Consortium to give cooks safe ways to pickle, ferment, pressure-cook, and store food. W e C an Because
Food preservation methods have been around since the beginning of humanity, but when COVID-19 hit, people returned to home gardening and home cooking to keep their social distance from crowds at grocery stores and restaurants, driving a resurgence in interest in food preservation.
Increase in requests for home food preservation recipes in 2020 620%
The National Center for Home Food Preservation reported that requests for validated home food preservation recipes shot up a whopping 620% in 2020 compared with the previous year—the key word being “vali- dated,” indicating consumers’ general awareness of the importance of preserving food safely. This demand for best food preservation practices prompted a group of Extension educators to create a consortium of food safety experts who could be a resource for home cooks, as well as for small, independent food retailers and home-based food preparation businesses. Founded in 2020, the Food Safety Extension Network (FSEN) launched officially in 2021 with 41 Extension specialists in consumer and retail food safety from nine Southeastern land-grant universities (LGUs). FSEN’s objectives are to create a model for fee-based membership, through which insti- tutions can collaborate and share expertise and partner with external institutions to support their work. FSEN’s founders have received two New Technologies for Ag Extension (NTAE) grants. “The first grant helped us begin to develop the idea for the consortium,” says Ben Chapman, a Food Safety Extension Specialist at North Carolina State University and co-lead on the project. “But growing an idea, getting buy-in, and building trust take time, so we applied for a second round of funding.” In this Q&A, Chapman talks about the team’s experience with the NTAE program, what the team learned about creat- ing a multi institution network, and about the basic structure of the FSEN. ➤
National Center for Home Food Preservation
States that allow home cooks to sell food prepared in their kitchens 50
Estimated cottage-food industry sales in 2019 $20B
Stateline.org
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EXTENSION FOUNDATION/NTAE | 2022-2023 YEARBOOK
2022-2023 YEARBOOK | EXTENSION FOUNDATION/NTAE
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