Remarks prepared for delivery by Jerold Mande, Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety, for the 2010 FSIS-NSF Food Safety Education Conference, March 24, 2010, Atlanta, GA.

Good morning and thank you for joining us at this year's Food Safety Education Conference. On behalf of Secretary Tom Vilsack and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the President's Food Safety Working Group, welcome to this important meeting.

This gathering of national leaders from government, education, public health, industry, and consumer groups is one of the largest and most influential meetings devoted to educating the public about food safety. We're proud to host it, along with our partner NSF International.

With the participation of more than 700 of you, the fact that we are not just sold out but overbooked, and the wide-ranging, exciting sessions we have planned, it's tempting to declare the conference a success already.

But success for us isn't just about numbers or interest. It's about results — in this case, reducing the risk and burden of foodborne illness in America. Foodborne illness is largely preventable and food preparer education and outreach provides a significant solution.

At USDA we often talk about the path food takes from "farm to table." Many important efforts in government and industry are taking place to combat foodborne illness in the early and middle parts of that path. But this meeting focuses uniquely on the critical and often overlooked final step before the food reaches the table — the role of the people who prepare the food themselves — whether that's in a commercial establishment or in the home.

I want to be clear. At FSIS we are focused every day on preventing contaminated food from ever leaving the establishments we regulate, and we have more work to do to make our food safe. But we must also recognize that most contamination occurs after food products leave federally regulated establishments. Even if FSIS and FDA succeed in reducing illnesses from our establishments to zero, there will still be millions of foodborne illnesses and hundreds of deaths each year unless we succeed in changing the behavior of food preparers.

Unless food preparers know how to safely handle, cook, serve, store food, and avoid cross contamination, their ability to protect the public and their families from microbiological food safety risks is limited. Our diligent efforts to reduce pathogens in processing facilities and transport will be less effective unless consumers and food preparation employees understand such food safety basics as how to use a food thermometer properly, how to prepare meats and vegetables safely, and how to keep food preparation surfaces clean.

When I was at FDA, I led the design of the Nutrition Facts label that now appears on virtually all packaged foods. That changed the way consumers shop.

With food safety, we need to change the way people think about food after they shop.

To do this, over the next three days, we'll explore a variety of approaches, and how different groups can use them.

We must understand where food preparers are falling short in food safety knowledge and motivation. How we can turn apathy into action.

Where we find gaps we need to ask ourselves — how can we better reach that audience?

You've heard the buzz about Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. People are using these social media tools both to network and to get information. Social media and new communications technologies give us new ways to provide health educators and many others tools they can use to increase food safety awareness — and vigilance — among the public. It's easy to trivialize social media. But for food safety education, it is potentially revolutionary. Here are some examples of how we might use it:

First, we might use social media to introduce food safety messages into existing conversations. For example, Facebook and similar sites provide food safety educators platforms where people voluntarily associate. They are 21st century water coolers where information is shared and received.

Second, we can reach out to groups actively seeking food safety information. For example, people who have signed up for our Tweets have chosen to receive our information — meaning we have a direct line to people who have expressed concern about food safety and are motivated to learn more about it. People who find those messages useful share them with each other, multiplying our impact.

FSIS now has over 25,000 Twitter followers — people who have made the positive statement that they want to receive food safety content as a part of their daily information "diet." We need to aggressively grow that number to create an effective ability to spread the food safety message throughout the public.

Third, social media is immediate and personal — without any mediation, we can send a message that directly reaches a mom in Nebraska, a restaurant manager in Oregon, and a teacher in Mississippi. No other medium allows us to do this.

Finally, we can use social media to rapidly reach Americans affected by outbreaks and other food safety threats. For example, we can send out information the moment a recall is announced or when a coming storm creates a risk of power outage. It clearly beats simply positing something on our Web site and hoping someone sees it.

We also need to reach multipliers like medical practitioners and health educators because they already interact directly with people most at risk.

The best outcome from this conference will be for you to go home with the tools to leverage your efforts by using communication strategies that amplify your message and get it to many more Americans and thus be influential multipliers yourselves.

The future of public health is in our hands. Let's seize this opportunity to network, share information, and find solutions that improve food safety education and public health, and ultimately reduce the number of foodborne illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Take what you'll gain here — apply it, teach it, or convey it to your colleagues and others — and you'll have realized an important goal of this event.

Thank you.