Food Is Important"Course to help with food safety"

An upcoming food safety training course will help explain a new Alabama law that allows anyone to sell non-hazardous foods directly to consumers.

The new Alabama Cottage Food Law took effect June 1, allowing homemade food to be legal

food safety

ly packaged and sold without inspection from a local health department. However, for the safety of others, experts highly recommend those interested in baking and selling from home take a food safety class.

The Alabama Cooperative Extension Service will host a food safety class in Selma August 12 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Alagasco, located at Highway 14 west. The class will go over how to safely produce foods in a home and those who complete it will get a certificate of completion.

“We have about 300,000 food borne illnesses reported every year through the Center for Disease Control so the purpose of them learning about it is to see what they can do to prevent that from happening,” said Janice Hall, a regional extension agent. “We don’t want them to be a statistic.”

Anyone who makes baked good at home must put a label on their foods that displays the person or business’ name, the address where it came from and state the food is not inspected by the Department of Public Health.

“At home you don’t have the commercial sinks and the sterilizers and all of that to make sure everything is sterilized,” Dallas County extension agent Callie Nelson said. “So what this is going to be training people on is steps they can take to ensure food safety in the products that they produce.”

Among the foods that can be sold directly to consumers under the new law are candies, jams and jellies, dried herbs, cakes, cookies, pastries, doughnuts, danishes, breads and other baked goods. Baked goods made with an ingredient that requires refrigeration, such as cakes with a whipped topping, barbeque sauces and soft or hard cheeses, cannot be sold directly to the consumer.

Source :selmatimesjournal.com/2014/08/01/course-to-help-with-food-safety/#ixzz39FWxXFZc

Food Is Important |"Sustainability Is Important To Most American Food Shoppers, Survey Finds"

Source       :  triplepundit.com
Category    :  Food Is Important
Posted By  :   Phil Covington

Food Is Important

A new survey of American consumers provides some potentially surprising findings that indicate American food shoppers are very mindful about what they place into their shopping carts, and it’s not just about price and taste. While food commercials on television constantly bombard Americans with offerings that focus on price-point and convenience, a 2014 survey by Cone Communications found that people care about where their food comes from and how it is produced. In a poll of more than 1,000 people from a broad cross-section of the shopping public, 77 percent of respondents said sustainability was an important factor in deciding what to buy, while 74 percent said buying locally was a significant factor.

Understandably, food safety is something that 93 percent of shoppers consider very, or somewhat, important when making food purchasing decisions, slightly outweighing concerns over nutritional value (92 percent). Interestingly, though, while 74 percent of consumers indicated buying locally is a consideration in making decisions, fewer, at 54 percent, said buying organic is a consideration. Evidently shoppers are prepared to spend extra dollars to support their “buy-local” sensibilities, with 66 percent of those surveyed saying they would pay more, and sacrifice variety, in order to purchase locally-produced foods. The top reason provided for buying locally is that people want to support local businesses and communities, which they deem more important than the potential environmental or health benefits of doing the same.

Another of the study’s findings is that despite industry resistance to labeling genetically modified (GMO) foods, consumers want to see companies step up their level of transparency about how food is produced. Eighty-three percent of those surveyed said they wished companies would disclose information and educate consumers about GMOs in their products — especially as 55 percent of people didn’t know whether GMOs were good or bad for them, and 51 percent didn’t understand what GMO food is.

Though sustainability is important for more than three-quarters of American shoppers, with 81 percent keen to see more food options that protect the environment, when those surveyed were asked to select their top concern in making purchasing decisions, sustainability didn’t trump other priorities. Fifty-four percent picked family satisfaction — that is, what products their family most enjoys eating — as the most important thing; 41 percent picked health and nutrition, while sustainability was selected as the top concern by only 5 percent.

Source:http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/03/survey-sustainability-buying-local-important-american-food-shoppers

Food Is Important | "When I Was Working In Mcdonald's ,UAE As A Cook"

Source      : Self

Category   : Food Is Important

Posted By : Self

                                                                   Food Is Important

Source : self