Food vendors will have to be trained in proper food management before they can be issued a food handler’s certificate, The Ministry of Health in conjunction with the Public Hospital’s Authority and the Grand Bahama Health Services announced yesterday.
The vendors will be required to complete a mandatory four-hour ‘Basic Safe Food Course,’ after which a community health physician will make an assessment before issuing a certificate which is valid for one year. This will include persons involved on a temporary basis such as cookouts and fairs.
According to the new policy, the certificates can only be issued by the community health clinics in Grand Bahama.
Rand Memorial Hospital Administrator Sharon Williams said one of the initiatives by The Bahamas National Health Services Strategic Plan was for the management of communicable diseases.
She said the national plan called for the implementation of a programme that would aid in the prevention and control of communicable diseases and environmental disorders. Food and food handling she said, comes under that programme.
“What we had to do on a local level and from ministry programme directive level, is to initiate a programme that speaks to safe food handling within our community,” Ms. Williams said. “Most of the food that we do get is not contaminated, but it is how we handle the food and how we prepare the food that is a big concern. That is what this programme speaks to in terms of ensuring that those persons who will be dealing with food for the community, are appropriately trained in how to manage the food and the processing of it.”
Ms. Williams said the new policy of the food handler’s programme involves a number of sectors in the community mainly those organisations that deal with the distribution of food such as preschools, schools, food stores and major hotels.
“The school lunch programme is a major concern in our country so we have to make sure that the Ministry of Health personnel are appraised of the standards so that they would adhere to them,” she said. ” We will be having a stake-holders meeting and then we will be having training sessions to train our staff and key persons on the management and delivery of the programme on a sustainable basis.”
“Then of course we will have the programmes launched in the clinics and hopefully at major organisations that are involved in the handling of food. We would like to encourage those organisations to get the whole staff together and we can come in and deliver the education. Then those that handle food can just go in for the medical check-up after they would have completed the 4-hour training.”
Principal Nursing Officer Cheryl Bain said the training sessions will cover various topics that include the bacterial agents that cause the food to be contaminated. Factors such as good hygiene, time and temperature in terms of proper food storage and other scenarios will also be illustrated.
She said individuals applying for food handlers certificates will have to undergo the four-hours of training and then they will be given an oral and written exam to make sure that they are able to articulate the importance of proper food handling.
“The four-hour training speaks to a wide variety of food handling and making food safe for public consumption,” Mrs. Bain said. “It is not only food handling that we will be looking at, we will also be looking at the packaging of food because we have noticed that if food is not properly packaged and stored in the right temperature, it can also lead to some contamination and possible outbreak.”
By LISA S. KING, Freeport News Reporter
