Food Safety Magazine, December 2010/January 2011

contamination events went down and handwashing attempts went up. While significant improvements were seen, a drastic improvement or elimination of risky practices was not.

The prevalence of indirect cross-contamination seen throughout our study also supports the creation of a good food safety culture—that food handlers act in a multi-user environment but may not see themselves as part of a team. Many of the recorded indirect cross-contamination events occurred when multiple food handlers used common food contact surfaces, utensils or equipment. The team-like nature of a foodservice system is currently missing from some food safety training packages and could in fact become a focus–it’s a way to teach and support food safety culture.

Overall, we found more risky prac-
tices in some areas than we expected.
Most previous studies relied on inspec-
tion results and self-reporting by food
handlers to estimate instances of “cross-
contamination,” finding that cross-con-
tamination was relatively infrequent. We
found approximately one cross-contamination event per food handler per hour. We
also found that when things are really busy, more mistakes are made (including cross-
contamination and poor handwashing). We saw that cross-contamination events can
largely be a team issue as many people work on the same meal and use common
equipment. Sometimes one person contaminates a cutting board and the next person,
minutes later, uses that cutting board for a ready-to-eat food.

Conclusions

Some of the largest foodservice, retail and food processors in the world currently use food safety infosheets on a weekly basis. One company has anecdotally shared that they changed their food safety training to all food safety infosheets, and reported that they know it is effective as employees have been overheard discussing the content, especially the stories, during lunch breaks.

It is not enough to provide prescriptive information to food handlers and expect that it will be followed, especially when recognizing the multiple priorities, and time pressures, encountered in the kitchen system. Food safety information needs to be tailored to specific target audiences. Sanitized, generic, social marketing campaigns created by government and the food industry, aimed at the general workforce, may do little to compel food handlers to change practices. Results of this study suggest that food handlers enjoy stories about the consequences of food safety as well as being presented with control measures realistic for the kitchen environment. A drawback of traditional food safety communication is that it is not built specifically to integrate into to the lives of food handlers to provide a personal context. Food handlers are a varied group with multiple learning styles (which are primarily visual and hands-on), and any tool that is directed at the group needs to utilize different communication techniques including story telling supported with graphics, surprising messages and prescriptive messages. Food safety infosheets are just one tool that can

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