We at StateFoodSafety.com don’t like pirates. And when I say “pirates,” I’m referring to people who steal intellectual property. That doesn’t jive with us. Our training courses were all created, recorded, and illustrated internally, and we’re very proud of our work. Copyright laws are in place to protect information like ours (and yours) and we support keeping those laws intact. We believe that civil liberties and free speech are key components to the foundations that our great nation was built upon.

Knowledge and information bring power, and sharing them with the world is what the internet is all about. That is why we are supporting Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, and the many other online companies that have spoken out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its little sister bill, Protect Intellectual Property Act (or PIPA). Intellectual property and copyright protection are complex issues, made even more obscure by the vastness of the internet. We believe that it is valuable to continue debating how to best protect information while allowing the citizens of the world to speak and share freely. It is our hope that the United States will not rush into legislation on an issue that is only partially understood, especially one with ramifications as far reaching as SOPA.

We encourage you to learn more about these two piece of legislation and sign Google’s online petition.

Our friends at CertificationMap asked us to share this info-graphic with you in honor of Handwashing Awareness Week.  Enjoy!

Via Certification Map – Teacher Credential & MAT@USC: Teacher Certification

Do you know your summer food safety IQ?  The USDHHS website, Foodsafety.gov, has a short quiz to help you find out.  Don’t worry, if you’ve completed the StateFoodSafety.com™ Online Food Handler Course, you’ll do just fine.  Trust us . . . we got 100%.

What’s Your Summer IQ?

Foodsafety.gov is the official website of the United States Department of Health & Human Services.

Photo Credit:  British Foods Worldwide

ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” recently published their findings of a year’s worth of health department violations for all Major League football, hockey, baseball, and basketball stadiums in North America operating in 2009.  The comprehensive article entitled What’s Lurking in your Stadium Food? can be read in its entirety here.  The website contains an interactive map that divides all the stadiums by the percentage of concessions stands that received critical violations, from “No Violations” to “79-100%.”  The highest category (100%) means that every single concession stand in the stadium received a critical violation in 2009.

A “critical violation” as defined by health department officials, is a violation of safe food handling and storage procedures that could result in employee or consumer illness or injury.  However, as ESPN clarified, a critical violation can mean different things to different health departments.  “For example,” states the article, “some [health departments] consider mouse droppings a critical violation, while others classify them as a minor problem.”  Dexter King of the International Association of Assembly Managers explained that “different inspectors interpret different violations almost as a referee would look at it, ‘Should I call this a foul or not a foul?’”

We recommend reading the full article, but if you don’t have time, here are some highlights:

• 107 stadiums were investigated for this article.  Of those, 28% had received critical violation at more than half their concession stands.
• 11 stadiums received zero critical violations.
• 8 stadiums received critical violations at all of their concessions stands.  7 of those stadiums are located in Florida.
• California stadiums scored well, with the percentage of critical violations in the 1-25% range.
• Specific complaints and violations included chemicals stored too close to food, “slime” in frozen drink machines, food residue in coolers, insects mixed into frozen drinks, under-cooked meat, employees touching ready-to-eat food with bare hands, insufficient hand washing, time/temperature abuse, cross-contamination, and rodent infestations.
• Food establishment inspections are all carried out in different ways.  In some locations, inspections come from the state level (Florida) and others come from the city or county level (California).  Some inspectors drop in unannounced in the middle of a game (Kansas City, Missouri) and others schedule inspections days in advance (Chicago, Illinois).  Each of these factors can affect the establishment’s scores and violation numbers.

Source:  ESPN “Outside the Lines”

Photo Source:  Artichoke Heart

We’ve gotten a kick out of the recent article by Delish.com about fast food you can only get outside of the United States.  Check out the source below to find out what Domino’s Pizza prepares in France, what McDonald’s is serving in Japan, and what Taco Bell is dishing up in India.

Source:  Delish.com