Improving Food Safety Training is the Key to Compliance

By Tina Brillinger

Frank Yiannis, Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response at the Food and Drug Association (FDA)—and a former contributor to GFSR— believes that improving food safety culture in an organization requires some simple changes in people’s behaviour.

In order to help companies learn and achieve those behavioural changes, Global Food Safety Resource® (GFSR) has launched its Safe-Food Training Hub™ (SFTH) earlier this year. Achieving food safety success in a changing regulatory environment means organizations need to invest more in the areas of training, testing and auditing.

After doing a great deal of research prior to launching the SFTH, GFSR identified a number of training-related needs for which food businesses are seeking solutions. These include:

• Training that includes preventive controls based on new regulations
• E-learning opportunities that would be flexible, and minimize downtime
• Assistance moving from paper-based manual training documentation to digital documentation of training records
• A training platform that offers a variety of levels of learning in multiple languages
• Assistance with career-enhancing skills development
• A resource catalogue of available quality training
• A mechanism that would allow the industry to provide user feedback to help inform companies and individuals about what training is best in a competitive landscape.
• Additional training resources, like tools, and videos and checklists

Until now businesses have either developed their own in-house training programs (which is costly and challenging to update) or found food safety training through referrals within the industry. Food professionals are increasingly going online to see the availability of training, and they are often challenged when they find that it doesn’t meet their specific needs, it’s not in their region, or it just doesn’t quite match their needs.

The SFTH was designed to meet the varied needs of food businesses and provide quality training. It’s the first-of-its-kind online catalogue for quality food safety training and resources. Our services and industry-recognized food safety training courses are taught by renowned food safety experts, and they have been vetted to ensure training providers meet quality standards. GFSR will continue to add more courses, as well as increase the ease of usage of the site by allowing users to search courses by topic, job competency, compliance, language, price, location, instructor and more.

Training is vital to furthering Industry’s need for greater food safety. It’s the bedrock of any behavioral change. As Frank Yiannas has said:

“Are you sure employees at all levels of the organization know your expectations of them around food safety, do we have enough training and education, are we communicating, (and) are we reinforcing the learning appropriately?”

It’s a big job, but continuously improving your food safety training program will pay huge dividends in terms of meeting the need for compliance and a safer food supply. This is not an issue that can be left to chance.

About the Author:
Tina Brillinger is President and Founder of Global Food Safety Resource®, and Safe-Food Training Hub™, organizations that aim to be trusted facilitators of food safety-related information and training resources for people within the global food community.