Food Safety Education Conference
                                              Release No. 0189.97
                                                                 
Remarks
                              of 
                     Secretary Dan Glickman
                Food Safety Education Conference
               Washington, D.C. -- June 12, 1997

     Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Secretary Shalala, we should
really take our show on the road. We've seen a lot of each other in the past
few months, and for good reason: This Administration's making history on
food safety. 

     And, we're hardly through. The only question we seem to get from
President Clinton and Vice President Gore these days is what next?

     Assistant Secretary Moreno, it's good to have you here as well. Now
that we've made  advances in our inspections, now that we have modern
science, education really is the next frontier of food safety.  So,
Assistant Secretary Moreno, I'm delighted you're joining us in that
capacity.

     Of course, we all know that education is also the top priority of
President Clinton's second term. But I think when he talks about education,
he's not just talking about the 3 R's. He's talking about empowering people
with the the knowledge they need to lead successful and safe lives. 

     Without question, food safety education is a critical part of that
vision.

     It's a fascinating issue from a government perspective. People have a
lot of qualms with government, but food safety is not one of them. It's
widely viewed as an area where we need government ... where government
performs a critical role in protecting the public health.

     When we revolutionized meat and poultry inspections last year under
the leadership of Tom Billy, the American people loved it -- it was the most
popular thing government's done in recent years. When we unveiled a White
House Food Safety Initiative to do even more, they said  that's great.' Food
safety is one area where most folks seem to feel that government -- together
in partnership with private stakeholders -- should do more. 

     With jobs and kids and everything else our families have to worry
about, they want to rest easy in the knowledge that the food on their plate
is safe. And, the United States government does more than any other
government in the world to ensure that we have the safest food. 

     Yet a funny thing happens when that food gets into our refrigerators.

     You ask people: How do you thaw a Thanksgiving turkey? When is an egg
properly cooked?  How hot does a hamburger need to be during cooking? How do
you clean a cutting board? 

     The answers -- quite frankly -- are all over the map.

     Why? I think I know part of the reason. When the experts and the
policymakers and the scientists and industry get together, we talk about
pathogen reduction, hazard analysis and critical control points. We debate
epidemiology and microbial testing. We chat up SOPs, CDC, FSIS and all the
rest of the acronyms that dominate this town.

     In other words, when we leave a conference like this and go back to
the real world, no one has the slightest clue what we're talking about.

     Lack of consumer awareness is perhaps our most dangerous food safety
gap. People want to know how to get it right. USDA's Meat and Poultry
hotline gets over 100,000 calls a year from consumers looking for very basic
advice on how to handle, prepare and store perishable foods.

     We who are involved in these issues -- from the schools, to
government, to consumers, producers, to restaurants, to the food industries,
to hospitals -- need a unified, clear, understandable message. 

     You know, it strikes me that we went through something quite like this
with the issue of nutrition information. We went from telling people to
ingest a certain number of grams of calcium, to saying drink milk. Instead
of protein, eat meat, and so on. The eventual result was the food pyramid,
which is probably as readily identifiable to the American people as Tiger
Woods is -- maybe not this week, but most times.

     We need an equally accessible food safety campaign. We need to come up
with a unified message. We need to get it out there to the American public. 
We need to target it to those who are most likely to be preparing the food,
and we need to work to ensure that our information is translated into in-kitchen action.

     The more we work together, the more successful we'll be. The
President's Food Safety Initiative gives us a public-private partnership to
all who can work together to make it successful. This conference is an
important start. 

     I hope we can take something real away from it, and empower the
American people to make their own critical contribution to safe food.

     I thank you very much.

     Now, I'd like to introduce my partner in all these endeavors, our
Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala.

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