High School Food Safety Curriculum

The safety of foods is important to everyone and consumers in the United States have one of the safest food supplies in the world.

Each sector of the food industry works diligently to insure the safety of foods they grow, process, prepare, and merchandise by developing and implementing food safety assurance plans that result in a wide variety of food products that successfully feed over 300 million Americans daily. While foodborne illness outbreaks sometimes occur, these illnesses usually result from lack of attention to details, an error, or other problem in the food protection system. The food industry and regulatory agencies constantly work to prevent outbreaks and provide all people with a safe food supply. Consumers also have a responsibility and should understand the basic concepts of safe food preparation and how to implement practices to assure the safety of the foods they handle, store, prepare, and eat.

The Food Safety Investigation (FSI) Curriculum has been developed for students in high school agriculture, biology, health, and food science classes. It is a supplemental curriculum designed to teach students safe food handling and preparation practices as well as increase their understanding of food production from farm to table. Created collaboratively with educators, it is presented in an easy to use format with activities that were tested in the classroom. While this curriculum presents cases that include food contamination events and foodborne illnesses, the lessons and activities are designed to be educational and not to raise concerns about specific food products.

The collaborating educators, who helped develop the curriculum and pilot taught it in their classrooms, requested the final curriculum be flexible in the design and presentation. To meet this need and take into account differences in teaching styles, classroom time periods, and variations between schools in different states, the FSI Curriculum is presented in multiple formats with the ability to modify flow and order. The authors take full responsibility for the original materials, but are not responsible for any content modification by users.

Funding for the development of the Food Safety Investigation Curriculum was made possible through a grant (Project # 2004-51110-02164) from the United States Department of Agriculture, Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, National Integrated Food Safety Initiative. The authors gratefully acknowledge their support of this important project. It is our sincerest hope that everyone who utilizes this curriculum finds it engaging and educationally valuable. Improving the food safety awareness and practices of consumers as well as future growers, agricultural workers, and food industry personnel is an important step in keeping all food safe as well as insuring the health and safety of all consumers.

Download Course Files

The FSI Curriculum files consists of PowerPoint and PDF files. The link below will download both sets of files in a zip archive.

Download FSI Curriculum course files

Pre and Post Tests

  1. Physical, mental, and psychological
  2. Bacteria, viruses, and parasites
  3. Physical, biological, and chemical
  4. Glass, rocks, and rodent feces
  1. Rats, mice, voles, moles, and groundhogs
  2. Bacteria, viruses, parasites, yeasts, and molds.
  3. Algae, daphnia, chlamydomonous, xylella, and trichoderma
  4. Cockroaches, ants, wasps, honeybees, and ladybugs
  1. Cockroaches, rats, and mice
  2. Yeasts, molds, and fungi
  3. Black rot, root rot, and leaf spot
  4. Bacteria, viruses, and parasites
  1. Athletes, young students, social workers
  2. Elderly, infants, and pregnant women
  3. Beach volleyball players, scuba divers, and marathon runners
  4. People with HIV, emergency room doctors, and people with organ transplants
  1. Are harmful.
  2. Are beneficial.
  3. May be both harmful and beneficial, depending on the microorganism.
  4. May be either harmful or beneficial, depending on the phase of the moon.
  1. Hamburger, some sausages, and yogurt.
  2. Lemon lime soda, chips, and French fries
  3. Lemon lime soda, cheese, and some sausages
  4. Yogurt, milk, and cheese
  1. food, acid, time, temperature, oxygen, moisture
  2. factors affecting the thermostability of microbes
  3. food, air, time, temperature, opportunity, medium
  4. food, air, turbidity, temperature, osmotic pressure, mobility
  1. E. coli O157:H7, Hepatitis A, Cryptosporidium parvum
  2. Chlamydomonas reinhardii, Cyclospora, Saccharomyces cerevisiae
  3. Hepatitis A, Brettomyces, Lactobacillus casei
  4. E.coli O157:H7, Salmonella enteriditis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae
  1. A tracking system that identifies chemicals applied to fresh fruits and vegetables.
  2. A tracking system that tells a grower how many pounds of product the retail store has sold.
  3. A tracking system that identifies the products that consumers buy as well as their brand preferences.
  4. A tracking system that allows a food item to be followed from the consumer back to the point where it was produced/grown.
  1. General Applied Production Strategies
  2. General Agricultural Practices
  3. Good Agricultural Practices
  4. Generic Agricultural Practices
  1. Hands, soil, and surfaces
  2. Water, manure, and weather
  3. Weather, wild animals, and soil
  4. Wind, hands, and manure
  1. Apply soap, wet hands, wash for 30 seconds, rinse and dry
  2. Wet hands, apply soap, wash for 30 seconds, rinse and dry
  3. Wet hands, apply soap, wash for 20 seconds, rinse and dry
  4. Apply soap, wet hands, wash for 20 seconds, rinse and dry
  1. Cost, Contamination, Cook, and Control
  2. Check, Control, Cook, and Chill
  3. Check, Clean, Chill, and Control
  4. Clean, combat Cross-contamination, Cook, Chill
  1. Spread of microorganismsfrom one item to the other, for example between raw and cooked food if using the same cutting boards.
  2. Movement of manure from the barn to the fields when it is applied as a fertilizer.
  3. Movement of germs from a sick person’s hand to the food they are handling.
  4. Another name for pollination, for example when bees inoculate flowers in the spring.
  1. 155° F
  2. 160° F
  3. 165° F
  4. 180° F

Suppose that you are working at home with your produce garden. You are harvesting vegetables to sell for either your 4H or FFA SAE and in doing so, you pull a thistle and prick your finger. Your finger bleeds just a bit onto a cabbage leaf. As a customer pulls up to purchase products, what should you do?

  1. Wipe your finger on your jeans and sell produce.
  2. Throw the cabbage that is contaminated with blood away, wash your hands with soap and water, bandage the finger, and then sell produce.
  3. Call 911.
  4. Ask the customer to pick their own cabbage while you wash the bloody cabbage and prepare it for sale.