Building FSMA Training Curriculum
Chris Brunner, April 8, 2016
Dr. Arens works with team members from NEHA and IFPTI, as they discuss content for the new course on labeling requirements.
WIFSS team members were recently in Rockville, MD, as part of the ongoing effort in the development of curriculum that will train food protection professionals to meet the requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).
The meeting, held March 29-31, at the FDA Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA), in Rockville, was hosted by FDA’s Division of Human Resource Development (DHRD). Attendees at the meeting included representatives from the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security (WIFSS) at UC Davis, the International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI), the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA), Auburn University, University of Tennessee (UT), and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) Those in attendance from WIFSS included Dr. Amanda Arens, and Heather Johnson.
These government, private industry, and university institutions have been working together for the past five years on the development of curriculum for Federal, State, Local and Tribal food protection professionals. This curriculum will provide the training that all food protection professionals will need to support the implementation of the new FSMA regulations. WIFSS is tasked with developing online training materials on professionalism, environmental hazards, public health principles, and food defense.
Additionally, WIFSS has developed training support materials that include videos and informational articles on topics such as produce production, dairy food safety and food animal production practices. The curriculum development portion of this project will be complete in August 2016. All training materials will begin to be available through the FDA’s learning management system (LMS) starting in the fall of 2016 for Federal, State, Local and Tribal regulatory personnel.