Safe food in the new year

A resolution that will impact you and your family for the new year.

Here at Michigan State University Extension, Experts spend countless hours preparing for and providing food safety education programs all over the state of Michigan.  The goal of educating residents about keeping food safe allows us to reach audiences of all ages from preschoolers to seniors and all ages in between. Food safety education classes provide training to commercial foodservice staff, home food preservers, entrepreneurs who are preparing products to sell at farm markets, as well as consumer food safety education for youth, adults and seniors.

If you are beginning to think about resolutions or areas for personal growth in 2017, consider exploring more about food safety. There are a wide variety of programs available and all of the programs can help enhance your life, as well as for those who you prepare food for on a daily basis.

Some of the programs that you are available to you:
  • Food Preservation: Food preservation workshops cover a variety of topics custom to each workshops target audience. Food preservation topics include freezing, boiling water bath canning, pressure canning and dehydrating. MSU Extension food safety educators teach food preservation skills and techniques that will provide participants with safe, high-quality canned products. Using up to date research methods, participants learn how to successfully and safely preserve food. Both face to face and online courses are available.
  • Cottage Food Law: Educators offer both one and two hour workshops on Michigan’s Cottage Food Law. This law allows residents to prepare and store certain foods in a home kitchen. The 2 hour workshop combines the business and food safety aspects of preparing and selling cottage foods safely and successfully. The 1 hour workshops cover the food safety aspect of preparing cottage foods for sale, including preparing, packaging, labeling, storing and transporting cottage foods.
  • Cooking for Crowds: Cooking for Crowds is an educational program for nonprofit groups that prepare food for their members or for the general public as fundraisers. The curriculum is designed to show the food safety risks that can develop when preparing and cooking larger volumes of food and how to reduce those risks.

Consider being a leader for your family, friends, church, service group, or organization and volunteer to organize a food safety education class for others who you work and interact with. You provide the group of people and a location and MSU Extension will do the rest.

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