Certificate Award Ceremony for Master Trainers in Food Control, 27 Feb 2016

A total number of 90 officials have been honored with the official certificates to be recognised as ‘Master Trainers’ on Food Control, at the award giving ceremony, hosted by Dutch funded FAO project on “Improving Food Safety in Bangladesh’, organized at Krishibid Institute of Bangladesh on Saturday, 27 February 2016.

The recipients of the certificate came from Departments of Livestock Services, Fisheries, and Agriculture Extension. Mr Md Maksudul Hasan Khan, Secretary, Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock and Chief Guest of the ceremony awarded the certificates to the Master Trainers, and praised the group effort that the three line departments had jointly shown with FAO support, hoping the opportunities for scaling up this initiative would now be explored.

The extensive training session, certified by NOCN, UK, a leading provider of productivity-linked technical services, maintained a high standard, and made sure that certificates were awarded only to those passing a series of assessments throughout the programme.

During the six-day long training session, first four days focused on guidelines, prescribing good practices at all stages of the food chain; two days were devoted exclusively to the topic of training others from different sectors. Later, the master trainers conducted training for around one hundred (100) ‘Lead Trainers’ from each sector. The lead trainers also shared their expertise to five hundred (500) 'lead farmers' in 25 Upazilas. The impacts of training on good practices are now being monitored by district and upazila officers through tablet PCs in real time and record books.

In his opening remarks, Mr Sridhar Dharmapuri, Officer–in-Charge of the FAO Food Safety Programme stated that FAO has been facilitating cross-sectoral collaboration by working with different ministries and agencies with a stake in food safety as well as civil society and the private sector. Mr Mike Dillon, Senior Value Chain Consultant, FAO, explained the methodology adopted for capacity building and fostering behavior change among farmers that led to higher incomes and safer produce.

The FAO Representative in Bangladesh, Mr Mike Robson, thanked the Government of Bangladesh for recognizing that food safety needs to be incorporated through appropriate control mechanisms along the food chain. These measures contributed to mitigating the consequences of poor hygiene and sanitation, made easy to implement by farmers and achieved business benefits. Mr Robson hoped that such efforts in the agricultural sector and their sustainability will contribute to Bangladesh becoming a middle income country by 2021.

The Directors General of all three departments (Livestock, Fisheries, and Extension) were also present to hear experiences of the field officers, and committed to ensuring continuous implementation of the controls required for food safety and to disseminating the message as widely as possible.

With the financial support of Government of the Netherlands, and collaboration of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, FAO Food Safety Programme, due to complete in 2018, is working with the key line Ministries involved in food production, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, in strengthening national capacity to implement key controls for food safety in three sub-sectors - horticulture, fisheries and poultry.