Reducing the Risk of Biocontamination in the Production Leafy Greens through Public Outreach, Awareness and Education

An Arizona Leafy Green Marketing Agreement (AZLGMA) outreach campaign was initiated in Yuma, Arizona to educate and inform Yuma area residents about the newly implemented set of food safety safeguards and their critical responsibility within the program.  Prior to initiating the informational campaign, over 200 randomly selected area residents were assessed to establish a baseline to better understand the impact of agriculture to the local economy, the AZLGMA, their confidence in leafy green production and general food safety guidelines in the region.  Later, an eight-month educational outreach campaign was developed which included a series of 10 food safety public service, television announcements (shown on KYMA-NBC, KSWT-CBS, Yuma 77 and City73), 10 food safety radio (KTTI-FM, KQSR-FM and KBLU-AM) commercials, a youth oriented food safety field day, 4 local newspaper (Yuma Sun) articles and 7 general audience presentations.  Prior to the Yuma AZLGMA outreach campaign, the overall awareness of the AZLGMA was negligible with only ~10% of local residents and ~13% of winter visitor were knowledgeable in current food safety guidelines.  Approximately 38% of Yuma residents and 56% of winter visitors surveyed were aware of newly adopted food safety standards prior to the campaign.  After the AZLGMA outreach promotion, general food safety awareness improved over 50% and 45% for area residents and winter visitors respectively, while overall confidence in leafy production protocols increased 2-fold.  While the majority of those that live in the Yuma area during the months of leafy green production are not aware of the AZLGMA by name, area residents appear to be generally more sensitive to and aware of to the new production standards.  In general, results of this project suggest that adults over the age of 25 years are more responsive to the needs of the industry than area youth.   Moreover, educating youth about area agricultural while expanding their cooperation for field-level food safety mitigation will continue to challenge the Yuma leafy green industry and that specific outreach programs which target youth would be beneficial.