Food Safety - clean, separate, cook, and chill! These activity books, word games and coloring sheets teach kids about food safety in fun and engaging ways. Food safety measures to help students prevent foodborne illness when preparing after school snacks. The invisible enemy is called bacteria (often referred to as BAC).
Prevent Food Poisoning
Activities are free to download on how to help prevent food poisoning by proper use of refrigerators, microwaves, and cutting boards. Your kitchen is filled with food safety tools, when used properly, can keep you and your loved ones healthy.
Washing hands with soap and clean water is the best way to remove germs that can make you and others sick. If you do not have soap and clean water, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.
Video: What You Should Know - The Latest on Hand Sanitizers
Infants and young children, pregnant women, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems caused by cancer treatment, diabetes, AIDS, and bone marrow and organ transplants are at greatest risk for foodborne illness.
Each year, 1 in 6 Americans get sick from eating contaminated food.
Video: Anyone Can Get Food Poisoning
Kids Games & Activities
Free at FightBAC.org
The Fight BAC!® Campaign focuses on the four simple steps you can take to fight foodborne bacteria and reduce the risk of foodborne illness for you and your family. It is simple!
Clean: wash hands and surfaces often
Separate: do not cross contaminate by using the same utensils on raw meat and cooked meat or raw vegetables
Cook: to proper temperatures
Chill: refrigerate promptly
Food Safety Education: The Story of Your Dinner recipes, videos, kids’ activities and food prep tips!
The FoodKeeper helps you understand food and beverages storage. It will help you maximize the freshness and quality of items. By doing so you will be able to keep items fresh longer than if they were not stored properly. It was developed by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, with Cornell University and the Food Marketing Institute. It is also available as a mobile application for Android and Apple devices.
Free From Harmful Bacteria
Helpful Tips
Wash your hands with soap and water for a minimum of 20 seconds.
Use plastic or non-porous cutting boards.
Wash your cloth kitchen towels often and in a hot cycle.
Do not use a plate that previously held raw meats, poultry, or seafood without first washing it in hot soapy water.
Make sure to use a food thermometer to see if your meat has cooked to a safe temperature.
Always use a clean food thermometer.
Don't eat any cookie dough that has raw eggs in it.
When microwaving, make sure that the food is heated thoroughly and that there are no cold spots in the food.
Put foods that need to be kept cold in the refrigerator as soon as possible to keep bacteria from multiplying.
Set your refrigerator no higher than 40 degrees F and your freezer at 0 degrees F.
Refrigerate foods within 2 hours.
Never defrost meat, poultry and seafood at room temperature. Always defrost in the refrigerator.
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