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.

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 withperforming routine food safety inspections to retail establishments. In order to make the bestuse of time and complete a quality, science-based inspection, local level inspectors requireminimal tools to achieve and record temperatures of food products as well as a means ofrecording those temperatures and the findings of their inspection. They are further required toreproduce that information in an easy-to-understand report to the food establishment andmake the report available for viewing by the general public. By utilizing key software, thisinformation can be easily recorded and formatted to quickly achieve a standardized report thatdetails findings of the inspection, recorded temperatures, and intervention strategies to reducethe incidence of risk factor violations in retail food establishments. It is equally important thatmaterials relating to the bigger issues found in retail food establishments be available fordissemination by inspectors while in the field. Basic, easy-to-read, informational materials likemagnets, stickers, and cards can be easily distributed by inspectors, with the hope that foodemployees will remember some vital details during their time at work. By obtaining thissoftware and these materials, our inspectors will be able to more easily review previousinspections, run detailed reports that collect information about certain risk factor violationswhile simultaneously creating an on-going data baseline, and reduce the amount of time spententering repetitive data; They will be able to quickly and easily provide basic, tangibleinformation to the establishment which ultimately will assist us in achieving a 100% complianceof retail food establishment inspections per year. These achievements will provide trainingopportunities for our local food establishments through a higher frequency of inspections, aswell as produce a safer, more informed, community.