Specialty food industry manufacturers, retailers, distributors and individuals all across the food supply chain are busier than ever doing their part in response to the spiking demand for groceries due to the impact of COVID-19.
In response, the food supply chain has had to make many adjustments to their routines, working locations and staffing schedules. Whether you are required to work from home, your state or city has instituted a stay at home order or your staff has been placed on a split-shift schedule, this may be the perfect time to catch up on mandatory food safety training.
Rutgers highly-regarded food safety certificate courses offered by the Food Innovation Center (FIC) at its location in Bridgeton, NJ, are now available as interactive virtual training options, including face-to-face via video conferencing, and presented by the same premier instructors with decades of on-the-job food industry experience.
For the next several months, virtual, interactive classes are available for PCQI, HACCP, SEAFOOD HAACP, GMPs, Allergens & Sanitation Preventative Controls and IA-VA (Food Defense Qualified Individual) trainings. Customized group food safety training for companies and organizations is also available.
Expert trainers at FIC are led by food microbiologist Donna Schaffner, associate director of Food Safety, Quality Assurance and Training. Schaffner, who is a member of the FDA’s Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance, helped to craft the training curriculum for the FDA’s new FSMA regulations. She is one of the just 21 individuals worldwide to be used by the FDA as a ‘Trainer-of-Trainers’ for the Preventive Controls for Human Foods course. Schaffner also holds FSPCA “Lead Instructor” status for Preventive Controls for Human Food, Foreign Supplier Verification Program, and Intentional Adulteration – Vulnerability Assessment classes.
Schaffner’s team of esteemed food safety professionals has decades of in-plant expertise. For more information, visit https://foodinnovation.rutgers.edu/what-is-fic/team/, under the Food Safety, Quality Assurance & Regulatory Compliance section.
To find a class that’s right for you, check the schedule of FIC training at https://foodinnovation.rutgers.edu/what-fic-does/learn/training-services/.
About the Food Innovation Center at Rutgers University
The Food Innovation Center is a unique food business incubation and economic development program, which is part of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES) at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Our Center provides business and technology expertise to startup and established food and value-added agricultural businesses, locally and globally. We operate out of two USDA and FDA-certified manufacturing facilities located in Piscataway and Bridgeton, NJ, facilitating the commercialization of products into distribution, while also providing mentoring assistance in marketing, R&D, food safety, regulatory, manufacturing and sales and distribution. Visit foodinnovation.rutgers.edu.
