1. Social media
&
Food Safety
Education
--------Ruby
For Social Media & Marketing Communication by
Professor Frechette

2. Background
• Unsafe food causes many acute and life-long diseases,
ranging from diarrheal diseases to various forms of
cancer.
• World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that
foodborne and waterborne diarrheal diseases taken
together kill about 2.2 million people annually, 1.9
million of them children.
•

3. Food-Chain

4. Food Safety is a
social issue
• Foodborne diseases and threats to food
safety constitute a growing public health
problem.
• Assist Member States to strengthen
their programs for improving the safety
of food all the way from production to
final consumption.

5. • USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) host a
food safety education conference on March 23-26,2010.
• Titiled “Advancements in Food Safety Education:
Trends, Tools and Technologies”

6. Importance of FSE
Food Safety Education is necessary:
Empowering consumers worldwide with
knowledge and better safe food handling
behaviors is the best line of defense against
pathogens causing foodborne illness.

7. Promising approaches:
Social media engagement

8. Through social media
• Increases the dissemination and potential impact
• Reaches diverse audiences
• Facilitates interactive communication and
community
• Empowers people to make healthier and safer
decisions

9. Food safety Education
Departments Resources
• Center for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC)
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-Food
and Nutrition

10. CDC & social media

11. Tapping the groundswell
• POST(People , Objectives, strategy, technology)
• Targeting Scientists
• Targeting underserved audiences
• Targeting kids and families

12. Targeting scientists

13. Targeting underserved
audiences
• CVM (community voice mail)
• a national network which connects more than
40,000 phoneless people annually to the
resources they need to restore dignity and
stability to their lives.
• More than 14,900 total voice mail messages
1,000 email messages disseminated

14. Targeting kids and
families

15. Energizing the
groundswell
• Creating a community to energize customers.
• For example:

16. Participate in daily life to
energizing customers

17. Recommendations
• Doing market research to know what
consumers really concern about- Listening to
the groundswell
• Instead of lecturing food safety knowledge,
making the education process more of
participation-oriented (games, ratings,
reviews)- Embracing the groundswell

18. References
• Lydia Medeiros, “Evaluation of Food Safety Education for
Consumers”, Sep.2001, Pages S27-S34.
• Donna Maurer, “Eating Agendas: Food and Nutrition As Social
Problems”,1995.
• Josh Bernoff, Groundswell, “winning in a world transformed by social
technologies, 2008.
• Ryan W. Newkirk, Jeff B. Bender, The Potential Capability of Social Media
as a Component of Food Safety and Food Terrorism Surveillance
Systems, Feb. 8, 2012.