May 01, 2015 02:55 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Many people responsible for managing school and community gardens are often unfamiliar with food safety practices that reduce the risk of foodborne illness, according to a recent study.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed guidelines that address how to limit risk in these gardens - and a pilot study shows that the guidelines make a difference.

"People involved with these gardens are passionate about healthy eating, food security and helping people connect to where their food comes from," Ashley Chaifetz, lead author of a paper describing the work and its effect on school and community gardening practices, said in a statement. "But they often don't have formal training in how to limit exposure to foodborne pathogens. We developed tools to help educate these gardeners, and our research shows that the tools are effective."

For this project, researchers developed a document that lists food safety risks, gives specific instructions on how to limit those risks, and explains how the risk mitigation efforts work.

Gardening involves working with your hands, this creates the possibility of transferring pathogens to fresh produce. Chaifetz said to limit that risk, people should wash their hands before working in the garden -- not just after digging in the dirt. So, gardeners should have access to hand washing facilities (and should use them), in order to wash off any pathogens.

The guidelines also offer garden managers advice on how to share the recommendations with volunteers who work in the garden.

The researchers conducted on-site, observation-based assessments of food safety practices at all 20 gardens. They then gave the guidelines and related supplies - such as hand soap - to the garden managers.

Two months later, the researchers went back to the gardens to conduct a follow-up assessment.

Sixteen of the 20 gardens improved their overall scores in terms of their use of best practices.

The findings are detailed in the journal Food Protection.

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