Every day, millions of consumers interact with food, whether it is being sold, consumed or processed.

Food Safety is Essential

According to the WHO, statistics show that 10% of people become ill every year as a result of contaminated foods.  Sadly, more than 420,000 people die every year from eating contaminated foods. Making it a legal requirement for businesses to ensure all appropriate staff are properly trained in food safety to uphold high standards of personal hygiene and cleanliness.

If your business works with food, whether in production, packaging or services, you need to take care in how you and your staff go about your daily jobs and functions as they can directly impact the health and wellbeing of the general public. 

Defining The Requirement

Firstly, what kind of food premises is the training being provided for? Training should be relevant to what staff do day-to-day, so choose a course that addresses both the risks and processes associated with daily functions and the functions of the environment. If you’re a green grocer you will need your staff to be familiar with the basics of food safety and hygiene. We have various courses on various levels that can assist from basic to Intermediate, to HACCP, ISO and FSSC Training that can assist food safety and hygiene from the shopfloor to the Quality Manager.

Once you know “where” you are, you need to assess and decide on your level of proficiency, to ensure the food safety accredited training you receive is relevant and on a level relative to your knowledge, experience, skillset or qualifications. 

It’s Your Responsibility

The survival of any food business is centred around customers coming back and wanting more. If staff members are sufficiently trained in food safety that won’t be a problem, however, should the business fail to uphold its food safety standards and related training, it could be impossible to recover from. 

There are numerous food safety accredited training courses on the market, and they range from basic food safety (more for general food manufacturing employees) to level 4 in-depth food safety training (covering aspects of food hygiene and safety in depth, providing candidates with thorough knowledge to ensure full compliance with the legislation). Some courses are also more focused on good manufacturing processes and the ins-and-outs of food contamination at scale. This course will demonstrate how to create consistent, quality controlled standards to comply with basic food safety practices. 

There are also more courses to choose from including HACCP, Food Defence, and Food Fraud. There’s a lot to consider when choosing the food safety accredited training level that you or your employees may need. Our food safety and food safety training in South Africa courses are available to do online, at a public venue, or onsite at Assurecloud.