Development of the Food Safety Wiki Aims to Provide Comprehensive Information and Resources about Food Safety Education

Introduction:  We developed an integrated approach to promote food safety education and training opportunities via the world wide web. There are currently very limited efforts to interest students at the K-12 and undergraduate level, and specifically to recruit graduate students into food safety related programs. We thus developed a Food Safey Wiki that includes comprehensive food safety education information for K-12 teachers, food safety undergraduate and graduate programs, and training opportunities for current food safety professionals.  

Purpose:  Our purpose was to develop a Food Safety Wiki with content that focuses on food safety education and opportunities from K-12 through graduate school and on to training for current food safety professionals. The Food Safety Wiki is an easily accessible resource for anyone interested in or needing food safety information.

Methods:  The Food Safety Wiki was developed using the Confluence software by Atlassian.  This effort was spearheaded by Cornell University, while collaborators at Colorado State University, Purdue University, North Carolina State University, Alabama A&M University, North Carolina A & T State University, Texas Tech University and Texas Wesleyan University assisted in contributing materials for the website.

Results:  The Food Safety Wiki (available at: https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/ FOODSAFETY/Welcome+to+Food+Safety+Wiki!) is a comprehensive resource for those involved in varying levels of food safety education. The Food Safety Wiki contains up-to-date information on K-12 teacher resources and workshops, Universities with Food Safety programs (e.g., links to application materials and specific faculty members with food safety expertise), food safety conferences, internship opportunities, job opportunities, listservs and blogs, food safety publications, databases (i.e., Pathogen Tracker), and professional associations. The Food Safety Wiki also contains information on specific foodborne pathogens and lists laboratories throughout the world that work on each pathogen. 

Significance:  The Food Safety Wiki is an easily accessible resource that will link different food safety efforts and institutions and will facilitate dissemination of information on food safety and foster early interest in food safety careers among K-12 through graduate students.