Tailor Your Training to Food Safety Standards and Your Staff Needs

By Beth Driscoll

A common refrain in the food industry is “our employees are our most valuable asset,” and chances are we’ve all either heard this said at our companies, or we’ve said it ourselves.   Most organizations that handle food, be it farm, processor, distributor, or grocery store recognize the importance of their employees in producing food safely.  But even the best preventive control programs and HACCP plans are just words written on paper (or electrons on the screen) until employees are trained in food safety practices so they can execute your procedures correctly.

Unless you’re a small organization with a local customer base, you are probably required to meet multiple standards: customer-specific standards, government regulations, and at least one Global Food Safety Initiative certification programme (CP). Today, in an international supply chain, it’s not uncommon for a facility to have to meet half a dozen or more standards.  This presents a level of complexity for your training program; how do you make sure that all your employees are trained to ensure compliance to all these standards?