 |
Food Safety and Inspection
Service United States Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C. 20250-3700 |
|
Food Safety and Inspection
Service United States Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C. 20250-3700 |
Speeches
Remarks delivered by Dr. Elsa Murano, Under Secretary for Food Safety, before the Conference on Food Safety Education, September 18, 2002, Orlando, Fl.
Good
morning. And welcome to the 2nd
national conference for food safety educators. I
am pleased to be here with my colleagues Dr.
Lester Crawford, Deputy Commissioner for the Food
and Drug Administration, and Dr. Rodney Brown,
Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and
Economics for USDA.
And, as Secretary Veneman already mentioned, Dr. Garry McKee, the brand new Administrator of the Food Safety and Inspection Service, also is with us today. Dr. McKee, if you could please stand so everyone knows who you are. I haven’t told Dr. McKee this yet, but once people find out you’re a public health food safety official, they don’t invite you to dinner anymore. As food safety educators, maybe you’ve had that same experience.
I want to join Secretary Veneman in congratulating you, the audience, for your hard work in educating food handlers at the grass roots level. Recently, I have been on the road, taking my friends Thermy™ and BAC! with me to the Southwest and Southeast, to visit schools and senior centers. I’ve learned a lot from these visits. First, I’ve learned it’s easy to be upstaged by Thermy™ and BAC because they really appeal to a wide audience. They’re also a lot taller than I am, so I have to make a real effort to be seen.
But seriously, I’ve learned that there are many eager students out there—of all ages, and from all backgrounds. At the senior center I visited in San Antonio, I was surprised at how many basic questions people had about handling and storing food safety. At a grilling event, people were surprised to learn that you can use a food thermometer to check the doneness of burgers, and that cooking them to 160 degrees is a much better way than checking color to ensure that harmful E. coli organisms have been destroyed.
So there are lots of opportunities out there for us, as educators, to make a difference. And I have seen first-hand your commitment to spreading food safety messages. While I enjoy getting out of Washington to educate folks on food safety, I certainly can’t do that every day. You truly deserve our thanks for being there on the front lines day in and day out.
As the top public health official at USDA, my primary role is to ensure that the American public has access to the safest supply of meat, poultry, and egg products possible. The majority of USDA’s regulatory authority is focused on slaughter and processing plants, and my job is to ensure that policies are in place to reduce to the greatest extent pathogens that can cause foodborne illness.
We have seen many successes. Testing in plants reveals that Salmonella levels in a variety of products are down, for instance, and that corresponds to a reduction in illnesses reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, as Secretary Veneman said, ensuring food safety is a farm-to-table job. Food safety education is certainly not a substitute for, but a complement to, science-based food safety policies. I would like nothing better than to tell people that they don’t need to worry about how they handle and prepare their food because government has taken care of the problem. I wish I could say that, but I can’t. We will continue to strive for greater reductions in harmful pathogens within plants. But regardless of what we can accomplish, consumers always will have an important role in keeping food safe.
Many of us in the food safety business like to talk in terms of a risk analysis framework—that is, risk assessment, risk management and risk communication. Education is a critical element of this framework. It is a risk management strategy because educating consumers is an important way to reduce the risk of foodborne illness. This is very clear, for example, in the work we have all done on educating high-risk population groups about Listeria monocytogenes. Education is also a risk communication function, because it serves to alert the public about a hazard that exists and can be addressed by safe food handling and food choices.
As we continue to examine emerging and existing food safety problems, it is important that we remember that reducing foodborne illness requires numerous interventions all along the farm-to-table chain. We must consider all the strategies available to us—including education—to make the food supply safer.
Together, we have many challenges ahead. You will hear data presented during this conference indicating that what consumers know about safe handling, preparation, and storage of food—and what they actually do—may be miles apart.
At same time, you will hear a presentation on the current state of foodborne illness in the U.S.—and that there is room for improvement in the prevention of illnesses.
And education is not just about the basics of safe food handling, although this certainly remains our greatest need. There are many new products in the marketplace and technologies being used that people want to know about, such as biotechnology, organic foods, and irradiation. The job will fall on you, as leaders in education, to help us give the public the most accurate and up-to-date information on these new and evolving products and technologies.
And of course, the increasing diversity of the population is another hurdle we face. Our strategies must reach the many diverse cultures and languages.
Despite these challenges, I’m an optimist at heart. I believe we can truly make a difference in changing behavior.
I think it is very exciting to see how the science of food safety education is evolving in terms of developing messages and targeting audiences. Just as we are learning in medicine that not all medications work the same for all people due to their genetic makeup and other factors, we know that one size does not fit all in education. We cannot reach all people with the same messages and the same methods of delivery. This knowledge provides us with an opportunity to work smarter to influence behavior related to food safety.
In closing, I want to assure you that we are committed to helping you meet these food safety education challenges, because we are all in this together. I think we can agree that everyone has an interest in educating consumers—consumer advocacy groups, industry, government, and academia.
We are your partners, and we will continue to be your partners. We have provided you with educational materials, and we will continue to do so. And we will continue to facilitate discussions, just as we are doing here today, to keep everyone up to date on the latest in food safety education.
Thank you for being here today, and I look forward to a very successful conference.
For Further Information:
FSIS Congressional and Public Affairs Staff
Phone: (202) 720-3897
Fax: (202) 720-5704