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foodsafetynews.com

Food Safe Families (Check Your Steps)

“Check Your Steps”

USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, FDA, CDC and Ad Council campaign launched June 2011 to reduce foodborne illness by getting families, especially parents, to follow four steps when preparing food: clean, separate, cook and chill.

Years
2011
Country
United States
Budget
Reported to have received "more than $83 million in donated media".
Topic
Food safetyHand hygiene
Asks people to
Start
Strategy
HumorSimple instruction
Channel
OutdoorRadioSocial (organic)TV
Audience
AdultsParents

Evidence

NoneUnknown

Sponsor (who paid)

  • Ad Council Ad Council (pro bono), campaign producer
  • USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service Federal government, partner/sponsor (lead)
  • U.S. Food and Drug Administration Federal government, partner
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Federal government, partner

Credits (who made it)

Sources

  1. USDA launches Food Safe Families (Meat+Poultry) news · 2011
  2. National food safety campaign aimed to reduce foodborne illness (Farm Progress) news · 2011
  3. Food safety campaign back on the boards and airwaves (Food Safety News) news · 2012
  4. NPHIC 2011 paper on Food Safe Families reference · 2011

Research notes

Topic: food safety has no taxonomy value; tagged infectious-disease and hand-hygiene. Credits checked 2026-10-22 against fetched pages: JWT New York (RBR, 30 Jun 2011, launch; Food Safety News, June 2012, 'The Ad Council member providing the creative work for the campaign is New York's JWT'); Partners + Napier (Meat+Poultry, 26 Nov 2014, read via Wayback: ECD Jason Marks of Partners + Napier, 'an ad agency that created the campaign', on the dancing-germs Thanksgiving PSAs). Corrected 2026-10-22: JWT source changed from the Meat+Poultry 2014 article (which credits Partners + Napier, not JWT) to RBR; Partners + Napier source changed from the USDA 2011 launch blog (no agency named) to Meat+Poultry, year 2014 added. endYear unknown. Links (#82) checked 2026-10-23: Ad Council pages from the Wayback Machine (adcouncil.org's old campaign pages), the Our History timeline or its case studies; dead campaign sites point to a Wayback copy from the campaign years.

Record cases/food-safe-families.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign