REDUCING THE RISK OF BIOCONTAMINATION IN THE PRODUCTION LEAFY GREENS THROUGH PUBLIC OUTREACH, AWARENESS AND EDUCATION

Proposed by: Kurt D.Nolte

Presenter: Nolte, K.D., Extension Agent, University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Yuma, AZ 85364

The 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach prompted the implementation of unprecedented compliance guidelines, called marketing agreements, to reduce potential sources of contamination in leafy greens in California and Arizona. To this end, an Arizona Leafy Green Products Shipper Marketing Agreement (AZLGMA) outreach campaign was initiated in Yuma, Arizona to educate and inform area residents about the newly implemented set of production safety safeguards and their critical responsibility within the program. The eight-month educational outreach campaign included a series of 10 public service television announcements (shown on KYMA-NBC, KSWT-CBS, Yuma77 and City73), 10 food safety radio (KTTI-FM, KQSR-FM and KBLU-AM) commercials, a youth oriented fresh produce safety field day, 4 local newspaper (Yuma Sun) articles and 7 general audience presentations. Prior to the AZLGMA outreach campaign, overall awareness of the AZLGMA was negligible with only 10% of local residents and 13% of the annual winter visitor population showing knowledge of the current fresh produce safety guidelines. After the AZLGMA outreach promotion, fresh produce safety awareness improved over 50% and 45% for area residents and winter visitors respectively, while overall confidence in leafy production protocols increased 2-fold. In general, results suggest that adults over the age of 25 years are more responsive to the needs of the industry than area youth. Moreover, educating youth about area agricultural while expanding their cooperation for field-level produce safety mitigation will continue to challenge the leafy green industry and that specific outreach programs which target youth would be beneficial.

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