Tag Archives: behavior

Better understanding the brain for better hygiene

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My friend in France sent me this story from Process Alimentaire and my best friend translated it.

Stephane Desaulty, a PhD student at CLLE-LTC University of Toulouse 2 is undertaking a thesis in cognitive psychology to increase the efficiency of good hygiene training in catering. It is reinforced by scientific expertise in food safety from the School of Industrial Biology (EBI).

Silliker is funding the research. For the consulting, auditing and analysis firm, part of Mérieux Nutrisciences this thesis is an opportunity "to identify new avenues for training."

The base for this research is in "fuzzy trace” theory. According to its inventors, experiences are simultaneously stored in our memory in two forms: first traces representing the details of events and also traces representing their general meaning. As such, this theory demonstrates that as expertise increases, the mental representation of risk does not become more complex. Quite the contrary, when making a decision the trained people would not rely on details, as would the novices, but rather on simple mental representations.

The thesis will focus on analyzing the memory representations in reasoning and decision making in a professional context as well as on analyzing possible differences between "experts" and novices. The goal? To identify the strengths and weaknesses of training programs. In the short term, this research should measure the suitability of proposed training and develop new learning tools.
 

Enhancing food safety culture to reduce rates of foodborne illness

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Snappy title, eh? But not bad for a peer-reviewed journal article in Food Control that was published on-line today ahead of print publication.

Almost two decades ago, E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box fast-food chain in the U.S. and propelled microbial food safety to the forefront of the public agenda. However, it remains a challenge to compel food producers, processors, distributors, retailers, foodservice outlets and home meal preparers to adopt scientifically validated safe food handling behaviors, especially in the absence of an outbreak.

Readers of barfblog.com will be familiar with the details surrounding the three case studies of failures in food safety culture documented in the paper: E. coli O157:H7 linked to John Tudor & Son in Wales in 2005; listeria linked to cold-cuts produced by Maple Leaf Foods of Canada in 2008; and salmonella linked to Peanut Corporation of America in 2009.

But anyone can be a critic, so we offer suggestions to enhance food safety culture, such as food safety storytelling through infosheets (Chapman, et al., 2010). And we end with my usual plea to actively promote food safety efforts, coupling a strong food safety culture with marketing to the world.

We conclude:

Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems. It requires commitment by an organization’s leaders, middle managers and food handlers. It also must be supported and demonstrated by sharing information within the organization and with customers. The food safety failures of John Tudor & Sons, Maple Leaf Foods, Inc. and PCA are illustrative of an emerging recognition that the culture of food safety within an organization is a significant risk factor in foodborne illness (Griffith et al., 2010a; Yiannis, 2009).

Individuals focusing on food safety risks within an organization with a good food safety culture:

• know the risks associated with the foods they handle and how those should be managed;
• dedicate resources to evaluating supplier practices;
• stay up-to-date on emerging food safety issues;
• foster a value system within the organization that focuses on avoiding illnesses;
• communicate compelling and relevant messages regarding risk reduction activities and empower others to put them into practice;
• promote effective food safety systems before an incident occurs; and,
• do not blame customers (including commercial buyers and end consumers) when illnesses are linked to their products.

The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent – whether it’s live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website – to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

I’ll add more as the paper becomes available, and if Chapman has anything witty to add (that takes time).

Enhancing food safety culture to reduce rates of foodborne illness

Douglas A. Powella, Casey J. Jacoba and Benjamin J. Chapmanb,
a Department of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
b Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family and Consumer Sciences North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7606, Raleigh, NC 27695-7606, USA
Received 2 August 2010;
revised 29 November 2010;
accepted 7 December 2010.
Available online 24 December 2010.

Abstract
A culture of food safety is built on a set of shared values that operators and their staff follow to produce and provide food in the safest manner. Maintaining a food safety culture means that operators and staff know the risks associated with the products or meals they produce, know why managing the risks is important, and effectively manage those risks in a demonstrable way. In an organization with a good food safety culture, individuals are expected to enact practices that represent the shared value system and point out where others may fail. By using a variety of tools, consequences and incentives, businesses can demonstrate to their staff and customers that they are aware of current food safety issues, that they can learn from others’ mistakes, and that food safety is important within the organization. The three case studies presented in this paper demonstrate that creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated food safety messages using multiple media.

Keywords: behavior change; foodborne illness; marketing; organizational culture; risk communication
 

Food safety stories can improve safety of restaurant meals

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Contact: Dr. Doug Powell, dpowell@ksu.edu
785-317-0560
barfblog.com
bites.ksu.edu

Posting graphical, concise food safety stories in the back kitchens of restaurants can help reduce dangerous food safety practices and create a workplace culture that values safe food.

It’s the first time that a communication intervention such as food safety information sheets have been validated to work using direct video observation in eight commercial restaurant kitchens.

“The food safety messages we’ve looked at are as effective as those ‘Employees must wash hands’ signs in bathrooms.,” said Dr. Douglas Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University and one of the co-authors on a new paper in the Journal of Food Protection. “They just don’t work.”

Powell and then graduate student, Ben Chapman, now an assistant professor of food safety at North Carolina State University, came up with the idea for food safety infosheets to promote discussion and improve food safety behaviors while playing hockey at the University of Guelph in 2003.

“Chapman and I were playing hockey a lot,” says Powell, “and there was a bar and restaurant that overlooked the one ice surface where we often engaged in after-hockey food safety meetings with our industry, provincial and federal government colleagues. We had all this food safety information, and the manager of the bar around 2003 was into food safety, so we thought, if daily sports pages are posted above urinals and on the doors of washroom stalls, why not engaging food safety information?”

As part of his PhD research, Chapman partnered with a food service company in Canada and placed small video cameras in unobtrusive spots around eight food-service kitchens that volunteered to participate in the study. There were as many as eight cameras in each kitchen, which recorded directly to computer files and later reviewed by Chapman and others.

The work built on other direct food safety observational studies conducted at Kansas State University and published in the British Food Journal in 2009.

Food safety inforsheets, highlighting the importance of handwashing or preventing cross-contamination, for example, were then introduced into the kitchens, and video was again collected. The researchers found that cross-contamination events decreased by 20 per cent, and handwashing attempts increased by 7 per cent.

Since September 2006 over 150 food safety infosheets have been produced and are available to anyone at www.foodsafetyinfosheets.com. The website has had a recent redesign, adding a search function, automatic email alerts and RSS feeds.

Katie Filion, who coded much of the video as an undergraduate student researcher, has moved from Canada and is now completing a Master’s degree with Powell at Kansas State University. She has just returned from a year of research with the New Zealand Food Safety Authority helping to design a national restaurant inspection disclosure system.

Dr. Tanya MacLurin, who collaborated on the research, was born on a farm/ranch in Kansas and received all her degrees from Kansas State University before joining the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of Guelph in 1991, where she subsequently collaborated with Powell.

The study, “Assessment of food safety practices of food service food handlers : testing a communication intervention” was authored by Dr. Ben Chapman of North Carolina State University, Dr. Douglas Powell and Katie Filion of Kansas State University, and Tiffany Eversley and Tanya MacLaurin of the University of Guelph in Canada. The study is published in the June issue of the Journal of Food Protection.

“Assessment of Food Safety Practices of Food Service Food Handlers: Testing a Communication Intervention”
Authors: Benjamin J. Chapman, North Carolina State University; Douglas A. Powell, Katie Fillion, Kansas State University; Tiffany Eversley, Tanya MacLaurin, University of Guelph
Published: June 2010, Journal of Food Protection

Abstract: Globally, foodborne illness affects an estimated 30% of individuals annually. Meals prepared outside of the home are a risk factor for acquiring foodborne illness and have been implicated in up to 70% of traced outbreaks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called on food safety communicators to design new methods and messages aimed at increasing food safety risk-reduction practices from farm to fork. Food safety infosheets, a novel communication tool designed to appeal to food handlers and compel behavior change, were evaluated. Food safety infosheets were provided weekly to food handlers in working foodservice operations for 7 weeks. It was hypothesized that through the posting of food safety infosheets in highly visible locations, such as kitchen work areas and hand washing stations, that safe food handling behaviors of foodservice staff could be positively influenced. Using video observation, food handlers (n ~ 47) in eight foodservice operations were observed for a total of 348 h (pre- and postintervention combined). After the food safety infosheets were introduced, food handlers demonstrated a significant increase (6.7%, P , 0.05, 95% confidence interval) in mean hand washing attempts, and a significant reduction in indirect cross-contamination events (19.6%, P , 0.05, 95% confidence interval). Results of the research demonstrate that posting food safety infosheets is an effective intervention tool that positively influences the food safety behaviors of food handlers.