School food may become safer to eat thanks to a $470,000 grant awarded to the ISU College of Family and Consumer Sciences from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Jeannie Sneed, associate professor of hotel, restaurant and institution management, and Daniel Henroid, temporary instructor of hotel, restaurant and institution management, wrote the request for the federal grant.

The grant will enable the researchers to help schools implement the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points program, a food safety system.

The program is designed to look for ways to reduce food-born illness in schools, Henroid said.

“[Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points] is not currently required in schools or restaurants, but it is good practice to use it anyway,” Sneed said. “We are trying to work with schools so they will feel comfortable implementing it.”

Henroid said the idea of the grant grew out of a training session he attended in March. He said Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points was a great program, but incentive needed to be developed for schools to participate, so he and Sneed wrote the grant proposal.

Sneed said she contacted all 50 state directors of child nutrition programs, and they expressed a need for the research and results of the study.

“Although there aren’t a lot of problems [with food-borne illness], 7 percent of outbreaks do come from school food,” Sneed said. “We want to do everything we can to ensure that food is safe.”

Henroid said all of the researchers’ work will be done with people in Iowa. He said they will work with people associated with the ISU extension services in each community as well.

“This will get us out in the field,” Henroid said. “We will have an opportunity to see and measure the effect of what we do.”

Although Henroid said most of the field work will be completed during the first part of the program, there are many stages. First, there will be pre-testing, implementation of training and then a post-test, “to see what we helped them accomplish,” Sneed said.

The researchers will produce annual reports of their progress in the three-year program as well as a final report at the end of the project, she said.

“We want this to be something that can be used,” Sneed said. “We want to get to know the people in the schools, to develop a relationship with them to help them through the mentoring process.”

By taking a systems approach, the researchers can do a better job of reducing the likelihood that someone will get sick from food, Henroid said.

“What we do in Iowa can be used all over the country,” he said.