Has ‘food safety culture’ jumped the shark?

The first thing Bob Dudley, the new chief executive of embattled oil giant BP, vowed to do was "change the culture" of how the company tackles safety issues after the Gulf of Mexico disaster and promised to "make sure this does not happen again."

Same thing after Bhopal and the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

Me and Chapman and Frank Yiannas and Chris Griffith have been pushing the concept of food safety culture for years as an enhancement to inspection, regulation and training.

Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. It’s when one food service or farm or retail employee says to another, dude, wash your hands, without being told by the boss or the inspector.

But now that safety culture is being touted by BP, the concept may have jumped the shark.

Jumping the shark is an idiom used to describe the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise. The phrase was originally used to denote the point in a television program’s history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations. These changes were often the result of efforts to revive interest in a show whose audience had begun to decline, usually through the employment of different actors, writers or producers.

The phrase jump the shark refers to the climactic scene in "Hollywood," a three-part episode opening the fifth season of the American TV series Happy Days in September 1977. In this story, the central characters visit Los Angeles, where Fonzie (Henry Winkler), wearing swim trunks and his leather jacket, jumps over a confined shark on water skis, answering a challenge to demonstrate his bravery. The series continued for nearly seven years after that, with a number of changes in cast and situations.
 

‘Dick, Dick, Dick’ Stephen Colbert explains risk communication basics

People like pretty pictures. That’s the conclusion of a new abstract in the journal Risk Analysis (it’s below).

But I prefer Colbert’s interpretation of risk communication on his show last night.

Understanding the positive effects of graphical risk information on comprehension: Measuring attention directed to written, tabular, and graphical risk information
17.jun.10
Risk Analysis
Chris M. R. Smerecnik, Ilse Mesters, Loes T. E. Kessels, Robert A. C. Ruiter, Nanne K. de Vries, and Hein de Vries
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123534228/abstract
ABSTRACT
Risk communications are an integral aspect of health education and promotion. However, the commonly used textual risk information is relatively difficult to understand for the average recipient. Consequently, researchers and health promoters have started to focus on so-called decision aids, such as tables and graphs. Although tabular and graphical risk information more effectively communicate risks than textual risk information, the cognitive mechanisms responsible for this enhancement are unclear. This study aimed to examine two possible mechanisms (i.e., cognitive workload and attention). Cognitive workload (mean pupil size and peak pupil dilation) and attention directed to the risk information (viewing time, number of eye fixations, and eye fixation durations) were both measured in a between-subjects experimental design. The results suggest that graphical risk information facilitates comprehension of that information because it attracts and holds attention for a longer period of time than textual risk information. Graphs are thus a valuable asset to risk communication practice for two reasons: first, they tend to attract attention and, second, when attended to, they elicit information extraction with relatively little cognitive effort, and finally result in better comprehension.
 

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BP CEO attributes oil spill cleanup workers’ illness to food poisoning, says he wants his life back

BP is making Exxon look good.

I know a lot of people who have to make everything about them, but this seems extreme.

In some of the worst risk communication ever, and which will surely be documented in some crisis book thingy or Powerpoint top-10 slides for decades, BP CEO Tony Hayward demonstrated an ability to make the Gulf of Mexico oil somehow about him.

“I want my life back,” video clip is below. So is the one of Hayward impersonating Napolean’s food safety guru.

Hayward also said on May 31, 2010 that workers were not getting sick because of the toxicity of the oil and BP’s dispersants, they have simply gotten food poisoning.

“I’m sure they were genuinely ill, but whether it had anything to do with dispersants and oil, whether it was food poisoning, or some other reason for them being ill. You know, there’s a– food poisoning is a really big issue when you’ve got a concentration of this many people in ten pre-cabs, ten pre-accommodations. It’s something we have to be very, very mindful of. It’s one of the big issues of keeping the army operating. Armies march on their stomachs.”