Finally the food safety training lab has come to full application. It has finally been set up officially after being in operation for one year. The International Food Safety Training Lab (IFSTL) was founded to train scientists in different ways to test food safety. This course is open to almost anyone who would like to take part in it and the majority of the science students are foreign. This lab, which was opened in September 2011, is located in the University of Maryland with the partnership of the Food Safety and Drug Administration. Some of the FDA scientists usually participate in the teaching of the lab students. They teach the students using the government standards of testing.
They are taught various testing methods for food safety, including meat safety and investigations of bacteria like E coli, aflatoxins in crops and some pesticide residues in fresh foods. They are taught all these things and much more. The students get to have interactions, one on one, with Food Safety and Drugs Safety specialists and also USDA and EPA specialists. The United States decided on this program because it seems that less attention is being paid to the food that is imported and also the food being consumed in the market.
With this course, there will be more hope that less contaminated food will pass through to the consumer market. With the first lab being built, there is hope that other labs will crop up, as there has been some confirmation of the opening of a new IFSTL lab in York, England in January 2013. The UK lab will be run by the Federal Food and Environment Research Agency.
Leave A Comment