U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announces FSMA regional education centers in Midwest and Northeast

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today the final locations to host regional training and support pertaining to federal food safety measures passed in 2015.

 

Iowa State University and the University of Vermont are among the ranks of the University of Florida and Oregon State University as recipients of the National Food Safety, Training, Education, Extension, Outreach and Technical Assistance grant program.

 

According to the FDA, the program, a joint venture with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, was established in 2015 to provide locations for food safety training for small farm owners and food processors following the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

 

With that passage, the FDA hopes to transform the nation’s food safety system into one that is based on the prevention of foodborne illness. It will be a system in which the food industry systematically puts in place measures to prevent contamination. Thus, food industry training initiatives were formed to achieve successful implementation.

 

The four universities will serve as regional centers lead by the National Coordination Center, established in October, at the International Food Protection Training Institute in Battle Creek, Mich.

 

The goal of FSMA training is to advance knowledge among food producers to meet FSMA requirements. Specifically, the regional centers will be charged with understanding and communicating the landscape of training opportunities available to target businesses in their region.

 

Through identifying needs of their local region, the centers will tailor curricula to target specific audiences. These centers will work with representatives from non-governmental and community-based organizations, and with representatives from cooperative extension services, food hubs, local farm cooperatives and other entities that can address specific needs of the communities they serve.

 

For more information on the FDA’s training strategy for FSMA, please see: FSMA Training.

 

More information on USDA’s National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA) can be found at: http://nifa.usda.gov/.

 

For more information on FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act, visit http://www.fda.gov/fsma.