Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
A recent survey of North Carolina county extension agents highlighted the need for increased food safety training among county agents who serve the state's local food system. In addition, the surge in food entrepreneurial growth highlights the need for an accessible training program relevant to the needs of small food businesses (home processors and very small processors), to assist with understanding and compliance of complex local, state, and federal food safety requirements (FSMA). The overall goal of this collaborative education and training project is to leverage and strengthen partnerships among two institutions that make up the NC Cooperative Extension Program, NC A&T State and NC State Universities, to develop and deliver a food safety training program that increases the educational capacity across the state among county agents and small food businesses. Project objectives include the following outcomes: 1) a series of food safety webinars delivered in partnership with state and federal regulatory agencies; 2) in-person workshops that will cover food safety (FSMA) topics and supplemental information on state-specific regulations; 3) a repository of food safety education and implementation resources; and 4) evaluation tools to assess the project's impact throughout the comprehensive and sequential approach to learning. The collaborative efforts of this project will strengthen partnerships among the NC Cooperative Extension Program to provide an established, long-term food safety educational platform that will help to support local food systems in NC that can be share across FSMA regional training centers.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of this collaborative education and training project is to develop and deliver a comprehensive, relevant, and engaging hybrid education and training program that is highly accessible among NC Cooperative Extension agents and small food processors/entrepreneurs to enhance knowledgetowards increasing thelikelihood of food safety regulatory compliance. This goal will be accomplished through the following objectives:1. Deliver webinar series featuring key food safety regulatory programs. This series is intended to help engage and connect both extension programs and the NC small food processing industry with their respective regulatory agencies.2. Develop and deliver in-person workshops. This objective seeks to build capacity among county extension agents and engage food industry participants through in-person, follow-up workshops for instruction and hands-on demonstrations that are relevant to food entrepreneurs and small processors. Through collaboration with NC Cooperative Extension and county agents, this proposal seeks to connect with rural counties and hard-to-reach areas of the state. The in-person workshops will be delivered in collaboration with county and state officials. The workshop materials will also include the use of a guide, or workbook, that participants can apply specific scenarios to each learning objective.3. Develop a repository of information for the industry and provide resources to programs beyond North Carolina. This objective seeks to provide an "all-in-one" site providing valuable food safety educational resources and factsheets for extension agents, food processing documents and templates, key North Carolina regulatory contacts and updates, and scheduled food safety training throughout the state which supports both on-farm and value-added production.4. Develop evaluation tools to assess short- and medium-term learning and impact throughout the sequential approach to learning. These tools will be developed to assess the progression of the project in meeting its short-, and medium-term outcomes.
Project Methods
Methods to achieve this collaborative education and training project include:Deliveryof a series of webinarsby state and federal regulatorsDuring the first year of the funding period, a webinar series will consist of bimonthly (every other month) webinars featuring North Carolina regulatory agencies and hot topics that fall under FDA jurisdiction. The target audience for these webinars includes both extension agents and small food businesses. Representatives from NC state regulatory programs, specifically the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (including the Food, Produce Safety, and Grade A Dairy Programs, as well as the Meat and Poultry Division) will be highlighted. In addition, the NC Department of Health and Human Services Food Protection Branch will be included in the webinar series. Each webinar will address (at least) the following information: roles and responsibilities of each program, jurisdiction of specific foods, regulations associated with specific foods, enforcement (what to expect during an inspection), and any updates that have recently occurred with specific state requirements.Developmentand delivery in-person workshops The strength of this proposal lies in the face-to-face workshops throughout the North Carolina for county agents and small food businesses. These workshops seek to expand information shared throughout the webinar series, provide training on topics identified through the survey, allow for hands-on application of food testing, and allow agents and business owners to meet their local regulators. The in-person workshops will be delivered in two rounds: round one will aim to build educational capacity among extension agents (train-the-trainer approach); round two will provide education and outreach material to food entrepreneurs and small food processors.The series of in-person workshops will first be delivered at each of the five NC extension districts with a focus on training and recruiting extension agents for future workshops for the industry. These first five workshops will be catered to extension agents and delivered as a train-the-trainer approach. After completing the workshops in each district, another round will be delivered at each of the five extension districts for food entrepreneurs and small food processors. With keeping in mind the rural, underserved populations, the two universities will work collaboratively to strategically locate in-person workshops. Our location of workshops will prioritize the 40 most distressed counties (known as Tier 1) to support and encourage economic activity.Particularly the Northeast and Southeast Extension Districts will be of a major focus as the majority of Tier 1 counties are located in these two districts. The workshops would be delivered in-person at local county extension offices and interested shared-use facilities for food entrepreneurial clients. PI Johnston and the team will build upon work previously conducted with the NC Cooperative Extension Program.Development of a repository of informationThe proposal team will develop fact sheets and materials which outline and support topics addressed during the webinar series. Materials developed from the webinar series will focus on regulatory jurisdiction of food products in North Carolina (e.g.: What food production is regulated by the Department of Health & Human Services vs. Department of Agriculture) and food safety topics related to current industry trends, such as food safety risks associated with novel food products. Templates and example food processing documentation will be developed to help FCS agents and food businesses implement food safety management systems. Material produced will be housed on existing extension websites at NC State & NC A&T, as well as the newly-created centralized website for this program. There is also opportunity for these documents to be housed at the Southern Center's Southern Regional Center for Food Safety Training, Outreach and Technical Assistance website and the Food Safety Clearinghouse website. The authors also recognize concurrent proposals that this project would support. The final goal of this centralized website is to set a clear, advertised schedule for in-person and online food safety training opportunities across North Carolina. To meet the specific educational needs of participants, trainings such as Safe Plates is available for those under the jurisdiction of NCDHHS and on-farm sanitation, GMPs, and PCHF training is available for those under NCDA&CS's jurisdiction. These trainings and workshops are already developed and are currently available via team members on this project.Development of evaluation tools to assess short- and medium-term learning and impactThese tools will be developed to assess the progression of the project in meeting its short, and medium-term outcomes. To evaluate the effectiveness of the workshops, we will develop an evaluation survey to determine if changes in knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and self-reported behaviors were met. Prior to the start of each of each workshop, learners will complete a short knowledge assessment to determine baseline knowledge. At the end of the workshop learners will complete a post-training evaluation, which will include a knowledge assessment, retrospective attitudes, self-efficacy assessments, and self-reporting of behaviors. Three to four months after the conclusion of training, learners will receive another post-training evaluation to identify whether gains in knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy were retained and identify if there were any changes in behaviors. Results of the evaluations will be published, shared at state and national FCS conferences and shared accordingly with the Southern Center.