The Safe Plates food safety team in the Department of Agricultural Human Sciences at North Carolina State University places emphasis on engaging individuals in dialogue about food-related risks, controls and benefits, from farm-to-fork. The program strives to design, implement and evaluate novel food safety risk analysis-based interventions and provide reliable, relevant information in culturally and linguistically appropriate formats to assist people in identifying, understanding and mitigating the causes of foodborne illness.

Also as part of North Carolina State Extension, the food safety culture team collaborates and supports the North Carolina State Food Safety Extension Program.

The team currently possesses and utilizes a social media networking dedicated laboratory to participate in and engage with individuals around food safety issues using blogs and social media. Using in-house multimedia equipment the program creates and contributes to food safety-related outputs such as the below activities. Qualitative data collection and analysis equipment has been used by team members to assess individual food safety behaviors from farm-to-fork and evaluate messages, programs and interventions that can reduce the number of people affected by foodborne illness annually.