The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently awarded the University of Idaho with a $1.2 million federal grant for its Food Safety Center, which will go toward education for food producers about safe practices.
Barbara Petty, interim UI Extension director, said the grant comes from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Food Safety Center, a long-running partnership between UI and Oregon State University, focuses on consumer food safety information and training. It is one of four such programs across the nation.
The UI and Washington State University food science programs merged in 2008 to form the School of Food Science. Barbara Rasco, director of the School of Food Science at Washington State University, said the grant money will be used for educating trainers to provide food safety programs for agricultural industries in the Northwest. Once these trainers are themselves trained, they will be tasked with providing classes and technical services to the agriculture industry.
Rasco said the program has done food safety training for regional industry for decades, so is well qualified to take on these new requirements. The Food Safety Center”s faculty are nationally recognized as leaders in food safety training, particularly Jeff Kronenberg, senior extension specialist in southern Idaho.
“He is one of the key people in the United States, widely recognized for his expertise, particularly with the dairy and potato industry,” Rasco said
Petty said Kronenberg has been the UI extension specialist for the last 15 years, and the goal of his work is to improve the manufacturing process, conduct food safety certifications and provide vocational and technical skill training for industry employees.
Rasco said the grant was prompted by the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, the biggest change to food safety laws in the United States since 1938. The law aimd to update the depression-era regulations that were by then considered obsolete.
Rasco said the updated regulations were prompted by new food safety concerns that have arisen in recent years, particularly concerns about intentional adulteration of food, whether by unscrupulous businesses in order to save money or by terrorists intentionally trying to make people sick.
Rasco said the new law imposed extensive new regulatory requirements for every business that makes food in the U.S. or that wants to sell food from overseas in the country.
The new training program will educate trainers who will provide food safety programs to business owners. The program will help to ensure businesses in the west are able to comply with the new regulations.
Because of the large scale of food production in Idaho, Rasco said helping the industry meet these new standards is of great importance to the state.
Idaho has major producers in dairy, potatoes, beef, aquaculture and wheat, as well as a number of orchards and a developing brewing and winemaking industry.
Rasco said one of the major requirements under the Food Safety Modernization Act is that food producers are able to track the sources of all of their ingredients as far back as they can. They must also have good records of where their food goes in case there needs to be a product recall, either for a quality issue or a safety issue.
There”s also a requirement for a supplier verification program, Rasco said. So if a company buys an ingredient or a raw material from somebody, it has the responsibility of verifying that the ingredient or component was made in a safe manner and has not been adulterated in any way, Rasco said.
Petty said completing these new trainings is an important responsibility, since the new regulations will have a major impact on agriculture, especially on small and midsized farms throughout the U.S..
“It could have gone to many other states,” Petty said. “But University of Idaho extension was the lucky one for this particular project.”
Ryan Locke can be reached at [email protected]