COVID-19 Management Control Strategies for Food Facilities
This free course is designed to provide food industry managers and supervisors with the tools and resources to help manage the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their employees and business operations. Course modules will be posted as they become available. While we recommend participants work their way through the entire series of modules, they can choose to take individual modules as stand-alone lessons.
For questions, please contact Aljosa Trmcic.
Module List
- Module 1: Course Introduction and Objectives
- Module 2: Risk-based Framework Overview
- Module 3: The Biology of COVID-19: Virus Properties, Symptoms, and Mechanisms of Spread
- Module 4: COVID-19 Risk Factors (Coming soon)
- Module 5: Basic Control Factors (Coming soon)
- Module 6: Proactive Mitigation Strategies (Coming soon)
- Module 7: Reactive Mitigation Strategies (Coming soon)
- Module 8: Verification and Validation of Mitigation Strategies (Coming soon)
- Module 9: Modeling COVID-19 Mitigation Strategies in your Facility (Coming soon)
- Module 10: Developing a COVID-19 Control Culture (Coming soon)
- Module 11: Developing and Communicating Front-line Training (Coming soon)
Module 1
Course Introduction and Objectives
Module 1 covers the outline of the course and where participants can access resources.
Module 2
Risk-based Framework Overview
Module 2 covers the importance of evaluating COVID-19 control strategies from a "risk-based" perspective to have optimal impact.
Module 3
The Biology of COVID-19
Module 3 covers virus characteristics and properties that are relevant to food processors. Topics include (i) why it is unlikely to contract COVID-19 from food or food packaging (ii) why SARS-CoV-2 cannot survive in food or on surfaces for long periods of time, and (iii) the importance of vaccinations.
If you have specific questions around ingredients, cleaning/sanitation chemicals and procedures, personnel practices, or other food safety, supply, and distribution changes due to the impact of COVID-19, reach out to our experts:
- Dairy: Rob Ralyea (rdr10@cornell.edu) and Kimberly Bukowski (krb14@cornell.edu)
- Fresh Produce: Dr. Elizabeth Bihn (eab38@cornell.edu) and Gretchen Wall (glw53@cornell.edu)
- Processed Fruits and Vegetables: Dr. Martin Wiedmann (mw16@cornell.edu) and Dr. Randy Worobo (rww8@cornell.edu)
- Fermented Beverages: Dr. Anna Katharine Mansfield (akm87@cornell.edu) and Chris Gerling (cjg9@cornell.edu)
- All Other Foods: Dr. Olga Padilla-Zakour (oip1@cornell.edu) and Dr. Bruno Xavier (bmx2@cornell.edu)
- For Resources in Spanish: Karen Ospina (karen.ospina@cornell.edu)
Our team can also provide process authority services in case you need to change processes and/or formulations due to COVID-19 related challenges. For more information visit the Cornell Food Venture Center and for dairy-related process authority services contact Rob Ralyea (rdr10@cornell.edu).
This work is supported by USDA NIFA AFRI Grant NO:2020-68006-32875/ Accession no. 1024254 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed on this website are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.