September Is National Food Safety Education Month

It’s National Food Safety Education month so we’d like to remind you about resources from the Environmental Health Services Branch and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) related to foodborne illness and food safety.

Resources from the Environmental Health Services Branch

EHS-Net – links environmental health specialists with epidemiologists and laboratorians to identify and prevent environmental factors contributing to foodborne and waterborne illness and disease outbreaks:

• EHS-Net Studies in Plain Language
• EHS-Net Food Safety Projects
• Foodborne Illness Complaint Form

Food Protection – section from Emergency and Terrorism Preparedness for Environmental Health Practitioners provides specific information on how practitioners can effectively prevent and respond to foodborne outbreaks and emphasizes food-security related issues

• Food Safety Publications – EHS food-safety publications listed by citation
• Food Safety Topic Page – EHS topic page with links to information on food safety
• Foodborne Illness Topic Page – EHS topic page with links to information on foodborne illness

CDC Resources

CDC’s Winnable Battle on Food Safety – snapshot of the context and background for CDC’s food safety priority area, as well as descriptions of some of the systems, policy, and programmatic interventions pursued by CDC and our public health partners at the federal, state and local levels

Estimates of Foodborne Illness in the United States – detailed information on the estimates and methods of foodborne illness in the US

• Attribution of Foodborne Illness, 1998-2008 – study provides a comprehensive set of estimates available to answer the question: which foods make us ill?

Find Out about Food Trucks in Your Area – read the blog about mobile food trucks

Food Safety – CDC Food Safety homepage

Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) – surveillance for foodborne diseases and related epidemiologic studies to help public health officials better understand the epidemiology of foodborne diseases in the United States

Foodborne Outbreak Online Database (FOOD) – web-based platform for searching CDC's Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System database by year, state, location, and pathogen

Frequently Asked Questions on Foodborne Disease – provides answers to most asked food safety questions about diseases, outbreaks, places and people most at risk.

Surveillance for Foodborne Disease Outbreaks — United States, 1998–2008 – article discussing foodborne diseases in the United States and the surveillance systems used to collect the data on them

Other Resources

Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR)

• Foodborne Illness Response Guidelines for Owners, Operators and Managers of Food Establishments – new guidelines developed as voluntary guidance for owners, operators, and managers of retail food establishments to help outline, clarify, and explain industry’s recommended role in a foodborne illness outbreak investigation
• Guidelines for Foodborne Disease Outbreak Response [PDF - 2.5 MB] – guidelines to aid government agencies responsible for preventing and managing foodborne disease

Food and Drug Administration

• FDA Food Code – FDA model that assists food control jurisdictions at all levels of government by providing them with a scientifically sound technical and legal basis for regulating the retail and food service segment of the industry
• Foodborne Illness and Contaminants – FDA guidelines for protection against foodborne illness

Foodsafety.gov (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) – information about food safety

United States Department of Agriculture

• Food Safety and Inspection Service – information about food safety and food inspections
• Nutrient Data Laboratory – tool to search for information about food