Food Safety Education: How to Talk Food Safety with your Customers

By: Hilary Thesmar, PhD, RD, Chief Food and Product Safety Officer and Vice President, Food Safety Programs

Food retailers have invested tremendous resources in food safety over the past two decades. Food safety is the foundation of food retailers’ relationships with their customers—consumers expect the food they purchase is safe. According to US Grocery Shopper Trends 2016 (FMI), nearly nine out of 10 shoppers have confidence in the safety of the food at the grocery store. Also, an increasing number of consumers are taking personal responsibility for food safety compared to just six years ago.

Food retailers are a credible and very accessible source of food safety information for consumers. For this reason, FMI has been a founding member and partner of the Partnership for Food Safety Education (PFSE) since its inception in 1997. PFSE is better known as the FightBac!® campaign which promotes  four core practices for food safety– Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill. The FightBac!® campaign provides food safety education to a variety of audiences through a network of health and food safety educators, called BAC Fighters. The retail food industry is an integral part of the BAC Fighter network.  Because interacting with customers is essential for doing business, grocers are well-positioned to put food safety information at shoppers’ fingertips. Over the years, PFSE has developed campaigns and toolkits for retailers to use in stores to help promote safe food handling at home.

FMI supports PFSE through the FMI Foundation to make the resources available to all FMI members to use.  Please feel free to use the PFSE materials and call upon PSFE or FMI staff for assistance.

Here are some of the most popular PFSE resources:

ProducePro: http://www.fightbac.org/food-safety-education/safe-produce/

Go 40 or below: http://www.fightbac.org/food-safety-education/40-or-below/

The Story of Your Dinner: http://www.fightbac.org/food-safety-education/the-story-of-your-dinner/

Be Food Safe: http://www.fightbac.org/free-resources/be-food-safe-resources-2/

Partnership for Food Safety Education Website: http://www.fightbac.org/

Get more ideas for educating shoppers about foods safety practices at the 2017 Consumer Food Safety Education Conference--Advancing Food Safety through Behavior Change January 25-27, 2017 in Washington, DC.