USDANEWS VOLUME 58 NO. 8 — October-November
1999
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 While FSIS’s Holly McPeak (right, holding poster) looks on with great anticipation, Precious Johnson (center), a student in the class of Washington, DC 6th grade teacher Brenda Maxwell (left), raises her hand with the answer to a question about safe food handling. It was part of a recent activity during which FSIS debuted a new, school-based educational program of fun ?n games, on the subject of food safety, which FSIS employees helped to develop. McPeak’s poster depicts “Thermy,” a newly-created cartoon character who is part of an educational campaign to help people learn to use thermometers to check whether meat and poultry products have been cooked to a safe temperature. --Photo by Bob Nichols |
Making Food
Safety Fun For Kids
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Temper.”
“Temper
who?”
“Temperature counts! Cook your burgers to 160 degrees F.
and chicken breasts to 170 degrees F.”
That’s what sixth graders learned in a recent food safety class--with the help of employees from the Food Safety and Inspection Service. The activity was part of “National Food Safety Education Month” which was commemorated nationwide during September.
Of import during this year’s commemoration was that a new, school-based educational program, which FSIS helped to develop, made its debut in elementary and middle schools across the country.
According to Sandy Facinoli, acting director of FSIS’s Food Safety Education Staff, specialists from FSIS and the Food and Drug Administration worked with the Partnership for Food Safety Education and the Food Marketing Institute Foundation in the private sector to create a potpourri of educational activities and games, as described in a 24-page publication they also developed titled “Your Game Plan for Food Safety--Teacher’s Activity and Experiment Guide.” They also produced a companion video and a poster.
“All of those items,” she emphasized, “center on the general theme of preparing food safely.”
The four key messages of that general theme are:
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| “You just push the digital thermometer in about one-half inch or so, and then give it about 10 seconds to measure the internal temperature of this burger,” explains FSIS’s Holly McPeak (center) to Washington, DC 6th grade students Precious Johnson (left) and Ronnette Williams. Later,... |
Facinoli pointed out that many of the educational activities and games in the new curriculum spotlight a 'big green monster’ named “BAC,” short for “bacteria.” “This menacing, loathsome creature, with drool dripping from its mouth,” she explained, “was our way of putting a face on foodborne illness.” It serves as the 'poster-monster’ of a safe food handling campaign, which goes by the trademark title of “Fight BAC!”, that was launched in October 1997. The November-December 1997 issue of the USDA News carried a story on that campaign.
As part of this new curriculum kids can, for instance, play the 'BAC catcher’ game. “It’s a fun way for kids to quiz and be quizzed on food safety issues,” Facinoli said.
 |
| ...the two students seem to
be expressing slightly different reactions to their own experiment, in which
they used a new, innovative, plastic throwaway temperature indicator to ensure
that their burgers were cooked to a safe temperature of 160 degrees F. inside.
--Photos by Bob Nichols |
In fact, that’s exactly what happened on September 20 at Van Ness Elementary School, a school in Washington, DC which is one of USDA’s many 'adopted schools’ across the country. During the aforementioned food safety class, Under Secretary for Food Safety Catherine Woteki quizzed sixth graders on key food safety concepts and demonstrated the use of a food thermometer when checking for safe food temperatures.
Holly McPeak, a public affairs specialist with FSIS’s Food Safety Education Staff, said that those sixth graders are currently employing another suggestion from the 'safe food handling’ curriculum, as they develop a comic strip which incorporates the 'preparing food safely’ theme.
In addition, because of National Food Safety Education Month FSIS teamed up with FDA to develop a 43-page consumer education planning guide titled “Cook It Safely.” “We designed the guide with factsheets, experiments, games, and brochures in English, Spanish, and Chinese,” McPeak noted. “Then we worked with FDA to distribute the guide to school district food service directors, chefs, school nurses, cooperative extension, and public health offices just before the school year began.”
That guide is accessible on the federal government’s web site for food safety at www.FoodSafety.gov/September
Oh, by the way, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“To stay away from the vegetables on the cutting board. It didn’t want to contaminate them.”
–Dianne Durant
Hey, Fido And Tabby: Look Here!
This year’s hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to
November 30, has included such destructive forces as Hurricanes Dennis, Floyd,
and Irene. They have varied in intensity and in location. But those hurricanes
that have caused flooding and subsequent evacuation of residences may share at
least one characteristic in common: Missing pets.
Specifically, as evacuees of hurricane-caused floods return home and begin to assess the damage, many are finding that things they left behind—including their pets—are missing. In fact, literally thousands of family pets may have disappeared during flooding and haven’t returned home.
But the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is helping to reunite pets with their owners through its “Missing Pet Network” on USDA’s home page.
 Is this what’s known as “Fido Up A Tree?” Well, stranger things have probably happened to real live missing pets during this years’s hurricane season. But APHIS’s Jerry DePoyster is helping to find them through the “Missing Pet Network” web site he created. --Photo by Ann Czapiewski |
Click on the web site—http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ac--and then click on “Missing Pet Network” to zone in on the site itself.
Jerry DePoyster, a veterinarian with APHIS’s Animal Care Unit, created the web site in 1996, using his own computer equipment during his spare time at home. The March 1997 issue of the USDA News carried a story about that new web site.
“I created this free service so that a person can post a missing pet listing, much like a classified ad in a newspaper,” he explained. “The network has a state-by-state listing, as well as some international locations, and includes entries for both lost and found animals.” It also includes information on pets that others have found--under the belief that one person’s ?found’ animal may be someone else’s ?lost’ pet.
DePoyster emphasized that the most effective listings about lost animals include the following information: where the animal was lost, when the animal was lost, a description of the animal complete with color and markings, and contact information. A phone number and/or e-mail address are required to post a listing.
 Is APHIS’s Jerry DePoyster scanning the horizon looking for missing pets? Is the stuffed animal lounging on a bench in front of DePoyster’s Riverdale, Md., office building representative of pets that have turned up missing during this season’s hurricanes? Okay, maybe all of this is a slightly strained symbolic stretch. But the message here is that the “Missing Pet Network” web site, on USDA’s home page, that DePoyster created is being used to help locate pets which have turned up missing, in the aftermath of flooding and evacuations during this hurricane season. --Photo by Ann Czapiewski |
Other information can be helpful as well. “Especially at a time when so many pets are missing,” he observed, “the circumstances of how your animal was lost, or certain words and phrases it responds to, can be instrumental in singling your animal out.”
DePoyster added that it’s very important--and helpful--to have a picture of one’s pet. “A pet picture is valuable,” he underscored, “both for use on this web site and for use in posters that would be displayed in those local areas where a particular pet is missing.”
DePoyster pointed out that, although he was the one who created the “Missing Pet Network,” “It’s being maintained by a lot of people around the country--and around the world, for that matter--who are members of our 'Missing Pet Network’ and who are very conscientious in their efforts, and we’re always looking for more volunteers.”
So, has he received any feedback about the use of the “Missing Pet Network” specifically in the aftermath of flooding and evacuations during this hurricane season?
“I’m not sure we’ll necessarily get that feedback,” he acknowledged. “But I can say that in mid-October we added information about what to do with your pets in the event of a natural disaster.”
“And I want to add that this site is helpful not just following hurricanes, but following any natural disasters in which pets may turn up missing.”
--Hallie Pickhardt
Helping Customers Be 'Y2K
OK’
Is there anything left to be said that hasn’t been
said already about Y2K?
Hopefully not. And the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service has been doing its part, over the past 12 months, to help raise public awareness of the problem among USDA’s customers and encourage corrective action as appropriate.
“For anyone who has been living in a tent on Mars for the last several years and doesn’t know this already,” quipped Judy Rude, a public affairs specialist in CSREES’s Communication, Technology, and Distance Education Unit, “the Year 2000, or 'Y2K,’ phenomenon is based on the 'year digits’ within the 6-digit code which computers use for processing information--when that information is a calendar date.”
For instance, May 31, 1999 is recorded and stored in a computer as 990531. But in the year 2000 a date like May 31, 2000 would automatically be processed as 000531--but would be interpreted as May 31, 1900. And that might result in a computer crash.
In order to help farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses prepare for those possibilities, in October 1998 staffers in CSREES’s Communication, Technology, and Distance Education Unit distributed packets of Y2K information they had prepared to 3,150 county extension offices across the country and to U.S. territories, as well as to the state extension communication and technology information heads at the nation’s land-grant institutions.
Rude noted that the CSREES Y2K 'toolkits’ contained such items as fact sheets and brochures--as well as talking points, scripts of public service announcements, and sample press releases for suggested use by local extension agents--about the Year 2000 problem that might be particularly useful for farmers, ranchers, and other rural business managers.
The materials also noted CSREES’s web site of materials, related to the Y2K issue, which is: http://www.reeusda.gov/y2k
“A key point of the message in our materials,” she pointed out, “was that there are four basic options for addressing computer-based systems that are not Y2K compliant.”
They are:
So, since CSREES distributed those information kits a year ago, how have they been used in the last 12 months?
“We used our materials to create an awareness,” noted Terry Meisenbach, director of Communication & Information Access in CSREES. “And that awareness has happened across the country.“
“We’ve observed,” he added, “that some field extension offices have used literally all of our materials, while others have selectively picked from the options we provided, to suit their own unique needs.”
For instance, local extension personnel helped develop a 'Y2K Neighborhood Movement’ in Spokane County, Wash. “It’s a grassroots group of resourceful people,” he explained, “who help neighbors understand the potential Y2K issues, using their resources and helping each other in times of need.”
He added that other Spokane County activities included working with 4-H club members and volunteers on a “Cookie Monster Project.” Specifically, 4-H club members bake cookies with embedded chocolate chips, with a sticker saying “Our Embedded Chips Are 'Y2K OK.’ Are Yours?” Then the 4-H club members sell the cookies.
The commercial nursery industry in Connecticut asked for, and received, Y2K help from the Cooperative Extension Service at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Conn.
“In addition,” Meisenbach said, “our land grant university partners were very active in providing local information for extension offices to use in their outreach initiatives to their own communities.”
“So, CSREES continues to follow its pattern of working with its partners. We were not alone in our efforts.”
--Ron Hall
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