5 Questions To Ask For Effective Food Safety Training

By Michael Perz, M.Sc., Chair, Food Safety Culture Development Group

All departments of any company (food production or not) need training from several perspectives, such as safety, job-specific roles, business acumen, and human rights. And other departments — accounting, production, quality assurance, upper management — they all have their roles that need training. Of course, sanitation needs to know how to clean, maintenance needs to know how to repair and upkeep, warehouse needs to know how to ship and receive. But, how important is training in the role of food safety? In a word: vital.

As food safety professionals, we are the lucky ones putting food safety on top. Actually, it is more like having a smoothie: all the various trainings — the ingredients — need to work together to make a great, final product. We are running a business with very specific needs, but a business none the less. For instance, a mechanic working on your car does not need to wear gloves and it doesn’t matter if he or she has hepatitis A. However, a mechanic in the food industry who cuts themselves does pose a risk to the production facility and they need to understand the risks they carry. Food safety training can help address that risk, and many others.

From there, the questions now become, “Who should lead food safety training?” “What’s driving food safety education and training?” “What goes into creating food safety education programs?” “How do you verify food safety training’s effectiveness?” and “Are the needs of small companies organizations different than from large ones?”