Food Safety Risk Analysis graduate course available by distance, Jan. 2011

I went to graduate school because the girl I was living with was a veterinary student who had another three years of schooling ahead, so I thought I needed a reason to hang around.

That’s not a good reason to go to graduate school.

I married the girl and had kids but dropped out of grad school.

Distance education may have helped.

The World Health Organization estimates that up to 30 per cent of people in developed countries get sick from the food and water they consume each year and has identified five factors of food handling that contribute to these illnesses: improper cooking procedures; temperature abuse during storage; lack of hygiene and sanitation by food handlers; cross-contamination between raw and fresh ready to eat foods; and acquiring food from unsafe sources.

Food Safety Risk Analysis examines the interwoven roles of risk assessment, management and communication – defined as risk analysis – and applies these concepts to problems and policy development in food safety. This course will aid students in developing the ability to critically examine food safety risk issues from various stakeholder perspectives, leading to risk management and communication activities to reduce the impact of foodborne disease.

A significant portion of the course will focus on the importance of thorough research and good communication skills, as well as the suitability of communication efforts. The emphasis on acquiring and critically evaluating electronic information will assist students in further developing lifelong learning skills. The course will be presented through lectures, case study presentations, and Internet-based support material including text, audio and video through the extensive database maintained by Dr. Douglas Powell of Kansas State University and colleagues in food safety. This course will be of interest to anyone in the food industry, food safety regulators, public health inspectors, food service managers and others.

A complete course syllabus is available here. Or e-mail me, dpowell@ksu.edu.

For enrolment information, visit the Kansas State Division of Continuing Education website at http://www.dce.k-state.edu/ and click on Courses at the top of the page to search for it. Interested individuals can click the Add Class to Interest List button. This will prompt the student to either log into iSIS if they are currently a student and enroll, or provide information about applying to the university if they are not a student.

I have nothing to do with the prices. But at least it’s not a humanities degree (that’s a joke; see video below).
 

barfblog, bites and food safety

There’s no shortage of food safety press releases, repeated and regurgitated using funky new media tools; there is a shortage of evidence-based, incisive approaches that challenge food safety norms and may eventually lead to fewer sick people.

barfblog.com is the fastest way to stay current on food safety issues. Powell, Chapman and assorted food safety friends offer evidence-based opinions on current food safety issues. Opinions must be reliable – with references — rapid and relevant.

Anyone can subscribe directly to barfblog.com and receive an e-mail immediately when something new is posted. Go to barfblog.com and click on the ‘subscribe’ button on the right side of the page.

Food safety infosheets are designed to influence food handler practices by utilizing four attributes culled from education, behavioral science and communication literature:
• surprising and compelling messages;
• putting actions and their consequence in context;
• generating discussion within the target audiences’ environments; and
• using verbal narrative, or storytelling, as a message delivery device.

Food safety infosheets are based on stories about outbreaks of foodborne illness. Four criteria are used to select the story: discussion of a foodborne illness outbreak; discussion of background knowledge of a pathogen (including symptoms, etiology and transmission); food handler control practices; and emerging food safety issues. Food safety infosheets also contain evidence-based prescriptive information to prevent or mitigate foodborne illness related to food handling. They are available in several languages.

The bites.ksu.edu listserv is a free web-based mailing list where information about current and emerging food safety issues is provided, gathered from journalistic and scientific sources around the world and condensed into short items or stories that make up the daily postings. The listserv has been issued continuously since 1994 and is distributed daily via e-mail to thousands of individuals worldwide from academia, industry, government, the farm community, journalists and the public at large.

The listserv is designed to:
• convey timely and current information for direction of research, diagnostic or investigative activities;
• identify food risk trends and issues for risk management and communication activities; and
• promote awareness of public concerns in scientific and regulatory circles.

The bites listserv functions as a food safety news aggregator, summarizing available information that can be can be useful for risk managers in proactively anticipating trends and reactively address issues. The bites editor (me – dp) does not say whether a story is right or wrong or somewhere in between, but rather that a specific story is available today for public discussion.

If you only want to receive specific news, use RSS feeds.

RSS (Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

If you only want stories about food safety policy, or norovirus, go to bites.ksu.edu and click on that section. Then click on the RSS symbol, and add to your reader. barfblog.com is also available as a RSS feed.

Breaking food safety news items that eventually appear in bites-l or barfblog.com are often posted on Twitter (under barfblog or benjaminchapman) for faster public notification.

These are the various information products we deliver daily, in addition to research, training and outreach. Sponsorship opportunities are available for bites.ksu.edu, barfblog.com, and the bites-l listserv.

Any money is used to support the on-going expenses of the news-gathering and distribution activities, and to develop the next generation of high school, undergraduate and graduate students who will integrate science and communication skills to deliver compelling food safety messages using a variety of media. Research, training and outreach are all connected in our food safety world.

Kansas State quarterback vomits his way to victory against UCLA

There’s something decadent about watching a Kansas State football game 50 yards from the sandy beaches of Anna Maria Island, Florida, on a Saturday afternoon while dining on grilled grouper fresh from the Gulf of Mexico, asparagus, summer squash and sweet potatoes.

Then Coffman started barfing.

Carson Coffman (right, during Saturday’s game, pretty much as shown), K-State’s starting quarterback (for now) was seen hurling on the sidelines and had to leave the game in the third quarter to get rehydrated with an IV-drip. According to media reports KSU’s QB barfed about 10 times during the game.

It wasn’t my cooking. No word on whose cooking it was, or whether the yakking was food-related at all. And who cares. K-State beat UCLA 31-22. And we just finished a delightful lunch of grilled Gulf shrimp accompanied by grilled peaches, pineapple and strawberries.
 

NCAA swimming and diving delaying because of barf

Basketball is interminably dull.

The first college game I ever went to on Jan. 30, 2008, Kansas State beat the University of Kansas – who went on to win the national crown – for the first time in 24 years.

All games should be like that. They’re not.

But I’ll watch tonight as K-State goes up against Xavier in a sweet-16 showdown, the first time K-State has been to that particular dance since 1988.

What would be a great storyline is if West Virginia met K-State for the final. Bob Huggins was rescued from career oblivion when they hired him as coach a few years ago. Huggins repaid K-State’s generosity by leaving after one year.

Locals are still upset.

But he left behind assistant coach Frank Martin, who’s turned K-State into a national competitor. The prodigy going up against the mentor. It would be like me and Chapman going on an all-nerd food safety Reach for the Top (trivia note: Chapman was actually on Reach for the Top or whatever the Ontario version was called when he was in high school).

In other NCAA news, the start of the Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships has been delayed 24 hours to Friday after 18 student-athletes and a coach were treated for a possible gastrointestinal illness since arriving in Columbus, Ohio.

K-State’s Bramlage Coliseum would make an excellent hockey arena.
 

barfblog.com now really at barfblog.com; change your RSS feeds and sign up

barfblog.com is becoming our flagship communication tool.

To stay up-to-date and get the fastest food safety news – along with pithy comments – subscribe to barfblog.com or change your RSS feed to receive barfblog.com.

barfblog.ksu.edu will later today start being directed to barfblog.com and no longer be updated.