Rutgers Food Innovation Center offers virtual food safety training – NJBIZ

Supply chain and food industry personnel will be able to take required courses online for the next several months via Bridgeton’s Rutgers Food Innovation Center.

Food safety certificate courses like Preventive Controls Qualified Individual and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point are now available via interactive virtual training, including face-to-face video conferencing.

Customized group food safety training for companies and organizations is also available.

Associate Director of Food Safety and Training Donna Schaffner conducts a session at the Rutgers Food Innovation Center in Bridgeton. – AARON HOUSTON

“Food businesses are essential businesses that are still going on to make sure the public is still fed. It’s more important than ever that we’re offering thee food safety training for the new employees at the food manufacturers so they can still get these trainings,” said Donna Schaffner, associate director of food safety, quality assurance and training at the FIC, who is leading the courses. “A lot of the food companies are hiring more people, and as people become sick they will have to hire even more people, so this is an opportunity to have them get the training they need before they start working in the facilities.”

As a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration’s Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance, Schaffner helped craft the training curriculum for the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act regulations. She is one of the just 21 folks worldwide that the FDA uses to train other lead trainers for the Preventive Controls for Human Foods course.