Social media &

Food Safety Education

--------RubyFor Social Media & Marketing

Communication by Professor Frechette

Background

• Unsafe food causes many acute and life-long diseases, ranging from diarrheal diseases to various forms of cancer.

• World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that foodborne and waterborne diarrheal diseases taken together kill about 2.2 million people annually, 1.9 million of them children.

•

Food-Chain

Food Safety is a social issue

• Foodborne diseases and threats to food safety constitute a growing public health problem.

• Assist Member States to strengthen their programs for improving the safety of food all the way from production to final consumption.

• USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) host a food safety education conference on March 23-26,2010.

• Titiled “Advancements in Food Safety Education: Trends, Tools and Technologies”

Importance of FSE

Food Safety Education is necessary:

Empowering consumers worldwide with knowledge and better safe food handling behaviors is the best line of defense against pathogens causing foodborne illness.

Promising approaches:

Social media engagement

Through social media

• Increases the dissemination and potential impact

• Reaches diverse audiences

• Facilitates interactive communication and community

• Empowers people to make healthier and safer decisions

Food safety Education

Departments Resources

• Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

• U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-Food and Nutrition

CDC & social media

Tapping the groundswell

• POST(People , Objectives, strategy, technology)

• Targeting Scientists

• Targeting underserved audiences

• Targeting kids and families

Targeting scientists

Targeting underserved audiences

• CVM (community voice mail)

• a national network which connects more than 40,000 phoneless people annually to the resources they need to restore dignity and stability to their lives.

• More than 14,900 total voice mail messages 1,000 email messages disseminated

Targeting kids and families

Energizing the groundswell

• Creating a community to energize customers.

• For example:

Participate in daily life to energizing

customers

Recommendations

• Doing market research to know what consumers really concern about- Listening to the groundswell

• Instead of lecturing food safety knowledge, making the education process more of participation-oriented (games, ratings, reviews)- Embracing the groundswell

References

• Lydia Medeiros, “Evaluation of Food Safety Education for Consumers”, Sep.2001, Pages S27-S34.

• Donna Maurer, “Eating Agendas: Food and Nutrition As Social Problems”,1995.

• Josh Bernoff, Groundswell, “winning in a world transformed by social technologies, 2008.

• Ryan W. Newkirk, Jeff B. Bender, The Potential Capability of Social Media as a Component of Food Safety and Food Terrorism Surveillance Systems, Feb. 8, 2012.