One in five households in the United States practice home canning, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The Center for Disease Control has stated that 30 percent of botulism cases from the past decade was caused by home canning practices. In an effort to promote safe canning practices in Butler County, the Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences offered a Food Preservation class on water bath canning, jelly and jam making, and freezing.

Fourteen participants were taught the water bath method while they made salsa and tomato juice. Nine of the fourteen had never attended a food preservation class, while six of the fourteen had never even canned prior.

Some (75%) of the participants were new to Cooperative Extension programming.  Almost half (43%) of the participants reported using food preservation methods sometimes and half (50%) reported using food preservation methods quite often prior to the program.  Participants said that they learned about the program through the Facebook, the Extension website, friends and family and the Extension office.  The reasons given by most participants for choosing to attend the program were to improve skills (98%), because of a desire to learn (79%), and to use the skills to save money (79%)*. 

End of program evaluation results indicate an increase in food preservation skills.  Before and after the program, participants self-report their skill level for each method as either ‘beginner’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘experienced’.  While this class contained many participants who self-identified as ‘experienced’ prior to the class, some of participants reported an increase in skill levels.  All participants (100%) either strongly agreed or agreed they had better skills in home food preservation methods, could identify research-based methods of home food preservation, could identify the necessary equipment for home food preservation methods, understood the difference in and could identify the correct method for canning low acid and high acid foods and could identify spoilage in home preserved products after the program.

To date, there has been over 1000 jars of fruits and vegetables canned by the participants.