US: Lamenting the end of food safety month

01.sep.09
barfblog
Ben Chapman

Playing the calm, cool Danny Glover to Doug's crazed Mel Gibson, I
wanted to contribute to the food safety month discussion.
I'm not a fan of causes of the month; either an issue is important
year-round or it's not. Food safety month, established sometime in the
mid-90s (thanks Google news archives, http://squurl.com/540b5/), is
supposed to be an awareness-raising time. The goal is to focus consumer
food safety communication efforts and coordinate messages. But does this
even work?
Liz Redmond and Chris Griffith published research in 2006 that showed
even targeted, specific social media messages (which isn't really what
is seen in the many food safety month press releases) may impact
practices right after the audience is exposed to them, but behavior
changes were not sustained 4-6 weeks after being exposed
(http://squurl.com/dbc52/):
"Results suggested that "one-off" food safety interventions developed
and implemented using a social marketing approach may result in a
short-term improvement of consumer food safety behaviors."
The unfortunate part about food safety month is that messages get
recycled from previous years (sometimes with updated temperatures,
sometimes not). It appears that contrary to CDC's FoodNet report
suggestions on enhanced measures, folks are just throwing the same
messages year after year (http://squurl.com/4f722/). The majority of
messages focus on what consumers can do in their home, but few stories
exist about what industry, regulators and researchers are doing to
address food safety risks. If food safety is a farm-to-fork problem
(kind of what HACCP is built on, addressing risks at different points)
then our food safety messages need to be farm-to-fork.
Over a decade of food safety months and we've got the same annual
estimate of foodborne illness incidents. If there's no measurable
impact, why bother?
Lets get rid of the one-off consumer-focused message blitz that is food
safety month.
The best campaign idea I have for food safety month 2009 is a funeral of
sorts. The campaign would be focused on lamenting the demise of food
safety month and the birth of "Every month is food safety month". We can
have a New Orleans-type funeral (because they really do them up right
with the parade and all) with the cook, chill, clean, separate motto
being pulled behind in an elaborate horse-drawn carriage. It will be a
somber event for some, but others will rejoice in shedding the tactics
that may result in only short-term behavioral changes. New messages and
mediums are needed to really affect foodborne illness incidents.