In partnership with the Allergen Bureau, Advancing Food Safety (AFS) has developed a frontline training program to help industry gain maximum benefit when using the AFGC Allergen Forum’s VITAL Tool.

In late 2007 AFS ran a number of pilot training programs with Allergen Bureau Member Companies to ensure the delivery of training for the online VITAL calculator could be easily understood by users of the tool. This course is now available in a half-day format.

Dates for the upcoming AFS VITAL Training courses are as follows:

Brisbane 19 May 2008
Melbourne 20 May 2008
Perth 4 June 2008
Sydney 13 June 2008

Courses are also available in New Zealand, on request.

Last year’s pilots highlighted a need for an additional Allergen Management training course, to incorporate risk assessment strategies that minimise allergen cross-contact from the research and development phase for new products, through to manufacturing, distribution and display of food products. This one day course has now been successfully introduced in both Australia and New Zealand. It complements the half day VITAL awareness training course and includes the scientifically-based standardised labelling system that has been developed in conjunction with the VITAL Tool.

Feedback from all sessions held to-date has been very positive, highlighting the food industry’s desire to better understand raw material allergen cross-contact risks, as well as in-process allergen cross-contact risk management.

More information on both the VITAL and the Allergen Management training courses can be obtained from www.haccptown.com.