Recipient Organization
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
STILLWATER,OK 74078
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The long-term goal of "Helping the Home Baker" (the Project) is to provide a customized food safety training and outreach program that will meaningfully engage and educate the growing number of small-scale, Oklahoma home bakers. The recent passage of the 2013 Home Bakery Act, a new "cottage food law" established in the state of Oklahoma, allows for home-bakers to produce baked items for sale as long as these items do not contain fresh fruit or meat. The new law is vaguely written and does not define selling only low risk activity baked foods. Since these home-bakers will be allowed to sell bakery foods in the rapidly expanding local markets, an educational workshop for home bakers is needed. The objectives for the Project are to (1) develop stakeholder specific training materials, recipe guide for alternative low-water activity products, record keeping templates and an online tools assist home bakers 2) develop a one-day hands on training course, focusing on how to meet the Home Bakery Act requirements and food safety training; and 3) project activity evaluation.FDA has identified, in its Preventive Controls Rule for Human Food, a long list of low-risk activity/food combinations (LRAFCs) for which preventive controls are not required to minimize the risk of SAHCOD hazards. FDA's analysis and the consensus of industry participants indicates that small-scale entrepreneurial food processing establishments focused on local food markets commonly limit their value-added production to LRFACs. These establishments frequently are operated out of a home kitchen or from a shared-kitchen facility. The Project will create training customized for the home baker's knowledge, understanding and application of Current Good Manufacturing Processes (CGMPs). While proof of taking a CGMP course is not required under the 2013 Home Bakery Act, this knowledge will be beneficial to home-bakers freshly entering the food industry. Otherwise, the only other similar training offered would be expensive and focused on preventive controls.Cottage food laws are relatively new to the heavily regulated food business. The Great Recession of 2008 left many people jobless and re-evaluating life goals. A response to this was a strong grass-roots movement to pass state cottage food laws, allowing opportunities for small-scale food businesses to become established out of their homes. Limited-resourced and socially-disadvantaged producers, including tribal and African-American communities, frequently lack affordable access to credit, making home kitchen production an important means for food entrepreneurs in these communities to build their businesses. In fact, after the neighboring state of Texas passed a cottage food law in 2011, over 1400 local businesses were established (Sibilla, 2014 ). When another neighboring state, Colorado, passed their cottage food law in 2015, hundreds of home businesses were launched (Ruland, 2015). Entrepreneurs saw the opportunity for incomeby selling value-added, low-risk home-baked products in the ever-increasing "buy local" food movement, expanded by farmer's markets. USDA statistics indicate farmer's markets have grown by 76% since 2008 (Young, 2015). In 2015-2016, farmer's markets are still rising, growing 2.3% (Mathews, 2016).Purchasing baked goods from a local home baker implies a perceived feeling of safe and wholesome food because it was baked in someone's home. However, this is not always the case and depends on the home-baker's food safety knowledge. In a 2013 article entitled, "Food Safety in Home Kitchens: A Synthesis of the Literature", experts agree the home is the primary location where foodborne outbreaks occur. Consumers do not believe home to be a risky place (Byrd-Bredbenner, 2013). Evidence does suggest home-produced foods are not safer. In a January 2016 article of The New York Times, entitled "Farmers Markets and Food-Borne Illness", the University of Minnesota found a positive correlation between the number of farmers markets per capita in a given state and in a given year and the number of reported outbreaks, regardless of type, of food-borne illness per capita in that state, that year (Bellemare, 2016). Baked items are most generally considered low risk. Between 1973 and 1987, only 2% of food-borne illnesses in the United States were contributed to bakery products. However, it does happen. According to the Encyclopedia of Food Microbiology, a microbiological surveys of retail food purchased in Europe and the United States, 30% of cakes and pastries, especially those containing cream fillings, contained coliforms and Escherichia coli (Voysey and Legan, 2014). Out of ignorance, home bakers may contribute to food-borne illness; selling food to strangers, instead of relatives, requires more than the average household amount of planning, scheduling, cleaning and transportation.By developing develop stakeholder specific training materials, recipe guide for alternative low-water activity products, record keeping templates and an online tools assist home bakers and training our target audience through a one day hands on training course we hope to address the needs of the cottage law home baker. This will help the home baker not only produce safer food products but will educate them on the liabilites and importance of food safety. It is also hoped in some cases to help the home baker possibly expand and grow their business into a commercialized company and potentially create more jobs and revenue in the state of Oklahoma..
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of the project is to develop a food safety training and outreach program that willmeaningfully engage and educate the numerous individuals that wish to take advantage of theOklahoma Home Bakery Act of 2013 and manufacture baked goods from their homes andresidences instead of a commercial bakery to meet the needs of earning a small amount ofadditional income to their families.The specific objectives of the project are to:1- Develop stakeholder specific training materials, recipe guide for alternative low-wateractivity products, record keeping templates and an online tool to assist home bakers.2- Develop an 8 hour hands-on training course, focusing on how to meet the Home BakeryAct requirements and food safety training3- Evaluation and follow up.
Project Methods
Methods include:1. Developing stakeholder specific training materials, recipe guides for alternative low-water activity products, record keeping templates and online tools to assist home bakers.Unfortunately, no such community training to meet the needs of these facilities currently exists. To address this unmet need, the project will create a customized curriculum and training program covering the basic principles and practices including Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMPs) and for reduction of pathogen contamination during processing:Additionally, resources such as record keeping templates (for food safety and financial records) and a recently developed tool online tool to help home bakers understand the financial impacts of production decisions will be shared with home bakers at all the workshops and also made available on www.Fapc.biz website. The online tool will be future optimized to allow home bakers to enter all relevant information for their planned operations, including multiple product options, and estimate the profitability of their ventures. Users will also be able to quickly perform "what if" analyses by changing one or more values and realizing the impacts of those changes on overall profitability and return on investment. Subsequent templates have also been developed to help home bakers examine the feasibility of future expansions to rented commercial kitchens or constructing and equipping their own commercial-scale. During our communication with stakeholders, we have identified a need for a recipe guide describing low-water activity products. Our team will develop a recipe guide for participants.2) Develop 8 hour long hands on training course, focusing on how to meet the Home Bakery Act requirements and food safety trainingA hands-on training to make stakeholder familiarize with training materials will be developed. A total of four different workshops will be organized at three different stakeholder convenient locations (Stillwater, Oklahoma City and Tulsa). The project team will also work with current or potential home bakers on one-on-one bases to provide technical support and training.3) Evaluation and follow upMeasurement of the impacts of objectives 1 and 2 will be performed quaterly after launching the project. The evaluation for the project team will be framed using the TOP model. The TOP Model focuses on both process and outcome indicators, both of which will help guide discussions with the project team regarding progress towards project goals and areas for improvement.Process evaluation,Measurement of the impacts of objectives 1 and 2 will be performed quaterly after launching the project. The evaluation for the project team will be framed using the TOP model. The TOP Model focuses on both process and outcome indicators, both of which will help guide discussions with the project team regarding progress towards project goals and areas for improvement.Social sciences research relies upon quantitative and qualitative methods to answer research questions. Qualitative methods complement quantitative methods by providing insight into why people think and act as they do, as compared to quantitative measures of what people think and do. Mixed methods will be used to formative and summative assess progress towards achieving project outcomes and to ensure project accountability.Process evaluation, also known as program monitoring, allows for administrators to see whether a program is functioning as intended (Rossi et al., 2004). Process evaluations compare what was done to what was planned. Records are an important data source for process evaluation. Outputs to be monitored in the process evaluation include: (a) number and type of materials stakeholder specific materials developed; (b) number of training organized; (c) number of current/potential home baker trained; (d) dissemination of stakeholder specific training materials on the website(e) number of one-on-one training/assistance provided to stakeholders.Accomplishing short and medium-term outcomes are anticipated to lead to long-term improvements in food safety practices and increasing marketability of products produced by home bakers.The quantitative component of the evaluation will use a pre- then post-test design to evaluate educational outcomes for the second objective. For the same objective, follow-up surveys using Qualtrics will be conducted at three and six-month intervals to measure participants' adoption and implementation of best practices and their progress toward certification.The qualitative component of the evaluation will be conducted at three and six-month intervals following participants' completion of training for Objectives 2. Semi-structured interview guides will be used to conduct in-depth individual recorded phone interviews with a convenience sample of trainer participants as well as curricula target audience. Data will be collected until saturation is reached. An emphasis will be placed on identifying successful techniques being implemented in training as well as identifying barriers to successful implementation. Data will be analyzed using the constant comparative analysis to identify emergent themes. Lincoln and Guba's (1985) methods for establishing trustworthiness, including member checks, audit trails, and triangulation of data, will be followed to ensure rigor.