ENHANCING RETAIL GROCERY STORE FOOD SAFETY

The goal of this project is to develop, evaluate and deliver educational materials and training programs to enhance retail grocery store food safety. Continued efforts are needed to provide food safety education to the retail food and foodservice industries, including grocery stores. Retail grocery industries may not allocate sufficient time, money or personnel toward food safety training for their employees. Additionally, high employee turnover and increasing numbers of workers who do not read English well are important barriers to effective training. This project will focus on grocery stores or supermarkets since they not only have these concerns, but also are increasingly conducting more in-store food preparations, such as slicing, cooking, packaging, and cold-holding. The target audience of this proposal includes grocery store employees (deli, meat and poultry, seafood, and produce departments), State government retail food inspectors, and Extension Agents. Proposal objectives include: a) develop and implement a food safety educational needs assessment (demographics, existing food safety knowledge, literacy level, preferred educational delivery methods, and applicability of current educational materials) for grocery employees in Virginia and Pennsylvania; b) develop and evaluate food safety educational programs for grocery store workers and managers; c) develop and evaluate graphical and bilingual (English and Spanish) food safety messages (reminders, warnings, instructions) for the grocery industry; d) disseminate educational materials to grocery stores and others, and assess their effectiveness; e) assess the knowledge gain and changes in food safety behaviors and attitudes for the target audiences.