Benchmarking food safety training

We have recently undertaken a global food safety training survey of over 25,000 food manufacturing sites across the world in conjunction with Alchemy Systems, BRC Global Standards, SQF and SGS. Bertrand Emond, Head of Membership and Training explains the findings and significance:

"Respondents recognised that improved food safety, better product quality and a reduction in customer complaints are the greatest benefits of effective food safety training; however, over three quarters said that finding the time for training was their greatest challenge - almost a quarter of the industry employees surveyed receive less than four hours of food safety training per year. There is room for improvement when it comes to the provision of training in the food and drink industry - one of the biggest deficiencies identified was incomplete training records.

At a time when pathogenic organisms are one of the greatest threats to food safety, and product spoilage continues to be a major contributor to food wastage and financial loss, there are warnings that there is a definite microbiological skills gap. There is concern that newly qualified and even established microbiologists, technologists and managers lack the practical experience to meet the changing and increasingly demanding needs of the food and drink sector. Following an extensive industry consultation specifically looking at the field of microbiology and the industry´s microbiological training needs, we published a brand new report* identifying the key areas of microbiological training that need to be addressed to plug the gap and ensure that employees have the skills and knowledge to do their jobs effectively."

The findings of the survey are summarised at www.campdenbri.co.uk/training/GFSI.pdf so that companies can compare their training activities with those of the industry as a whole.

*Report available by sending an e-mail to auto@campdenbri.co.uk with the subject line: send microbiology

Bertrand Emond
+44(0)1386 842062
bertrand.emond@campdenbri.co.uk