These two-day food safety workshops, provided retail food store personnel with the knowledge and skills necessary to incorporate and apply the principles of food safety assurance in their daily activities. Through this better understanding and application of food safety practices, the quality and safety of foods are improved and the risks of foodborne illnesses and injury are reduced.
impact statement issue
During the last several years, there has been extensive media coverage of the safety of the U.S. food supply. Foodborne illness outbreaks, product recalls and other food safety issues have made national news. It is estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that each year in the U.S. there are 76 million cases of foodborne illness with 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. Foodborne illnesses involving Salmonella species, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Hepatitis A virus, Norovirus and other human pathogens have focused attention on food safety assurance strategies. The retail food industry is always seeking practical and useful information on proactive prevention strategies such as GRPs, prerequisite programs, sanitary design, and HACCP principles to identify, evaluate, and control food safety hazards in their operations.
impact statement response
Since 1980s, the Department of Food Science at Cornell has been actively providing education and training programs to food retailers on the HACCP concept. As the science and technology of safety assurance has improved, programs have been planned, developed, and conducted to include current information about GRPs, prerequisite programs, and HACCP for food retailers. In 2008, a series of food safety and HACCP workshops on incorporating the principles of food safety assurance into fresh prepared food departments in retail stores were conducted.
These workshops provided food store personnel (executive chefs, fresh prepared department managers, supervisors, team leaders and others) with the practical knowledge and skills necessary to understand the importance of how prerequisite programs provide the foundation for a HACCP system and how these principles are used to develop HACCP plans for a wide variety of foods prepared, merchandised and sold in retail stores.
impact statement summary
Good Retailing Practices (GRPs), prerequisite programs, sanitary design of retail food stores, and the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) concept have become important strategies for identifying, evaluating, and controlling food safety hazards in retail food stores. Incorporating these principles into the design and development of a food safety assurance plan is of critical concern to food retailers. Education and training programs conducted by the Department of Food Science have provided retail food store personnel with the knowledge and skills needed to assure the safety of foods that they prepare, merchandise and sell.
