organization dedicated to the prevention of illness and death from foodborne pathogens. For over 20 years, state, federal, and industry stakeholders have called upon Darin Detwiler as a significant voice in strengthening America’s food policies. Detwiler is an FDA certified Food Science Educator appointed twice to serve as a regulatory policy advisor for the USDA. He is a frequent speaker at FDA regional training events, as well as national food policy conferences. Additionally, Detwiler is the Academic Program Director and an Adjunct Professor in the MS Program in Regulatory Affairs of Food and Food Industry at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, where he is also a Doctoral Candidate in Law and Policy focusing on food policy.
Ideas and Innovations
9 年Nice Jessica!
Senior Director Quality Assurance Loblaw Companies Limited
9 年It's certainly out there, but determining whether the food safety culture is good or bad is another matter.