Increasing Food Safety Preparedness of Small and Emerging Food Businesses with Targeted Food Safety Training

There is strong consumer demand for local, value-added food products; however, these smaller scale food manufacturing operations tend to face more challenges in understanding and complying with food safety regulations, specifically, the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Preventive Controls for Human Food (PCHF) rule. An eight-module educational program was developed to introduce food safety throughout the product development life cycle and included concepts related to the FSMA PCHF rule. The program was offered in person (n = 2) and virtually (n = 6) to 143 participants in total, who were mostly early-stage food developers. Most (74%, n = 90) had little to no prior food safety-related training and experience. The majority (93%, n = 90) agreed they will apply the knowledge and skills learned in the course to food applications, such as developing food safety plans, label review, and good manufacturing practices. Self-rated level understanding for each module ranged from 4.4 to 4.6 on a 5-point Likert scale. Overall, participants felt better prepared to conduct various food safety activities after taking the course, supporting the need for nonmandatory training opportunities to enhance FSMA PCHF regulatory compliance. These types of training may be important for small-scale operations to improve the learning outcome and regulatory compliance.