FOOD SAFETY TRAINING
COORDINATION AND SUPPORT CENTRE

       Bulgaria accessed the EU on 1 January 2007. One of the preliminary conditions for free movement of goods and particularly foods was that each EU member state should guarantee the safety of those products. For this purpose EU developed a comprehensive set of regulations for food safety provision and Bulgaria has to comply with the requirements of the new European legislation.

This will require a substantial (re-) training of quality managers at companies, organizations for wholesale and retail trade, restaurants and hotels, as well as inspectors from the different divisions of the Ministry of Health (MH) and Ministry of Agriculture and Food (MAF). The employed inspectors have to be retrained on the new approaches. The private sector engaged in production, processing and trading in foods faces the serious task to prepare their entire staff for the modified paradigm of food safety developing with the EU accession. The newly trained professionals in the field of medicine, agriculture and veterinary matters should have the adequate knowledge, skills and approach to contribute to the Bulgarian national efforts in further food safety provision. The curricula of Bulgarian training institutions and centers should be revised. All efforts in elaboration of educational and training programs have to comply with legal requirements, to follow a set standard and to be unambiguous.

For this purpose, as a joint effort of MH and MAF and with the support of a Bulgarian-Dutch project MAT04/BG/9/1, was established a Center for coordination and support of training on food safety control. The Center, engaging the available resources, staff and services will contribute to covering the current and further requirements for a system for food safety provision in Bulgaria, complying with EU postulates. This will be realized through support in the elaboration of an adequate, effective and efficacious national curriculum for training in food safety, comprehensive and guaranteeing provision of the required training to all players in Bulgarian food industry in order to comply with EU requirements.