Food Hygiene Training: The Chance to Create a Coherent Policy

In September this year, the Government issued its draft Regulations on Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) 1995, which acknowledges for the first time the importance of a programme to make food handlers, their supervisors and managers, properly aware of the importance of food hygiene for the protection of the consumer and what they can do to prepare food safely. However, the regulation is specific neither about how training should best be implemented nor on the most important aspect of the policy, its end result. The standards of food hygiene awareness to be achieved through training have not been specified. The Department of Health, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF)cannot delegate their responsibility to protect the public health. Therefore, levels of food hygiene awareness, regardless of industrial sector, should be their prime concern. If the departments could set their minimum required standard of food hygiene awareness, the national framework of training which has evolved could naturally regulate the quality of training itself.