In a two week visit to Bangladesh two of our Précon consultants put the final changes to a training for food safety inspectors, which university teachers delivered, and evaluated the training with all participants and the trainers. Fourteen (!) topics in five days, from inspection methodology and risk-based inspection to points of attention in product groups such as meat, dairy and processed products. There also was a visit to a subsidiary of an international dairy company, where a milk powder product is packaged into consumer products.
Participants had not yet experienced such an interactive training and were very enthusiastic and willing to help improve the training. The evaluation with participants provided our consultants useful information to align the training even better with the practice of the inspectors. Over 700+ inspectors in all parts of Bangladesh will be provided with the course!
In addition to this training, the two Précon consultants participated as panelists in a workshop of the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority. In this workshop research results were discussed on Listeria contamination, crop protection residues, heavy metals, aflatoxins and antibiotic resistance development in food pathogens. Due to COVID and budget these studies were small in size, but enough to cause a good discussion amongst participants in the workshop. It even caught the attention of national media: Bangladesh’s largest newspaper reported the study results and one of the researchers was asked to explain during a live TV broadcast in the evening.
Additionally, our consultants have given three workshops at the two universities to learn to look at food safety in an integral way. Both this and the professional short courses give the universities relevant tools to better understand the needs of future MSc Food Safety graduates at BAU and SAU. In this project, Précon will continue to support the design of professional short courses with our training methodology and focus on the needs of the food safety professional.
