NFA offers food risk training course

Manila, Philippines -  The Food Development Center (FDC) of the National Food Authority (NFA) will conduct a training course on the “Introduction of Risk Analysis and Microbial Risk Assessment (MRA) and the Application of Predictive Microbiology to MRA and HACCP” on Aug. 9-10, 2012 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the FDC Compound, FTI Complex, Taguig City.

Food-borne disease remains a serious and formidable global problem causing great human suffering and significant economic losses. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, up to one third of the population of developed countries may be affected by food-borne diseases each year.

The problem is likely to be even more widespread in developing countries, where food and water-borne diarrheal diseases kill an estimated 2.2 million people each year, most of them children.

Changing global patterns have created an increasingly demanding environment in which an array of food-borne hazards pose risks to health and obstacles to international trade in foods. These risks must be assessed and managed to meet growing and increasingly complex sets of national objectives through a logical and systematic process that is risk analysis. 

An overview of risk analysis will include brief discussion of the three major components: risk management, risk assessment and risk communications. 

Interactive exercise is mainly on risk assessment. Focus on microbial risk assessment will help participants better understand how the hazards in hazard analysis in HACCP should be arrived at, and how the hazard controls are designed.

Computer-generated predictive and probability models used in risk assessment will be described and presented. 

Dr. Manuel M. Garcia, an internationally recognized expert and trainer in microbiology and food safety,  concurrently visiting consultant for the FDC-NFA and a DOST Balik scientist, is the principal resource speaker. He is a former senior research scientist and two-time recipient of the Presidential Award for Outstanding Filipino Overseas. He is currently visiting foreign adviser to FDC, the Natural Sciences Research Institute (NSRI) of UP Diliman, Philippine Coconut Authority and the Canadian Executive Service Organization. Dr. Garcia was elected as corresponding member of the National Academy of Science and Technology in July 2008. 

The course fee is P5,600 per participant inclusive of a training manual, lunch, snacks. 

For further inquiries, please contact Amelia S. Bautista of FDC-NFA, FTI Complex, Taguig City at telephone Nos. 838-4014; 838-4561; 838-4478; 838-4601; Fax No. 838-4016 and 838-4692 and at e-mail address [email protected].