The need for continuous training in food factories

Abstract

The dissemination in food factories of the organisms I have referred to earlier, represent significant and interesting issues of public health concern. Yet there seem to be difficulties in incorporating material in education-training-information programmes explaining merely the most simple and basic facts about the risk involved in food being contaminated in food factories. Such educational programmes are essential components in the overall scheme of foodborne disease control, yet they often represent the weakest links in the control chain. There has been a decline in the emphasis on food hygiene in some programmes at the level of institutions of higher education, and a de-emphasis on food hygiene has occurred over the past few decades in schools of veterinary medicine in some parts of the world. This committee has taken active steps to improve this situation by convening a professorial consultation on post-graduate teaching in advanced food microbiology, Copenhagen 1989 (Park, 1990). The public, as well as politicians, focus for the time being on chemical contamination of foods, possible presence of residues, thereby ignoring the fact that statistically it is not the residues that cause deaths which count, but, without a shadow of doubt, the foodborne pathogens. This fact emphasizes the need for intensive training in preventive hygienic measures. Since representatives of the food industry are participating in the Symposium, I would like to balance the problems by saying: we all share a responsibility in securing education in food hygiene in food factories.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)