USDA - Food Safety and Food Inspection Service

Hi All,

Would you like to know the genesis of this blog entry? Yep - I thought you would. I'm trying to eat a bit healthier lately so I just ate two oranges. And boy oh boy they were delicious. As I was eating them I was thinking that it tasted at least as good as a good cookie or a piece of chocolate.

Fast forward a few minutes and I'm working at the reference desk thinking of ideas for a blog post (this one in particular)....then I got a whif of my hands - which of course smelled like oranges'. And then my brain got churning...blog post, spring, oranges, healthy, nutrition. BAM...'write a blog entry about food safety. BAM...I went to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) website and did a bit of searching...and so a blog post was born.

And what did I find you might ask? Here it goes!

Believe it or not, there is a department within the USDA called the Food Safety and Inspection Service. Click here for the link. Click on this link for the FSIS Mission Statement; which, in part, does the following... 'responsible for ensuring that the nation's commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and package'.

So basically they help keep our meat, poultry, chicken and egg products safe!

Click here for specific links to the FSIS Fact Sheets that deal with Safe Food Handling - this is darn good stuff!

Kitchen Companion - note that this is a 47 page pdf document - you might want to print it out and keep it in your kitchen!

Cooking For Groups: A Volunteer's Guide to Food Safety

Freezing and Food Safety - more sub links follow on topics as varied as 'What can you freeze?', 'Is Frozen Food Safe?', 'Freezer Burn', 'Safe Thawing' and much, much more.

Handling Food Safely on the Road - especially during vacations

Molds on food: Are They Dangerous? - topics include 'What Are Molds?', 'Where Are Molds Found?', 'How Can You Minimize Mold Growth?' and again, much, much more.

Click here for Fact Sheets regarding food for At-Risk Populations! Three of the more helpful links on this part of the site are:
1. Be Food Safe - a pdf document - has a great chart to tell users what the minimum temperature should be used for various foods (ham, pork, beef, casseroles, etc)
2. Keep Hands Clean - another very helpful pdf document
3. Food Safety For Older Adults - yet another pdf document for you!

Click here for information regarding Meat Preparation! Specifically, click on this link for more information for a link entitled, 'Color of Cooked Ground Beer As It Relates To Doneness'

Click here for information regarding Poultry Preparation! Got chicken? With these links you'll want to go to the store and buy lots of chicken for the rest of the week! Yum!

Note that I listed only SOME of the more useful links on the site. Your own interests and likes/dislikes might very well take you to different parts of the FSIS website that I didn't cover.

Click on this link to get to the FSIS site A to Z Index. Note that these are index terms so you might need to search a second time if your initial search didn't come up with the results you were expecting.

5 more links and I'l be done - promise.

Other neat links on the FSIS site include:
1. Food Safety Education - I like the video that discusses 'Let's Talk About Ham'!
2. Science
3. Regulations and Policies
4. FSIS Recalls
5. Food Defense & Emergency Response

Sigh...so many great links and so little time!

Enjoy the site and I hope you get to use the valuable information found at the FSIS!
Stu

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