Seminar on Training of Food Handlers in Food Safety

By 1 2 1 News Reporter

Chandigarh 25^th October: --- Department of Dietetics and School of Public Health hosted a ICMR sponsored  seminar on Food Safety today in Auditorium of Advance Eye cente, PGIMER. It was titled as 'Training the Trainers: Implementation of Food Hygiene Related Provisions of New FSSR 2011 in Eating Establishments of Hospitals'. Dr Amarjeet Singh was the organizing secretary and Mrs Mridula Wattas was the convenor of the seminar.The seminar brought on one platform all the relevant stakeholders who are dealing with food safety at various levels.This first of its kind eventsought to bridge the gap between policy making, implementation, monitoring and feedback regarding food safety in various settings. The focus of the event was on training of Food Handlers in food safety as a necessary step to implement FSSR 2011.

The seminar was inaugurated by Dr AK Gupta, Medical Superintendent, PGIMER. It was attended by Dieticians of Government Medical College, Sector 32, GMSH-16, Fortis Hospital. TK Razdan, Principal  of Central Institute Hotel Management, Sector 42 along with his faculty also participated in the event.   More than 100 participants attended the seminar. Sukhwinder Singh, from the Food Safety Office, UT, Chandiagrh also addressed the participants. A comedy movie on food safety developed by Dr Puja Dudeja was also  screened. Free refreshments and certificate of food training course were given to all the participants. A panel discussion was also organized during the seminar. The panelists included Dr Amarjeet Singh, Dr RK Sharma, TK Razdan, Ms Sonia Gandhi( Fortis Hospital), Ms Sunita Malhotra. A quiz contest on Food Safety  was also organized by Dr Puja Dudeja. The seminar marked the beginning of the intervention phase of her PhD research work, which she is doing under the guidance of Dr Amarjeet Singh, Professor School of Public Health. In her PhD , Dr Dudeja is focussing upon the status of conformance to FSSR,2011. As  a follow up to the seminar, food handlers in various canteens,mess, eating outlets of PGIMER will be trained on food safety issues on Saturday. They will be given a booklet on food safety in Hindi, free of cost.