Walkthrough for the 4-H Food Safety training

Fundraising and Bake Sales

We are having our first bake sale in mid-April to kickstart our fund-raising for next year, and I’m writing this post to help walk you through doing the 4-H Online Food Safety training. To bake treats for the sale, you either need to be trained yourself, or working in a kitchen with someone else who has been trained. I encourage everyone to do the training, however! It doesn’t take long, it isn’t hard at all (mostly common sense), and it is free. It is an older training site, so doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but the information is up to date and good. And surprisingly pertinent with coronavirus being in the news.

Walkthrough and Links:

1. Main page for the 4-H Online Food Safety Training: https://ucanr.edu/sites/MISKIS/

You will see tabs at the top for “Intro”, Module 1″, and so on all the way to “Summary” and “Certification”. It is a good idea to use “open in new tab” to open links because some of the back links are broken.

I didn’t have to sign in using the passwords from the CA 4-H page (see CA 4-H Food Safety Page), but you will need to provide name and email (see below).

2. Read through these two documents first: http://safety.ucanr.org/files/3134.pdf, http://4h.ucanr.edu/Resources/Policies/Chapter11/

3. Read through the Intro: https://ucanr.edu/sites/MISKIS/Intro/  You will have to scroll to the bottom of the page to read the actual slide presentation. Please note that this site is still using Adobe Flash, but I didn’t have any problems with my Windows machine using Firefox. The slides are also not captioned, but the important information is all present on the slide.

4. Take the Pre-test: https://ucanr.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=8720 

You’ll give your name and email, your county for 4-H (Alameda), and you will check the 4-H volunteer box. There are about 12 questions, mostly common sense. Don’t worry if you get any wrong, it doesn’t count toward your certification.

Once you are done with the pre-test, there’s a link to go back to the main page, but it doesn’t work.

Click here instead: https://ucanr.edu/sites/MISKIS/Intro/

5. Start the modules and work through 6 of them.

Go to the bottom of the page for Module 1. Again, it is best to open links in a new tab so you don’t lose the main page. Note that you don’t have to do everything in one sitting, you can leave the page and return to it.

Module 2-6 also mention an activity, but they are real-life activities/demonstrations and you do NOT have to do them (like putting red paint on a plate to show cross-contamination of raw chicken)! Just read/watch the slideshow.

6. Read through the summary and then do the certification test (again, another 12 multiple choice questions). I promise it isn’t difficult and will not require you to remember the different pathogens and their incubation periods. Provide your name and email, plus your 4-H county (this ensures your test makes it to Cheryl so she can mark you as certified).

That’s it! It took me less than an hour, and now I can bake bundles of goodies for our Bake Sale!