Through a new initiative that will help to promote safe food in the various departmental canteens of the Central Government, the FSSAI has conducted training for Food Safety Supervisors. These canteens provide and serve food to thousands of government employees daily. This training is part of FSSAI’s recently launched programme SNF@ Workplace (safe and nutritious food at the workplace). SNF@ Workplace is an initiative which aims to educate the people running canteens as well as the workforce eating in these canteens about safe and healthy diets and the need to develop an ecosystem that will provide safe and nutritious food in workplaces.
SNF@ Workplace also encourages employers to adopt a systematic approach to ensure safe and wholesome food for their employees. This initiative should be seen both as a measure of employee welfare and a means of increasing workplace productivity. The SNF programme outlines a comprehensive approach and points out specific measures that the workplace administration can take in order to create a system that will enable an environment that ensures safe and nutritious foods at the workplace.
The initiative also recommends specific best practices and guidelines that the canteen establishments can adopt so food served in the workplace is safe and wholesome. There are also several important dos and don’ts and useful tips and suggestions which can be adopted by employees to eat and stay healthy in the workplace. Help provided through the initiative lets them learn how to make informed choices about the food they consume.
The Government, as one of the largest employers in the country, has adopted the SNF@ workplace initiative. More than 80 trainees from governmental departmental canteens attended the training and capacity building workshop on Food Safety and Hygiene Practices. This was the first phase of training and the objective is to cover all departmental canteens over a period of time.
The trainees were mobilized by Training Partner (Green Food Consultancy) of FSSAI through Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) and other Departments/Ministries for ensuring maximum participation. To ensure that all the government canteens are licensed/ registered under the FSS Regulations, FSSAI also facilitated an on-the-spot registration on the day of training and distributed Food Safety Display Boards to registered canteens.
The training programme institutionalized for various central government departmental canteens and cafeterias is integrated under Food Safety Training & Certification (FoSTaC) programme. The aim of this programme is to ensure that Food Business Operators have at least one trained and certified Food Safety Supervisor for every 25 food handlers or part thereof in each of their premises. The training programme was delivered by trained subject matter experts in association with Training Partners impaneled by FSSAI for this purpose.
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