I am getting a much increased demand for Intermediate Food Safety courses just now, and requests for enhanced allergen training and coaching within the course, sadly in the wake of recent tragic events. All our training is bespoke to our clients and their systems, from simple implementation of SFBB, to full blown HACCP plans, and everything in between.
The Intermediate course (I use CIEH accreditation by choice) is my absolute favourite to teach, and has been ever since it was originally launched way back last century (!) In fact I used to write all the exam papers and questions for CIEH from 1996 for a good number of years and into the new millennium. Oddly enough the course (or at least the way I teach it) hasn’t changed a bit in all this time, although of course the content has updated. Its essentially not so much a food safety course, more a supervisory skills course, but set in a practical food safety context. (Incidentally, in health and safety too I was one of the original designers for this middle layer of training).
I always recall the first time I introduced an immersive exercise designed to teach the power of good supervision in food safety, and the risks of poor supervision:
This was before VACCP and TACCP were words on our lips – and before sabotage was a subject we taught in any great detail. On an in-house course, nevertheless, I created an exercise to infiltrate a (real) rival company and ruin their reputation by covert poor supervision – E.coli O157 being our weapon of choice in those days as a ‘new’ and upcoming risk. The delegates took the exercise to heart, producing sample press releases, news items, and evidence for the court case. and some years later I was fortunate to deliver training for the rival company!!! You can guess what happened then???? This was training at the edge of creativity!!!! All done in the best possible taste!!!! (Nowadays I vary the exercise between campylobacter, listeria, allergens etc. dependent on the client – and we introduce VACCP and TACCP as appropriate).
These types of exercise may be a little controversial, and need skilful handling, but they help the good practice sessions come alive, and you find that your learners either roll out their learning from the course in their own words (always very inspiring), or they show up the sessions you haven’t taught well enough (equally as valuable). And the more creative and slightly safer ideas found their way into some of the original CIEH training packs which are still on my shelf, if not on yours!
Have you got a favourite immersive training exercise you would like to share? Email me on david@davidnewsum.com if you have.
Also, if this is the kind of training you want to bring into your organisation, contact us now for a personalised illustration and no-obligation meeting, on your journey to better food safety management. 07973 549906 or david@davidnewsum.com
Happy training !
