Greene County learns the importance of food safety
WAYNESBURG – On Tuesday, Oct. 15, Penn State Extension’s ServSafe food safety class came to Greene County to teach food handlers how to prevent foodborne illnesses.
The class ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and continued on Tuesday, Oct. 22.
Carrie Masterson, program assistant for health and food safety at Penn State Extension and instructor for the ServSafe course, understands the immense consequences that come with a lack of safe food practices and hopes to convey this to her classes.
“In the U.S., there’s an estimated 48 million cases of foodborne illnesses each year,” said Masterson. “It’s really important that people understand and follow state food safety codes.”
ServSafe, one of many courses offered through Penn State Extension, uses the 6th edition of a book entitled ServSafe Manager that comes from the National Restaurant Association.
Masterson teaches the ServSafe course in Greene, Westmoreland, Indiana, Armstrong, Washington and Fayette counties. Attendees include employees of food establishments, gas stations and even farmer’s markets.
Participants in the course pay $175, which covers the cost of the book and the proctoring of the exam. Taken at the end of 10 hours of instruction, the exam consists of 80 multiple-choice questions; students must answer 60 of them correctly to pass the course and become ServSafe certified. The certification remains valid for five years.
The course covers the following topics: providing safe food; biological, physical, and chemical forms of contamination; how to handle food safely; the purchase, receipt, storage, preparation and service of food; food safety management; safe facilities; pest management and cleaning and sanitizing.
Of the 48 million cases of foodborne illness each year, approximately 128,000 of them result in hospitalization and 3,000 result in death. Mishandling food is the cause of 95 percent of these cases. As such, the course puts particular emphasis on avoiding mishandling of food.
“We really focus on the five major risk factors for foodborne illnesses, which are purchasing food from unsafe places, holding food at incorrect temperatures, failing to cook food correctly, using contaminated equipment and practicing poor personal hygiene,” said Masterson.
Pennsylvania law used to dictate that food-related establishments always had a certified person on staff. The development of technology has changed that.
“The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture doesn’t require a certified person to be on staff at all hours, but they do require someone certified to be available by phone at all operating hours,” said Masterson.
Masterson also explained that the state recommends that non-profit organizations that carry out food-related fundraisers, such as volunteer fire departments or churches, have at least one ServSafe certified person on staff. These groups can be inspected and shut down by the Department of Health.
In lieu of the full ServSafe class, however, such personnel can take a shorter, three-hour class entitled Cooking for Crowds, also offered by Penn State Extension.
Penn State Extension works with the Penn State College of Agricultural Science and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to provide food safety courses for the state. They offer courses in many other areas as well, which can be found at extension.psu.edu.
Employees of Penn State Extension’s Health and Food Safety Department, like Masterson, essentially work to educate Pennsylvania workers about the importance of food safety and the ways by which it can be achieved. It is their hope that if food handlers are properly informed, the number of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. can be drastically reduced.