Food Handler's PermitOn Wednesday Hannah and I attended classes and obtained a food handler's permit from the City of Lincoln, NE. Why am I, a registered nurse and certified infection control professional, boasting of this new credential? Actually, we have no intention of handling food in a restaurant in the city of Lincoln. With foodborne illness outbreaks popping up across the country - salmonella in the peanut butter, E. coli O157:H7 in spinach and lettuce, and Norovirus all over the place - we thought it might be wise to "get inside the food industry" in this way and search for opportunities for nanobugs to contribute to better outcomes in the area of food safety. The experience turned out to be valuable for us.The room at the Irving Recreation Center was packed for the Wednesday afternoon session. I didn't count but it looked like 40-45 people of a wide span of ages, both genders and a variety of cultures attending. The schedule for the class was really tight - one hour of lecture presentation facilitated by a 55-slide PowerPoint, an old (but effective) video produced by the National Restaurant Association , a very short Q&A session, a 25-question multiple-choice exam, grading of the exams, collection of the $10 fee and issuing the permits. All of this was efficiently accomplished in 1.5 hours. Only 2 people failed the exam (passing grade was 70% or greater) - they appeared to be husband and wife (who brought their baby with them) and English was their second language. I think they were from West Africa - either Ivory Coast or Sierra Leone and French was their native language. The exam is offered in English, Spanish, and Arabic - but not French. This could have been the problem for them or maybe the fact that the teacher had to speak very rapidly (in English) to cover all the necessary content of the presentation in the short time. Some people were taking the course for the required annual update so this was review for them; however, it seemed most of us were first-timers. I was impressed with the amount of material that could be covered in the allotted time (the teacher was an experienced presenter and made the content as interesting as possible). I worried about retention and assimilation of the information if this is the only exposure to the information over 12 month period. But hopefully, MOST restaurants and companies have further training on this information as part of their new employee orientation. We were told that the most common foodborne illness in Lincoln area over the last year was related to Norovirus and several of the outbreaks sited (of course, without naming or blaming any specific business) were transmitted by catering businesses and especially from employees working when they are sick, or returning to work still sick. SO....please stop blowing your horn in the drive-thru line at your favorite "burgerdoodle" and thus pressuring the reigning supervisor or manager to keep the sick employee filling those orders between trips to the restroom! Hannah and I concluded that we have found a vast new potential market for nanobugs - especially the foodborne nanobugs. More on that later...
This entry was posted on September 21st, 2007 at 5:13 pm. RSS
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