How can we improve food safety across the world?

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology and Food Science.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• Around 600 million people – which is almost 1 in 10 people worldwide – become ill every year from a foodborne illness. 420,000 of those people die. This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Wei Zhang, a professor of food science at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, USA, who is focusing on improving food safety for everyone.
• This resource also contains an interview with Wei. If you or your students have a question for him, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. Wei will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Wei’s research, and tasks them to advise others on food safety.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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