The Potato Project-Implementing food safety strategies in retail food establishments in order to reduce the incidence of risk factor violations through training, materials, and communication.

NIH RePORTER · FDA · U18 · $69,000 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

The Potato Project Food safety is an issue across the state of North Carolina, as well as the entire country. At the local level of government, environmental health departments are usually tasked with performing routine food safety inspections to retail establishments. In order to make the best use of time and complete a quality, science-based inspection, local level inspectors require minimal tools to achieve and record temperatures of food products as well as a means of recording those temperatures and the findings of their inspection. They are further required to reproduce that information in an easy-to-understand report to the food establishment and make the report available for viewing by the general public. By utilizing key software, this information can be easily recorded and formatted to quickly achieve a standardized report that details findings of the inspection, recorded temperatures, and intervention strategies to reduce the incidence of risk factor violations in retail food establishments. It is equally important that materials relating to the bigger issues found in retail food establishments be available for dissemination by inspectors while in the field. Basic, easy-to-read, informational materials like magnets, stickers, and cards can be easily distributed by inspectors, with the hope that food employees will remember some vital details during their time at work. By obtaining this software and these materials, our inspectors will be able to more easily review previous inspections, run detailed reports that collect information about certain risk factor violations while simultaneously creating an on-going data baseline, and reduce the amount of time spent entering repetitive data; They will be able to quickly and easily provide basic, tangible information to the establishment which ultimately will assist us in achieving a 100% compliance of retail food establishment inspections per year. These achievements will provide training opportunities for our local food establishments through a higher frequency of inspections, as well as produce a safer, more informed, community.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10149109
Project number
1U18FD007014-01
Recipient
COUNTY OF RUTHERFORD D/B/A HILLS HEALTH DISTRICT
Principal Investigator
Jason K Masters
Activity code
U18
Funding institute
FDA
Fiscal year
2020
Award amount
$69,000
Award type
1
Project period
2020-07-01 → 2022-06-30