Effects of 'The Vicious Worm' educational software on Taenia solium knowledge among key pork supply chain workers in Zambia.

The neglected zoonotic cestode Taenia solium is endemic in many low- and middle-income countries, including Zambia. The parasite infects humans and pigs, inflicting high socioeconomic and disease burdens in endemic areas. Health education is regarded as an important component in T. solium control and previous studies indicate that 'The Vicious Worm' may be an effective T. solium health education tool for Tanzanian medical and agricultural professionals and Zambian primary school students. This study aimed to assess the effects of health education using 'The Vicious Worm' among Zambian pork supply chain workers, because the pork supply chain greatly influences food safety and security in Zambia. Half-day educational workshops using 'The Vicious Worm' and subsequent follow-up sessions were organized in the Lusaka and Katete districts of Zambia in March and April 2019. Questionnaires were administered before, after, and three weeks after the use of 'The Vicious Worm' to assess the program's impact on knowledge uptake and short-term retention. Focus group discussions were conducted to assess the program's user experience and the participants' beliefs, attitudes, and insights. In total, 47 pork supply chain workers participated: 25 from Lusaka and 22 from Katete. Overall, knowledge about T. solium was significantly higher (p<0.001) both immediately after, and three weeks after the use of 'The Vicious Worm' compared to baseline knowledge. Focus group discussions indicated incipient attitudinal and behavioral change, as well as a positive reception of the software; with participants describing the software as simple, educative, and useful to share knowledge. The study results indicate that workshops using 'The Vicious Worm' may be effective for short-term T. solium health education among key pork supply chain workers. Follow-up studies are required to assess long-term effects, transfer of knowledge and behavioral change. However, educational interventions with 'The Vicious Worm' could be considered for integrated T. solium control programs in sub-Saharan Africa, especially if the educational content is further simplified and clarified.

Observed Food Safety and Sanitation Behavior for Chinese Culinary Cooking.

The purpose of this study is to develop a Chinese culinary food safety and sanitation behavior scale that can be used in industry auditing, inspection, and training, as well as in school education. This study first observed food safety and sanitation behaviors in the order of cleaning, cutting, and cooking procedures according to the standards of Chinese culinary cooking. According to the observation results, for the cleaning component, alcohol disinfection after cleaning utensils and hands, the utensil cleaning sequence, the placing of cutting boards, the cleanliness of articles and water tanks, and other cross-contamination actions, as well as the complete removal of gills and scales of fish in fish handling, received lower scores. In terms of cutting, cutting sequences for various ingredients, the three-stage egg knocking sequence, the cleaning actions after each action, and the action of cleaning the knife and cutting board again were not performed properly. In the cooking step, the cross-contamination of cutting raw and cooked food, the placing of finished products, plate decorations, and the cross-contamination of not wearing gloves when contacting cooked food and tasting the food were still major problems. Finally, the cleanliness of the working area still needs improvement in all processing.

Effectiveness of Food Handler Training and Education Interventions: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Improper food handling among those working in retail and food service settings is a frequent contributor to foodborne illness outbreaks. Food safety training and education interventions are important strategies to improve the behaviors and behavioral precursors (e.g., knowledge and attitudes) of food handlers in these settings. We conducted a comprehensive systematic review to identify, characterize, and synthesize global studies in this area to determine the overall effectiveness of these interventions. The review focused on experimental studies with an independent control group. Review methods included structured search strategy, relevance screening of identified abstracts, characterization of relevant articles, risk of bias assessment, data extraction, meta-analysis of intervention effectiveness for four outcome categories (attitudes, knowledge, behavior, and food premise inspection scores), and a quality of evidence assessment. We identified 18 relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and 29 nonrandomized trials. Among RCTs, 25 (64%) unique outcomes were rated as high risk of bias, primarily owing to concerns about outcome measurement methods, while 45 (98%) nonrandomized trial outcomes were rated as serious risk of bias, primarily because of concerns about confounding bias. High confidence was identified for the effect of training and education interventions to improve food handler knowledge outcomes in eight RCT studies (standardized mean difference = 0.92; 95% confidence interval: 0.03, 1.81; I2 = 86%). For all other outcomes, no significant effect was identified. In contrast, nonrandomized trials identified a statistically significant positive intervention effect for all outcome types, but confidence in these findings was very low due to possible confounding and other biases. Results indicate that food safety training and education interventions are effective to improve food handler knowledge, but more evidence is needed on strategies to improve behavior change.

Efficacy of Food Safety Training in Commercial Food Service.

Proper food safety training is essential to decrease incidences and overall rates of foodborne illnesses and outbreaks. Though many commercial restaurants should provide proper food safety training to food handler employees, this training is not always offered or effective. Here, we summarize the results of a primary literature study concerning the effectiveness of food safety training in commercial settings. The literature chosen for review contained only studies with experimental food safety training, with before and after training data. Through evaluation of these studies, the best practice for ensuring effective training and follow-through were the use of food safety training programs, which incorporated both knowledge and behavior-based training. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Food safety managers in food service establishments may consider reevaluating their current food safety training program to incorporate behavioral-based food safety training in addition to knowledge-based training.

Stakeholder attitudes towards cumulative and aggregate exposure assessment of pesticides.

This study evaluates the attitudes and perspectives of different stakeholder groups (agricultural producers, pesticide manufacturers, trading companies, retailers, regulators, food safety authorities, scientists and NGOs) towards the concepts of cumulative and aggregate exposure assessment of pesticides by means of qualitative in-depth interviews (n = 15) and a quantitative stakeholder survey (n = 65). The stakeholders involved generally agreed that the use of chemical pesticides is needed, primarily for meeting the need of feeding the growing world population, while clearly acknowledging the problematic nature of human exposure to pesticide residues. Current monitoring was generally perceived to be adequate, but the timeliness and consistency of monitoring practices across countries were questioned. The concept of cumulative exposure assessment was better understood by stakeholders than the concept of aggregate exposure assessment. Identified pitfalls were data availability, data limitations, sources and ways of dealing with uncertainties, as well as information and training needs. Regulators and food safety authorities were perceived as the stakeholder groups for whom cumulative and aggregate pesticide exposure assessment methods and tools would be most useful and acceptable. Insights obtained from this exploratory study have been integrated in the development of targeted and stakeholder-tailored dissemination and training programmes that were implemented within the EU-FP7 project ACROPOLIS.

Traditional alcohol production and use in three provinces in Vietnam: an ethnographic exploration of health benefits and risks.

BACKGROUND: Gaps exist in knowledge about the production and use of traditional alcohols, particularly in Asia. This study adds new information about the nature, production and sale of traditional distilled spirit alcohol in Vietnam. METHOD: This was an ethnographic study of traditional distilled spirit alcohol production in rural areas of three provinces in Vietnam. Researchers interviewed more than 300 individuals and recorded responses to general open-ended questions about local alcohol production. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and studied to discern what information about traditional alcohol was important to the speakers. RESULTS: Methods of production followed long-held traditions. Participants listed both personal and community benefits (economic, health, and social) from traditional alcohol making. Older people favoured traditional alcohol, while younger people favoured brand-name beer. Typically people consumed 2-4 drinks daily, mainly at meal times. People consumed more alcohol at special events and festivals. Distribution patterns ranged from low-risk distribution to family and neighbours to high-risk distribution by an agent who might combine alcohol from several producers, which increases the opportunity for dilution and adulteration. The most commonly listed health risks associated with locally-made alcohol were local air pollution and water pollution; participants also mentioned traffic crashes and bad public behaviour. Depending on the location, community leaders reported that production may be relatively stable or it may be declining. CONCLUSIONS: Traditional alcohol manufacture, sale, and use in Vietnam is a long-standing practice and low- to moderate-risk to health. There do not appear to be instances of accidental or intentional contamination. Urbanization seems to be affecting the market share of traditional alcohol as urbanized youth turn to branded products, mainly beer, making traditional alcohol making and consumption an activity mainly linked to older people in rural areas. In the rural areas surveyed, significant economic and social benefits are derived from traditional alcohol manufacture, sale, and use. Policy makers designing ways to reduce alcohol-related risks and harms need to give thoughtful consideration to the role traditional alcohol plays in the local society and to suggest changes that do not create unintended problems.

[Sensory analysis. Study of influence of assessors training duration on the panel efficiency].

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the assessors group at different stages of training and estimate the influence of the duration of their training on the quality of the data obtained. The optimal training duration to work with descriptive methods, which is necessary and sufficient for reproducible evaluation of sensory properties has been determined. The training was conducted at three stages during 108 hours. It has been demonstrated that statistically significant differences among products can be already determined by assessors after 8 hours of training. By increasing the training duration the effectiveness of assessors was improved. Completion of training course led to a significant reduction in the mean square error for some sensory characteristics of the products and the variability of the scores.

Traditional food: a better compatibility with industry requirements.

The objective of this article is to summarise the main results of the TRUEFOOD Integrated project, which is supported by the European Commission in the European Framework Program 6 (FP6). This project started in 2006 and ended in 2010. TRUEFOOD aimed to improve quality and safety and introduce innovation into Traditional European Food production systems through research, demonstration, dissemination and training activities. It focuses on increasing value to both consumers and producers and on supporting the development of realistic business plans for all components of the food chain, using a farm-to-fork approach.

Training of panellists for the sensory control of bottled natural mineral water in connection with water chemical properties.

As bottled mineral water market is increasing in the world (especially in emergent and developed countries), the development of a simple protocol to train a panel to evaluate sensory properties would be a useful tool for natural drinking water industry. A sensory protocol was developed to evaluate bottled natural mineral water (17 still and 10 carbonated trademarks). The tasting questionnaire included 13 attributes for still water plus overall impression and they were sorted by: colour hues, transparency and brightness, odour/aroma and taste/flavour/texture and 2 more for carbonated waters (bubbles and effervescence). The training lasted two months with, at least, 10 sessions, was adequate to evaluate bottled natural mineral water. To confirm the efficiency of the sensory training procedure two sensory groups formed the whole panel. One trained panel (6 persons) and one professional panel (6 sommeliers) and both participated simultaneously in the water tasting evaluation of 3 sample lots. Similar average scores obtained from trained and professional judges, with the same water trademarks, confirmed the usefulness of the training protocol. The differences obtained for trained panel in the first lot confirm the necessity to train always before a sensory procedure. A sensory water wheel is proposed to guide the training in bottled mineral water used for drinking, in connection with their chemical mineral content.

Reinventing the role of consumer research in today's open innovation ecosystem.

Consumer research (CR) has played a key role in the food and beverage industry. Emerging from laboratory product-tests, it has evolved into a corporate testing service that measures the consumer reactions to products/concepts using a wide range of analyses/metrics. We propose that CR transform itself in light of accelerated knowledge expansion, mounting global, and local economic pressure on corporations and changing consumer needs. The transformation moves from its traditional testing into creating profoundly new knowledge of the product and understanding of the corporation's current and future customers. CR's tasks will involve: contributing/expanding science, applying open innovation principles, and driving consumer-centric innovation. We identify seven paradigm shifts that will change CR, namely: a different way of working--from testing to open sourcing; from good corporate citizen to change leader; open new product development (NPD) process; new management roles/cultures; universities and industry, new education curricula, and cooperation; from battle over control to sustainable sharing is winning model (SiW); and the central role of design. This integrative, innovative CR requires the implementation of three recommendations: start the change process now, fine-tune along the way; create a new marketing/CR department; and educate and professionalize. These recommendations provide the blueprint for jump-starting the process and call for immediate actions to deal with the severity of the crises facing the CR profession.

Food and the body politic.

Americans are in the midst of a food-consciousness revival: on television, in the mouth of the First Lady, in endless articles celebrating urban agriculture can be found a sudden enthusiasm for the politically and, perhaps, spiritually curated dinner table. In this special section, writers explore the perilous state of food and food politics in America and a wide range of responses on the Left. Marion Nestle, in her essay on the farm bill, describes how the existing policy disaster came to be, along with the relationship between Reagan-era deregulation and the obesity epidemic. Mark Engler describes both the successes and coopting of the strands of left-wing responses­buying organic, eating local, and agitating for fair trade­and asks, "What's a radical to eat?" Laurie Woolever uncovers the kind of labor exploitation endemic to the elite dining experience. Karen Bakker Le Billon compares American to French school lunches, unpacking the relationship between food and citizenship. Juliana DeVries explores vegetarianism and the politics of everyday life.

Utopian dream: a new farm bill.

In the fall of 2011, I taught a graduate food studies course at New York University devoted to the farm bill, a massive and massively opaque piece of legislation passed most recently in 2008 and up for renewal in 2012. The farm bill supports farmers, of course, but also specifies how the United States deals with such matters as conservation, forestry, energy policy, organic food production, international food aid, and domestic food assistance. My students came from programs in nutrition, food studies, public health, public policy, and law, all united in the belief that a smaller scale, more regionalized, and more sustainable food system would be healthier for people and the planet.

Making choices: ethics and vegetarianism.

I was seventeen and taking an elective course in Earth and Environmental Science. We were learning about farming and the food system­genetic modification, land use, organic labeling­when our teacher assigned us an article about beef. The article explained the following process: the U.S. government subsidizes corn, so we feed it to our cows, because corn is cheap and fattens the cows up quickly. Cows are biologically designed to eat grass, so their livers are unable to process the corn. The cows' livers would actually explode if they were permitted to grow to full maturity, but we slaughter them first. This, combined with their living in close quarters and wading in their own feces, causes the cows to get ill often, so we feed them a con-stant stream of antibiotics, a practice that strengthens bacterial strains such as E. coli. Roughly 78 percent of cows raised for beef undergo this process. Similarly nauseating practices are used to raise chickens, turkeys, and pigs, 99 percent, 97 percent, and 95 percent of which, respectively, come from factory farms. Nowadays, these details are less than shocking. Movies such as Food, Inc. and Super Size Me, as well as books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation have raised consciousness, if not much action, on the topic of our food system. But, for me, it was a new story.

Industry challenge to best practice risk communication.

UNLABELLED: Effective food safety and food defense risk communication helps to inform consumers without causing panic and alarm. The Risk Communication Team of the Natl. Center for Food Protection and Defense has developed a list of 11 best practices recommended for effective risk communication. These practices, designed for a food defense crisis, are currently applied to food safety issues, since fortunately a food defense crisis has yet to occur. IFT examined the utility of these best practices and the limitations on their use during food safety and food defense crises by academics, trade associations, and the government. It was hypothesized that legal and business considerations as well as the nature of the event would determine the implementation of the best practices. Through the use of focus group meetings, it was discovered that there was a low level of awareness of the best practices. However, stakeholders practiced some aspects of the recommended practices. Participants felt some of the practices were related and could be consolidated. They also agreed that a food defense event will increase the urgency of the communication and include players not typically involved in food safety issues. The challenges reported by the stakeholders varied, but legal liability, as well as the impact their communications could have on an industry, were often cited. From the government perspective, their need to act within their authorities drove some of their actions with respect to communication. Determining the differences in communication limitations during food safety against food defense events can provide key information to further developing and refining risk communications and specific messages targeted for a food defense incident. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Effective food safety and food defense risk communication helps to inform consumers without causing panic and alarm. Determining the differences in communication limitations during food safety against food defense events can provide key information to further developing and refining risk communications and specific messages targeted for a food defense incident.

The coastal metropolitan corn trade in later seventeenth-century England.

Exploiting hitherto unexamined London port book data, this article shows that during the last quarter of the seventeenth century the coastal metropolitan corn import trade was twice the size that historians relying on the work of Gras have assumed it to have been. More significantly, it demonstrates that Gras's failure to examine the capital's grain trade other than in terms of aggregate corn imports has disguised the nature and extent of its contribution to the development of the London economy. By the 1680s, the coastal trade comprised two distinct strands of roughly equal size: one providing food and drink for the London population, the other fuelling the overland trade of the capital. It is argued that the former was unnecessary for the provision of the city other than in barren years, but that the latter may have been indispensable for the development of the overland transport infrastructure of the metropolitan region at the height of the late seventeenth-century commercial revolution. Thanks largely to the agency of southern English mariners commanding large coasters, London's demand for fodder crops after the mid-1670s drew most of the coast stretching from Berwick to Whitehaven into the orbit of the metropolitan corn market.

[Frequency and preferences of consumption of high-fat products by students of catering school in Kraków]. / Czestotliwosc i preferencje spozycia produktów wysokotluszczowych przez uczniów zespolu szkól gastronomicznych w krakowie.

BACKGROUND: Dyslipidemia is one of the most important risk factors for atherosclerotic disease and may lead to coronary heart disease, obesity, type II diabetes and certain cancers. The choice of food and meals by adults is a large part determined by the dietary habits and knowledge acquired in earlier periods of life. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate frequency of consumption of food products containing fats among students of the Catering School in Kraków. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study was conducted with the participation of 140 students divided into two subgroups, depending on gender and age, in the autumn and winter season. During the studies a food frequency questionnaire containing question about frequency intake of selected groups of food products containing fats was used. This questionnaire was prepared at the Department of Human Nutrition Agricultural University of Kraków. RESULTS: A significant (P <0.05) effect of gender on preferences for the choice of milk, eating greasy food and the type of fat used for frying foods was found. Girls more often chose milk with reduced fat content compared to boys. It was observed that the fatty parts of food more often were eliminated by girls than boys. Girls more often than boys chose to fry foods oil or margarine, while boys more often used lard and bacon. Frequency of consumption offish or fish products, milk consumption preferences and eating fatty foods depended significantly (P <0.05) oon age. Older students less likely to eat the fish or fish products more often left fatty cuts compared to the younger students. Fatty milk was likely consumed by younger students, while fat free milk by older youth. CONCLUSIONS: It was found that the students of the Catering School, despite the acquired knowledge of nutrition, make many mistakes.