Food safety training for vendors at PGI

ibune News Service

Chandigarh, September 14

As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, Hindustan Unilever Limited organised Food Safety Training and Certification (FOSTAC) training of food vendors for implementing the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) supported programme on “Eat Right Campus” at the PGI here today.

The PGI is the first medical institute in India to organise FOSTAC training, wherein all food business operators inside the campus were approached for this purpose. Various officers in charge of the following eating outlets, including hospital kitchen, upper/lower cafeteria, hostel messes and private food business operators, on the campus were asked to actively participate in the programme. Fifty of them attended the workshop.

Dr Amarjeet Singh, Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGIMER, was the coordinator for this venture.

The star attraction of the event was the presence of specialists in the field who attended the event such as JP Kant, faculty from the CIHM, Sector 42, Dr Geeta Mehra, faculty from MCM-DAV, Sector 36, and Dr Pushkar and Dr Ishwarpreet Kaur.

This training also co-hosted the 15th capacity building and training workshop for street food vendors. The trainees received free hygiene kit, which included aprons, gloves, head covers and easy to understand IEC material. They also received free medical check-up by doctors of the community medicine, PGI.

The workshop was attended by more than 130 participants. These included 40 doctors, medical/nursing/food technology/hotel management students, paramedical, 50 staff members of eating outlets inside the PGI campus and 19 street food vendors of Chandigarh.