FOCUS: TRAINING
By L. G. Po, L. D. Bourquin, L. G. Occeña and E. C. Po
Food Safety Education
for Ethnic Audiences
The U.S. is projected to become more racially and ethnically diverse by mid- century, with the working-age popula-
tion projected to become 55% of what
used to be considered the minority.1 As
minority groups continue to play an in-
Traditional food safety educational
resources targeting ethnic audiences are
usually direct translations of the English
food safety materials into another language. These direct or literal translations
we refer to as Level 1 ethnic food safety
resources, containing mainly the 4 Cs
(clean, don’t cross-contaminate, cook,
chill) or the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service
(USDA FSIS) Be Food Safe messages, are
aimed at a general audience. These resources may not necessarily be culturally
appropriate to some ethnic populations
and may not have gone through a
process that solicited feedback from all
potential stakeholders.
This paper discusses strategies for improving ethnic food safety educational
resources using Level 2 (culturally appropriate) and Level 3 (need-directed,
process-oriented) approaches. For the
purposes of this paper, the examples are
focused primarily on Mexican and Asian
audiences. However, the strategies are
applicable to other ethnic populations
in the U.S.
creasing role in the workforce of the U.S. food supply chain,
2 there is
a need to develop effective food safety education training resources
for ethnic food handlers.
The expanding ethnic populations and increased prevalence of ethnic food markets have been accompanied by a proliferation of ethnic foodservice establishments and retail stores in the U.S., with Mexican and Asian cuisines ranking as the
top two popular ethnic foods.
3 Not surprisingly, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an increase in total food outbreaks associated with
ethnic foods from 3% to 11% from 1990 to 2000, with most frequent outbreaks
representing Mexican (41%), Italian (39%) and Asian (20%) foods. The highest
number of outbreaks were reported to have occurred in restaurants (43%) and
private homes (21%).
3
In a study of independently owned restaurants, a significantly higher number of
food safety violations (e.g., inadequate time and temperature control, lack of hand
washing) were found in ethnic restaurants (particularly Asian) than in non-ethnic
restaurants.
4 Ethnic food retail stores have also been involved with a number of
critical/priority food violations,
5, 6 including inadequate temperatures during transport, holding and storage and cross-contamination. As energy costs continue to increase, more ethnic food distributors may try to cut corners by using transport and
storage environments that have minimal temperature control, posing a food safety
risk.
7
Strategies for Ethnic Food
Safety Education
The strategies recommended in subsequent sections were based on our previous experience in developing
prototype food safety educational resources targeting ethnic groups. The prototype toolkits were composed of a
curriculum and visual aids for the educa-tor/food safety communicator and promotional educational resources handed
out to the ethnic participants of food
safety classes. These resources can be
downloaded from
www.fooddomain.msu.edu. Special
focus was made on the consumer food
safety toolkit for Mexicans/Mexican-Americans, Seguros Alimentos Todo El Año
(Safe Food All Year Round), the first prototype ethnic food safety toolkit we developed following the strategies discussed
in this paper. However, subsequent ethnic food safety prototype toolkits (Table
1)
8 are mentioned to further illustrate
recommended strategies.
