Consumer education has always been a primary consideration in the prevention of food-borne illness. Using nutrition education and the new food guide as a model, this paper develops suggestions for a framework of microbiological food safety principles and a compatible visual model for communicating key concepts. Historically, visual food guides in the United States have concentrated on dietary recommendations, including the well-known pyramid of food classification and the mandatory nutritional labeling. Guides are now emerging for food safety education and public health. For example, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently made safe handling labels required on all raw and partially cooked meat and poultry products. The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) is a procedure that identifies ways to prevent food-borne illness by monitoring critical control points in the processing of foods. In other words, the consumer should take certain precautions at each culinary step, including when food is purchased, stored, prepared, cooked, and when the preparer cleans up. These consumer tools need more systematic presentation, however. Dietary recommendations can be grouped under the three points of variety, proportionality, and moderation; food safety principles are also governed by threes--the three variables of time, temperature, and cleanliness and three categories of food which represent different degrees of bacterial risk. Any accompanying visual model should use familiar but strong symbols (a clock, a thermometer, hands under a faucet) and careful manipulation of design variables like shape and line. Seven figures accompany the text. (Contains 11 references.) (BEW)