Education in the Food Industry

 While there are so many blogs out there that push for self-cooking and self-reliance on food, there are almost certainly staples which will only remain available through the stores.  Having enough storage in your own home through the winter is costly and an investment that not everyone can make at any one time.  We're also living in a time where space is getting more valuable.  Taking for example Nampa, Idaho where I've lived for the past twenty years, seeing the city expand on all sides by three miles and grow out into the towns around it has shown me that we're expanding at an incredible pace and this idea that we can make our own personal room for all of our needs is becoming less of a reality.

I bring up this issue of space to highlight the needs that have sparked our food industry here in the U.S. and more or less the rest of the world to grow to accommodate the need of a bigger population.  Along with this, the population is growing more insightful on what they eat with a new diet being introduced every year and consumers becoming more educated about what sort of nutrients the food they eat provides.  This sparked a reform in the last decade which saw a big change in the way products were labeled, redirecting some of our dietary needs to areas that needed to be highlighted, and removing those that the average American diet became more accustomed to meeting our basic dietary needs.

 From: Getty Images

With this growth in the food industry came regulations, and with them, training.  While much training is performed through 3rd party organizations such as TechHelp here in Idaho, we also have programs available at the University of Idaho and even our community college in Twin Falls, College of Southern Idaho, that offer degrees related to food science and food processing technology.  An aside to this is to note that the Bachelors of Applied Science degree available at CSI is also at community college tuition rates, a very great incentive to attract someone interest in the industry to attend these courses and get a rounded degree in all aspects of the food industry.

One of the aspects that comes with a career in the industry is the multitude of Continuing Education available.  Regulations have the possibility of changing and with modifications to food regulations in the last year, someone is required to be a manufacturing plants HACCP or Food Safety coordinator, a position that could be filled by the Plant Manager, Quality Manager, Operations Manager, or even a specialist in this area.  Manufacturing facilities also undergo training and maintain their knowledge through these, and can participate in trainings through certified and applicable courses such as Food Safety and Preventative Controls Alliance or the Produce Safety Alliance.

In practice with maintaining the standards expected by the Food and Drug Administration, who perform annual audits on facilities, companies also may choose to undergo a 3rd party audit.  These 3rd party audits are performed based on the companies preference, but are also influenced by customer preferences as well.  One of these auditing bodies follow a GFSI, or Global Food Safety Initiative, Standard which highlights on successful complete that a company follows a particular scheme of manufacturing that is recognized in the food manufacturing world of best practices.   

 From: Dan Charles/NPR

While most of us only see what's on the store shelves and don't have the knowledge of what goes on to get that product on the shelf aside from what gets posted on blogs or on the news, I've found that slowly making my way from the front (grocery store, restaurant, caterer, regulatory specialist, quality specialist) and back up the supply chain of the industry has given me a greater understanding of where food comes from and what it means to keep the industry moving, not just to provide food on the shelves but also to strive to bring meaningful food instead of just profitable business when it comes to selling products to customers.  When you're considering the industry you'd like to work in I push you to think about the requirements other positions face and what can be done to make sure you have the most educated workforce available to make sure that safe products are the only products you put on the shelves for others.