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County Contacts
Erie - Janice Ronan
Forest - Nancy Yergin
Mercer - Katherine French

 


A Volunteer's Guide to
Safe Food Handling




Why Attend?

Church dinners, fire company chicken barbecues, booster club hoagie sales, organizational bake sales and more are popular activities or fundraising efforts. Providing food that looks and tastes good and is safe to eat is important for an event's success. The use of safe food handling practices is essential to protect your customers from foodborne illness. "The way we've always done it," is not necessarily the safest way. Advances in science and technology continually provide new facts about the safest ways to handle food to prevent illness.

Participants of this three-hour workshop will learn up-to-date methods for handling and preparing food for crowds. Topics include:

  • How food becomes unsafe
  • Preparation practices that keep food safe
  • Taking food temperatures
  • Calibrating thermometers
  • Purchasing/storage of food and supplies
  • Holding hot and cold foods
  • Thawing and reheating
  • Handling leftovers
  • Personal hygiene
  • Cleaning and sanitizing

All Participants will Receive:

  • Certificate suitable for display
  • Food safety posters

Facts

Each year in the United States . . .

  • 76 million people suffer from foodborne illness, which is often mistaken for the flu or "24-hour bug."

  • 5,000 individuals die from foodborne illness. Older adults, very young children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems, such as persons undergoing cancer treatment, are especially prone to serious illness or death from foodborne illness.

  • Medical and legal fees, and lost wages due to illness cost in the billions of dollars.

  • Reputations for providing safe food are ruined.

 

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Penn State | College of Agricultural Sciences | Cooperative Extension & Outreach


This page last updated Monday, April 10, 2006 11:43

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