Food Standards Agency
Thursday 24 July 2008
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What is RSS?Food Hygiene Mission Control
Food Hygiene Mission Control is an interactive resource for children aged 7 to 14 and their teachers. Through quizzes, games and fact pages it educates young people about food hygiene issues. The teachers' section contains downloadable activity sheets for further teaching.
Food Hygiene Mission Control started off as two food hygiene teaching resources, 'Aliens in Our Food' for secondary pupils, and 'Safe T and the H Squad' for primary schools. The resources were the result of collaboration between staff from the Joint Food Safety and Standards Group (the predecessor of the Food Standards Agency) and the Health Education Authority. The free resources were sent out to UK schools in 1999 and 2000, and the two were combined to become Food Hygiene Mission Control, which can now be found at the link below.
The development of the resources in Food Hygiene Mission control was funded by the European Commission, following the Commission’s decision to devote all consumer policy information efforts in 1998 and 1999 to food safety and consumer health. This decision was taken because of strong consumer concern across the EU about the safety of food products, revealed in a Eurobarometer survey in 1997.
Schools can cover food safety and hygiene as part of food technology, which is a compulsory part of the National Curriculum for primary school children at Key Stages 1 and 2. Food technology isn’t mandatory at secondary level, but DfES guidance strongly suggests that schools should offer children the opportunity to study food technology and about 94% of schools do so.
The number of children taking GCSE food technology is on the increase. In 2000, more than 107,000 were entered for the qualification, compared with fewer than 95,000 in 1998.
The Food Standards Agency continues to support food hygiene education in schools. One of the proposals in the Agency's foodborne disease strategy is to negotiate with the DfES about including food hygiene in the curriculum.
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