“

uey-Buick” isn’t a word you find often in Extension publications, but Dr. Judy Harrison (PhD ’92, Foods and Nutrition) knows that educating youngsters about food safety requires a special vocabulary – one that adults might find a bit, well, unappetizing.

“ To educate children, you have to think like a child,” says Harrison, an associate professor of Foods and Nutrition and an Extension Foods and Nutrition Specialist. “You can’t be afraid to throw in a yucky sounding word.”

Harrison and her colleague, Bob Molleur, who recently retired as editor of visual communications for the University of Georgia Extension Service, have spent the past three years focusing on yucky sounds, rap lyrics, and cartoon drawings as part of a federally funded food safety project. Using BAC, a green, cartoon bacteria created by the Partnership for Food Safety Education, the two have created a cartoon video, activity books, teachers’ guides, and now are working on computer games, to teach children proper food safety and food handling techniques.

“ Our goal is to start with children so that they develop food handling and hygiene skills for a lifetime,” Harrison explained. “Our children are going to grow up to become food service personnel, dietitians and food technologists. Certainly, they’ll be cooking in their homes. By developing healthy habits at an early age, they’ll be more likely to maintain those habits throughout their lifetimes.”

Although cartoons look simple when seen on Saturday morning television, Harrison has learned that the effort involved in combining animated video with an educational message takes time. Lots of time.

“Originally, we thought we would work with already established children’s television programs, but when those shows were not available to work with us, we decided we could do this on our own,” Harrison said.

Harrison credits Molleur for using media contacts he has developed through the years to make contact with a company called Actual Reality. While Actual Reality handled the animation, it was up to Harrison and Molleur to create the script.

“ We locked ourselves in a conference room and worked for three days. We worked well together. We fed off of each other. We both have young children, so we drew off of that knowledge. We also got a little goofy,” she said.

The result: A video that opens with school children describing – in detail – the results of food poisoning at a school picnic, including the shot of a teacher running into a school restroom as one student explains that she “huey-buicked.”

From there, the video shows the older children as they perform a play – complete with rap music – for the younger students.

But between writing the script and the finished product were many months of agonizing detail to ensure that the “Smart Kids Fight BAC!” video and educational materials accomplish their goals.

“ We took everything to the schools for pilot-testing,” Harrison said. “When we were deciding what the characters should look like, we took three sets of characters to students in grades K-3 and had a little election. Since the students were too young to write down their choice and we didn’t want them to be influenced by their classmates, we had them whisper their vote to their teacher.”

“ I wanted this to fit into the Georgia Core Curriculum, so our starting point particularly for the supplemental materials was the GCC website,” Harrison said.

To ensure she was on the right track, Harrison asked FACS county Extension agents to take the supplementary materials to teachers for their input.

In addition to the initial pilot testing in Georgia schools, the materials also were pilot-tested in Mississippi and North Carolina by Harrison’s counterparts, Dr. Melissa Mixon at Mississippi State University and Dr. Angela Fraser at North Carolina State University. Officials with the USDA-Food Safety and Inspection Service, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the USDA-Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Services gave their stamps of approval.

Although “Smart Kids Fight BAC!” has taken a tremendous amount of time and the involvement of more than 200 people, Harrison says the program fills an important niche in food safety education.

“ More than 6,000 people die each year from food-borne illnesses,” Harrison said. “Many more people get sick from mishandled food each year, but most of the time they’ll be sick for a day or two and then get well. But for young children; senior adults; people with compromised immune systems, such as those undergoing chemotherapy; and pregnant women; the risk of serious complications is severe.”

Since being completed, “Smart Kids Fight BAC!” has won nearly a dozen national awards, including being the 2002 recipient of the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences National Food Safety Award.

In Georgia, people interested in having the “Smart Kids Fight BAC!” program can contact the FACS Extension agent for their county. The curriculum is for sale in other states through Harrison’s office.

But Harrison isn’t finished fighting BAC! yet.

Currently, she and Molleur are developing interactive computer games that target young children with food safety information.

“ Most classrooms now have computers and kids love computer games,” she said. “We’ve received a second grant from USDA-CSREES to take the elements of the video and activity book and incorporate them into computer games.”

Developing videos and computer games is time consuming and requires tremendous creative and financial resources, but when the payoff is healthier children, Harrison welcomes the opportunity to find more yucky words with a message.