Municipality educates locals about food safety
They gave certificates to 40 employees after teaching them all about listeriosis, food safety, and pest control.
The West Rand District Municipality, together with the Municipal Health Services, had a training session for their personnel on handling food correctly and managing food as a resource.
The purpose of the training, held at Cedar Lodge, was to educate and train management and food-handling personnel, which included chefs, on the five key aspects of listeriosis and food safety. This is to prevent food-borne diseases in the light of the recent listeriosis outbreak in South Africa, which killed over 216 people and led to the discovery of over 1 060 confirmed laboratory cases.
The training also aimed to promote safe handling, preparation and storage of food and to promote clean environments. The 40 food handlers were also trained on food safety and pest control. At the end of the programme, each attendee was issued with a certificate of acceptability to food processing facilities, in line with the new regulation.
It is hoped that this ongoing programme for all food processing plants/ facilities on the West Rand will reach far and wide.
The motivation for the programme came from the theme for 2018 Environmental Health Day, i.e., Global Food Safety and Sustainability. There is also a gap in the whole food industry for capacity building and training of food handlers. This is the result of the increasing distribution of foodstuffs that are unfit for human consumption and incorrectly labelled, as well as non-compliance with existing food safety laws.
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