About Us

National Center for Home Food Preservation

Brief History: Home food preservation remains an important and popular cultural activity. It is critical that those who practice preserving and processing foods at home have access to the most reliable information available concerning food safety and food quality. The Cooperative Extension System (CES) and USDA have long been recognized as credible sources for science-based recommendations. Developmental work on new or continued recommendations has been sporadic since the 1950s due to the availability of resources.

Brief timeline:

The National Center for Home Food Processing and Preservation was established with funding from the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES-USDA) in 2000 as a multi-institutional effort with The University of Georgia and Alabama A&M University as the primary institutions. Expert scientists in home food preservation from industry and eight other U.S. universities comprised an advisory committee for the Center. Two national surveys conducted by the Center in 2000 and 2005 both revealed a high percentage of home food processors are using practices that put them at high risk for foodborne illness and/or economic losses due to food spoilage.

Home food preservation recommendations were updated through laboratory development and testing of products and critical literature reviews; recommendations from USDA and the Cooperative Extension System have been made available through this website; a new video series; on online self-study course; revision of the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning (2009 and 2015); updating of Extension professionals in various states; and, various other publications on the website.

The first project ended in 2005, but the Center received additional funding to conduct some additional limited projects through August 2010. Collaborators from 5 states were part of the National Center team for those years, but primarily through 2008. In 2005-2010, work continued on the website-based self-study course modules; applied laboratory research on refrigerator dill pickles and canned tomato-based salsas was conducted; and, an undergraduate college short-course about home food preservation was developed, implemented and evaluated.

The last project, 2011-2015, developed, implemented and evaluated a series of six youth lesson plans on home food preservation; developed and taught webinars on home food preservation; and, built our website resources and maintained the integrity of current website content. In addition, research was conducted on atmospheric steam canning for acid foods and to compare several home canning lid systems on features of sealing rates and vacuums obtained.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation had not received funding from 2015 to 2022. Limited funding has been provided by the USDA New Technologies for Ag Extension program (NTAE-2021-2184) for the development of a new website.

A new curriculum series of fermented products was started in 2022 with its first research-based recommendation being the development of a Kombucha recipe.