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Integrating Food Defense Principles into Routine Food Service Operator Training C

Objective

<p>The Westchester County Department of Health (WCDH) is the sole government health unit in Westchester County, a 450 square mile county of almost one million residents located immediately north of New York City. There are approximately 3,500 permitted food service facilities in Westchester County. These include national chain restaurants, small limited food preparation operations, large catering halls, school food operations, mobile food vendors and full-service restaurants. Since 1985 WCDH has offered a foodservice manager's training course which is a collaborative arrangement with Westchester Community College and taught by WCDH staff. The proposed project will provide funding to permit the development of two food defense training modules of varying length that can be incorporated into existing training programs for food workers and food managers in an effort to educate industry workers regarding food defense issues. A subject matter expert will be hired as a consultant to work with WCDH staff as well as staff from the county's Department of Public Safety to develop the modules, which will incorporate the FDA's ALERT/FIRST initiatives. The modules will be designed to be widely applicable to a broad range of food service settings and be easily integrated into existing food training programs, thus optimizing public health protection activities through the use of existing resources.</p>

Investigators
Guido, Frank
Institution
Westchester County Department of Health
Start date
2009
End date
2011
Project number
1R18FD003803-01