Making a Difference in Food Safety Training

Members of a project team, led by Dr. David Green (CMAST, Seafood Laboratory), are making their mark nationally in an effort to establish an integrated food safety system for the US Food and Drug Administration. The Seafood Laboratory is part of the NC State Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences (FBNS).

In 2011, FBNS was awarded a five-year collaborative grant by the Food and Drug Administration’s Division of Human Resource Development (DHRD) to help establish the system through uniform national standards in training and certification of federal, state, local, territorial and tribal public health authorities.

The project team, an eleven member group representing not only NC State, but other universities and regulatory interests, is responsible for development and delivery of four national training courses-acidified food products, aseptic processing foods, low acid canned foods and shellfish evaluation.

The model program, now in the third year of development, has to date delivered five acidified food courses and one aseptic food course to 200 federal and state investigators. The new FDA acidified foods and aseptic food processing courses are being offered online in Fall 2014. Each course also requires a face-to-face segment in order to receive certification and continuing education unit (CEU) credits.

Additionally, the acidified food products course was adapted in 2014 for use in food industry training.