ISU students away from mom’s kitchen for the first time have a place to turn with their food safety concerns.

The ISU Extension Food Safety Project Web site is useful for students, because food safety is one of today’s major issues, said Mary Gregoire, professor and chairwoman of apparel, education studies and hospitality management.

“This may be the first time many students are living on their own and preparing their own food,” Gregoire said. “This site provides them with the information they need to find out just how long to cook something and when something else may not be safe to eat.”

The Web site has been popular among inquisitive novice chefs, she said.

“In this past year the site has received more than 3 million hits,” Gregoire said.

The site has a series of different features, she said. Information is accessible on everything from common food-borne pathogens, food irradiation, 10 steps to a safe kitchen and proper food storage and preparation.

“The site contains good consumer information, and is written in a way to be consumer-friendly,” Gregoire said. “This site was not designed specifically for HRI majors. It has information on it that is useful to all students, campus wide.”

Dan Henroid, temporary instructor of hotel, restaurant and institution management and the site’s Web master, said it has been in existence since 1995. He began coordinating the site in April of last year.

Henroid said HRI students are a small portion of the site’s users. He said the Food Safety Project site has been used by several high schools across the nation, accessed by people from 120 countries and translated into both Japanese and Arabic.

“This site contains the only set of online food safety lessons,” Henroid said.

It contains a teacher’s manual and four self-paced lessons, each of which contain a quiz to test how much each user has learned, he said.

“The site also includes daily news updates on current food safety issues,” Henroid said.

The site has received recognition and several awards by various online news and educational outlets.

The program receives funding from the USDA and the Food Safety Consortium, Henroid said.

“We have received $215,000 in funding already this year,” he said.

Visit the ISU Extension’s Food Safety Web site at www.extension.iastate.edu/foodsafety.