Benjamin Chapman

Assistant Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist

Ben provides leadership and technical expertise for the statewide Extension food safety education program; develops and evaluate education programs that focus on safe food handling from farm-to-fork. Through using new methods and messages, Ben hopes to provide information that helps create a culture of food safety.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Ben grew up in the agricultural town of Port Hope, Ontario. He completed a BSc in molecular biology at the University of Guelph in 2001 and completed an MSc focusing on-farm food safety programs, also at the University of Guelph in 2005. Ben has co-authored 6 peer-reviewed articles on food safety and risk communication. Ben's PhD studies focused on developing and evaluating communication tools directed at food handlers. Weekly, Ben develops Food Safety Info sheets (http://foodsafetyinfosheets.blogspot.com), one-page summaries of food borne illness outbreaks or incidents supplemented with surprising messages and graphics. The objective of Food Safety Info sheets is to create dialogue amongst food handlers around food safety issues. Food Safety Info sheets are distributed to over 400 direct subscribers and appear in kitchens throughout North America. Since early 2007 he has been blogging about food safety on barfblog.com . The site, which averages around 1800 unique visitors daily, is a place where food safety researchers provide brief commentary on world-wide food safety happenings.

Contact Information: 919.515.8099 or benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu