PA Food Protection Conference

Over 100 individuals participated in the EDEN Food Protection Conference in Pennsylvania October 27-28.  Representatives from Cooperative Extension, state agencies, federal agencies, the food manufacturing  and marketing industry with interest or responsibility in food protection became better informed and more capable of improving consumer safety while reducing the negative industry impact from food recall incidents.  Conference participants learned about the roles of federal, state and local agencies and organizations from presentations by representatives from;

                State Department of Agriculture,

                USDA Food Safety Inspection Service,

                Center for Disease Control and Prevention,

                Food and Drug Administration,

                State Department of Health,

                Federal Bureau of Investigation,

                Cooperative Extension,

                and the food Industry.

The conference included a panel discussion which included all agency representatives and focused on interventions for Food Protection issues.  To illustrate the complexity of a recall, there was a detailed chronological sequence of events of a major national food recall incident.

Keynote presentations shared results from a national survey explaining the consumer’s perceptions of the national spinach recall incident, and information about the United States Food Import Inspection program. Participants learned about the resources of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense in Minnesota, and  a variety of Food Protection resources for the industry and extension educators including, Food Shield and the Food and Agriculture Sector Criticality Assessment tool; FAS-CAT.

 Communications challenges from all sectors were identified and recommendations were provided for improved communications between food protection stakeholders and the general public.

The conference agenda and presentations can be viewed by visiting the EDEN Northeastern Food Protection Conference site located under the Conferences section of the EDEN home page.  For more information about this and other EDEN Food Protection conferences, contact Dave Filson EDEN chair at; dfilson@psu.edu

Funding support for the EDEN Food Protection conferences is from USDA-NIFA.