Students, professionals and consumers who want the latest in the world of food safety can call upon the ISU Food Safety Project Web page.

The Web page is updated daily with everything from information about E. Coli bacteria to the president’s 1999 budget.

“Sometimes visitors can access information even before it hits the media,” said Peggy Sherry, research associate for the Food Safety Project through Family Extension.

“We want people to see it as a reliable and consistent source for food safety news,” Sherry said. “We provide original information and links to other sources. I put major headlines on the homepage, and the newspage will have other sources.”

Sherry added that the information is useful and often necessary for professionals.

“Our audience is looking for food safety information and is often in the profession, [using the information in] articles in journals and research articles,” Sherry said.

Sherry said she receives e-mail from around the world, including Queensland, Australia, where people access the Web site for certified courses in food sanitation.

The “Food and Safety Lessons” section has also been translated into Italian. The “10 Steps to a Safe Kitchen” section has been featured in USA Today, and the site was contacted for a Newsweek story about food-born illnesses.

According to the Web page, the Food Safety Project is a “risk analysis tool that provides current, generalized, public risk perception, management and assessment information about food safety risks.”

Sherry said a basic page for food safety was set up in November 1995, but only about 20 people a day visited it; that number increased after the addition of a “Food and Safety Lessons” link, which is used primarily by high school students.

The number of users has shot up to about 100 per day, and the Web page was redesigned in January. Archives were added about the same time, Sherry said.

The redesign also is the only place in the world to find archives of the FSNews, which are supplied by Doug Powell of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada; Powell sends a synopsis and Sherry animates them with headlines for the Web page.

The Food Safety Product Web page is located at http://www.exnet.iastate.edu/Pages/families/fs/homepage.html.