It’s “LEARN,” And It’s Quick!
The word “LEARN” has a whole new dimension to its meaning these days for Food Safety and Inspection Service employees across the country. That’s because it refers to a new, more efficient way in which FSIS inspectors can access laboratory results from testing meat, poultry and egg products.

As part of FSIS’s responsibility for ensuring that meat, poultry, and egg products are safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled, FSIS inspectors conduct verification sample testing to monitor for microbiological pathogens, such as E. coli 0157:H7, and for excessive levels of antibiotics or hormones. Samples being tested may include tissue or swab tests from carcasses, samples of finished product at a meat processing plant such as luncheon meat, or samples of ground beef in retail stores.

The Laboratory Electronic Application for Results Notification, or LEARN, provides electronic status reports on the samples that FSIS collects. “LEARN is an automated process that tracks each sample as it is received, analyzed, and reported out,” said Pat Abraham, director of the FSIS Lab Sample Data Management Staff.

"Once I change this tape to the server, then the data backup to our LEARN system will be ready to go," notes Mike Terry, the laboratory systems manager at FSIS's Eastern Lab in Athens, Ga. --Photo by Terrie Sutton

“In the past, our field personnel were notified of test results through a combination of phone calls, fax messages, and multiple computer applications,” she explained. “There was no update on the status of a sample between the time it was sent to the FSIS laboratories and when the final results were reported.”

LEARN went online on September 24, combining the old notification methods into one application and using fewer agency resources while delivering more up-to-date information. “LEARN provides our personnel with notification on when a sample is received, when it is analyzed, if there are preliminary results, and the final results,” Abraham said. “The program even notifies an inspector if the test on a sample is delayed and explains the reasons behind the delay.”

Each sample that an inspector takes is identified with a collection date, the plant’s establishment number, and a corresponding form number. The samples are sent to an FSIS laboratory, where they are marked with a lab code and assigned a unique internal lab number. “These numbers and codes allow the samples to be tracked through the testing process,” she explained. “The electronic information for each numbered sample is automatically updated in the laboratory computer system several times each day.”

FSIS personnel can access LEARN through an FSIS intrAnet site. “Once an employee logs on to the FSIS server, he or she can check on samples from individual meat, poultry, and egg product establishments, such as a meat slaughterhouse or a poultry processing plant,” she said, “or summaries of the results from FSIS districts or circuits around the country.”

Industry and state officials may also obtain information on the status of the sample through LEARN. But establishment officials only receive results from their plant, and state officials only receive results for establishments within their state.

“As our inspectors and field personnel continue to use LEARN, we’ll work to continue to improve the system,” Abraham said.

--Katie Pritchard

Protect Homes From Wildfires
More and more people are drawn to building homes on the beautiful landscapes of the West. But when those homes lie on the fringe of forests and rangeland, they face the threat of wildfires that know no boundary between private property and wildland.

That’s why staffers from the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Forest Service teamed up to develop and implement a program to educate those homeowners on how to protect their homes from the inevitable effects of unwanted wildland fire.

Russ Manwaring, who is based in Emmett, Idaho as NRCS’s coordinator for the West Central Highlands Resource Conservation and Development Area, said the National Fire Plan, which was developed by USDA and the U.S. Department of the Interior after the severe 2000 fire season, included funding for fire education in the “wildland urban interface”--or those areas in which homes were built close to forests or rangeland.

“I saw an opportunity to create an educational program to help homeowners protect their residences from wildfire, after I saw the results of a catastrophic firestorm in 1992 that hit the community of Lowman, Idaho,” he said. “But I had no funding sources or staff to implement the idea.”

His idea remained on hold until late fall 2000, when the Western Governors’ Coalition issued a call through the Wildland Urban Interface Grant Program, which offered $17 million to 17 western states for fire suppression and fire education projects. Manwaring contacted Danny Ebert, a Forest Service regional partnership coordinator on the Boise National Forest, based in Boise, Idaho, to develop a grant application for funding a “Fire Education Corps” to educate private property owners about reducing home and neighborhood wildfire risk through five multi- county Resource Conservation and Development Areas in Idaho.

The proposal, which sought $325,000 to develop a Fire Education Corps, received funding in late 2000 through the Idaho Department of Lands. The funds went to those five RC&Ds. The five then contracted with the Student Conservation Association, a nationwide organization that is the country’s leading provider of outdoor service opportunities for youth, to put the Corps together. More than 500 applications poured in from college age students who wanted to join the Corps. SCA selected 50 applicants who were then trained by experts from the Forest Service, Idaho Department of Lands, and Bureau of Land Management.

RC&D councils stationed Idaho’s five Fire Education Corps teams in Coeur d’Alene, McCall, Boise, Pocatello, and Salmon. BLM assigned two teams to work in Carson City and Elko, Nevada.

Manwaring said that, for $50 a week plus room and board, Fire Education Corps teams spent the summer of 2001 conducting home safety evaluations and providing homeowners with fire prevention techniques, using the nationally recognized 'FIREWISE protocol,’ a program for fire education sponsored by a coalition of state and federal agencies.

“The teams concentrated their efforts in interface areas where fires might start and spread to homes that were surrounded by dense dry fuels,” he said.

Ebert said the teams also worked weekends at local Home Depot stores that were also enlisted as project cooperators. The stores built home mockups that the teams used to demonstrate FIREWISE concepts. Corps members also attended local events such as rodeos, fairs, farmers’ markets, and festivals to provide residents with information and to schedule home evaluations.

Judy Kissinger, an FS public affairs specialist at the agency’s headquarters office in Washington, DC, noted that similar fire prevention education activities--coordinated by FS with participation by BLM, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, and state agencies, as appropriate--have been operational across the country since 1996. Those activities all come under the official title of National Fire Prevention Education Teams. “But this particular Fire Education Corps is different,” she said, “because it was developed in the aftermath of the National Fire Plan and has relied on college age students to spread the word on fire prevention education.”

Local residents and officials lauded the efforts of the Fire Education Corps volunteers.

Manwaring said the partners have applied for funding for 2002 which will enable them to build on the first year’s effort and expand the Fire Education Corps into new communities in Idaho.

--Sharon Norris