September 20, 2017
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the availability of an online food safety training module
for carriers engaged in the transportation of food by rail or motor vehicle in the United States. FDA is offering this training free of charge to help carriers meet the requirements of the FDA’s Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food Rule (Sanitary Transportation Rule).
The Sanitary Transportation Rule requires rail and motor vehicle carriers covered by the rule to provide food safety training to their personnel engaged in transportation operations. The training must provide personnel with an awareness of 1) potential food safety problems, 2) basic sanitary practices, and 3) carrier responsibilities. The carrier training requirement applies when the shipper and carrier have agreed, in a written contract, that the carrier is responsible, in whole or part, for sanitary conditions during transportation operations.
A
carrier may wish to offer this FDA module to their operations personnel as a means of satisfying the training requirements of the Sanitary Transportation Rule or to compliment other training offered by the carrier. Carriers may also elect to train their own personnel or to acquire training through a third party vendor to satisfy the training requirement. The training is available on FDA’s website.
If your organization maintains its own Learning Management System (LMS), your administrator can download the course files and import them into your LMS. This allows you to track completion data automatically in your system.
Individuals
who complete the online module will be able to generate a certificate of completion from the website. Carriers subject to the training requirements must establish and maintain records documenting the training of operations personnel, which they may be asked to provide to FDA upon request. The first compliance date for businesses covered by the Sanitary Transportation rule was April 6, 2017. The compliance date for small businesses covered by the rule is April 6, 2018.
More information regarding the Sanitary Transportation Rule, and other FSMA
provisions, is available at FDA.gov.
