CDC Launches 2 New Food Safety Tools!

Published: April 17, 2014

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) National Center for Environmental Health has two new exciting food safety tools (http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/News/Features/2014/food-safety-tools.html). Foodborne illness is a significant problem in the United States, but addressing environmental causes can help prevent it.

The e-Learning on Environmental Assessment of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks is a free interactive online course to help prepare individuals to serve on a team that investigates foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants and other food service venues. Continuing education units (CEUs) are available.

The National Voluntary Environmental Assessment Information System (NVEAIS) is a new surveillance system targeted to jurisdictions that inspect and regulate restaurants and other food venues such as banquet facilities, schools, and other institutions. The system provides an avenue to capture underlying environmental assessment data that describes what happened and how events most likely led to a foodborne illness outbreak.

Please share information about these new tools on your organization's website, in newsletters, on listservs, via Twitter, and via any other mechanisms you think would be helpful. Sample tweets are below, and instructions on how to post a web button promoting the e-learning are available at http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/eLearn/EA_FIO/button.htm.

Thank you so much for helping us promote these new tools. If you have questions, please contact NVEAIS@cdc.gov.

Sample Tweets

Foodborne illness is a problem. Help address its environmental causes with CDC's new tools. http://ow.ly/vEXXv

Learn about CDC's new environmental health tools to improve food safety. http://ow.ly/vEXXv

Over half of foodborne illness outbreaks are associated with restaurants. Be a part of the solution with CDC's new tools. http://ow.ly/vEXXv

Earn CEUs & have fun while you do it! Explore CDC's new food safety training on environmental causes of outbreaks. http://ow.ly/sT9QK

New! CDC's training tool on environmental assessments of foodborne outbreaks: http://ow.ly/sT9QK

Is your health dept registered? Check out CDC's new data system for environmental causes of foodborne illness outbreaks. http://ow.ly/t0ztJ

Interview this food worker! Explore CDC's new food safety training on environmental causes of outbreaks. http://ow.ly/sT9QK