Program helps to reduce food-borne illness cases

The food science program at the Universityof Nebraska-Lincoln not only offers food safety courses for students, but it also reaches out to real-world meat and poultry processors.

An extension program was implemented in 1992 after the U.S. Department of Agriculture made strict regulations for meat and poultry producers and processors to decrease the number of food-borne illness cases, said Dennis Burson, an extension meat specialist in the animal science department at UNL.

The program appears to have reduced incidents of contamination in some meat and poultry since it began a decade and a half ago.

Since 2000, more than 1,000 small local meat and poultry processors have benefited from the training offered by UNL professors in the food science program, said Harshavardhan Thippareddi, a food safety specialist in the food science and technology department.

"East Cmpus is a land grant mission, meaning we do both research and teaching and also extensions," Thippareddi said.

Thippareddi works with Burson to hold workshops for small processors across the state.

The workshops, entitled "Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points," train personnel at meat and poultry processing plants on how to properly handle food to prevent food-borne illnesses, focusing on Listeria and E. coli, both of which can be fatal, Burson said.

UNL faculty members also work with colleagues in Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota to put on workshops outside of Nebraska.

The workshops are usually free for processors in Nebraska, Thippareddi said, but for other states, the cost is anywhere from $150 to $250 and the turnout is usually 30 to 35.

"The fees are used to cover the cost of the materials we need to use for the workshop," Thippareddi said.

The program has had quite an impact, he said. With Nebraska leading the country in commercial livestock slaughter, safe processing is a must. In 2001, 59 E. coli-positive samples were found in meat processing plants. In 2005, it decreased to 19.

This decrease has been largely attributed to HACCP, Thippareddi said, because the program teaches personnel to pay closer attention and keep better records of what happens day-to-day within the processing plant.

Burson said he is pleased with the decrease of food-borne illnesses but feels there is more to the success of the program.

Burson said he noticed that the workshops seemed to make workers more comfortable with the USDA safety guidelines.

"There are different ways to evaluate the impact of our program, and I think it's important to see, 'Have the personnel improved themselves after attending our workshop?' " Burson said.