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Workshop Issue 1: Identifying and Assessing
Educational and Informational Needs |
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- Workshop Chairman: Dr. Javier Trujillo Arriaga, Director General of SENASICA, Department of Agriculture, Mexico
- Workshop Co-Chair: Dr. Karen Hulebak, Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA
- Workshop Co-Chair: Dr. William James, Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA
Discussion:
- The workshop participants concluded that, although there are differences among the two key audiences (government officials and private producers), their exposure to the same training would help capacity-building of the system.
- An objective should be to create
bodies of trained professionals so
that those who would leave government
service would be replaced by
similarly trained professionals who
had been working in the private
sector. Training government and
private officials at the same time
preempts the need to train new
government officials should the
bureaucracy change after an election.
- Emphasis was also placed on the
importance of education for the
consumer.
- It is assumed that laboratory personnel would have less need for training by FSIA.
- The workshop participants anticipate significant added-value in organizing training to involve mixed audiences (government and private sector, as well as laboratories and the general public) by encouraging a broader exchange of views among all interested parties.
Recommendations:
- FSIA should draw on existing resources.
- There exist considerable educational and training
resources among the international organizations (such as
INPPAZ), ministries, private services and academic
institutions in the region.
- The goal should be to develop a structured approach to
capacity-building training following the
university-system of establishing prerequisites.
- Training must cover several threshold areas.
- First, training should provide an introductory presentation
of basic microbiology and good manufacturing and agricultural
practices (GMPs).
- Next, advanced training on HAACP should be provided.
- Beyond the technical, substantive training, training should
focus on the techniques of training trainers so that the
training effort can be locally sustained and renewed.
- Attention should be given to innovative techniques
for adult education.
- Such attention is needed to make training efforts
interesting and engaging for adult, non-professional
personnel.
- FSIA training should cover produce.
- In addition to training in systems of meat and poultry,
attention should also be given to developing skills in the
management of control systems, surveillance and tracing of
produce.
- Food Bio-security control should be factored into
food safety training.
- Food security was defined by the workshop as the deliberate
contamination of a food product from production through
processing to distribution and consumption; food safety is the
unintentional contamination of a food product as a consequence
of production.
- Each country should conduct its own survey.
- Each country should do so in working with FSIA to develop a
training plan.
- Surveys should seek to identify sources in agricultural
organizations for potential project funding.
- Attention should be given to regional needs.
- This is necessary both as a need to implement sanitary &
phytosanitary (SPS) requirements in international free trade
agreements (such as CAFTA), but also to develop a regional
bloc to compete with and to develop compatible approaches on
SPS issues with other regional trading blocs (such as the
European Union).
- The FSIA ought to start with small, manageable
projects.
- With such projects, the FSIA can more easily bring to them
to a successful conclusion which will, in turn, demonstrate
the value of FSIA and therefore attract greater support and
interest from other potential partners.
- The FSIA should take a specific and incremental
approach to developing training projects.
- In particular, the FSIA should identify a particular
food-born illness and then work backwards to develop the
training needed for consumers, government inspectors and
producers to reduce that problem.
- Projects should aim at reducing the
"double-standard" of products for exports.
- This "double-standard" was identified by the workshop as
instances in which a country sets differing standards for
exported products than for similar products destined for the
internal, domestic market.
- Projects should be sensitive to the ability of
producers (especially small producers) to respond to new
regulatory requirements.
- This may be achieved by providing a longer time line (such
as a five-year capacity-building/implementation timeline) for
implementation by smaller producers of requirements.
- Working with producers in partnership with Ministries of
Agriculture to ensure a marketable commodity could provide a
process for cost-recovery that would make training sustainable
while working toward the same public health protection
objectives that are promoted by Ministries of Health.
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