Issue View | Council II | 2018 Biennial Meeting

This is a brand new Issue.

EFST 2 - Approval and Posting of Guidance Document

The Employee Food Safety Training Committee has completed the charges outlined in Issue 2016 II-001 to identify what a food employee should know about food safety, prioritized by risk and to develop a guidance document. The committee developed a guidance document outlining learning objectives along with knowledge, skills and abilities that should be demonstrated by employees. Each topic category has been placed in its own section, grouped by contributing factor and foundational knowledge, based on the learning objectives. This resource is designed to be used by industry, regulators and/or third party food safety training programs.

The Employee Food Safety Training Guidance document was created to help standardize entry level employee (also known as food handler) food safety training by providing a guidance document recognized by the Conference for Food Protection. There is currently no nationally-recognized standard or guidance for operators, regulators or third parties which develop entry level food employee training. In spite of this lack of standardization, more and more jurisdictions are now requiring food employees to earn certificates, food handler cards or other credentials and/or to receive training using an approved operator, regulator or third party training program.

Food employees trained in food safety have the potential to decrease incidents of foodborne illness in foodservice establishments. The existence of many variations of food employee training requirements in many jurisdictions throughout the United States makes it difficult for foodservice establishments that have more than one location to have a consistent food employee food safety training program. Foodservice establishments could more readily and efficiently offer effective food employee training if consistent national food employee training guidance was used. Such guidance would encourage more food employee training in food safety and could improve public health.

that the Employee Food Safety Training Guidance Document (attached to the Issue titled Report - EFST Committee) be approved and posted to the CFP website as a PDF guidance document, and authorize the Conference to make any necessary edits prior to posting to assure consistency of format and non-technical content; edits will not affect the technical content of the document.