The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Food Processing Center is expanding its international reach with involvement in a new initiative to help Central America and the Caribbean strengthen food safety efforts.
Rolando Flores, director of the center and head of UNL's Department of Food Science and Technology, is part of an advisory group for the new Regional Food Inspectors School, sponsored by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture.
Central American nations are trying to open, maintain and expand food-export markets and need to ensure they're following the same food-inspection regulations, IICA said in a briefing. The food inspectors school aims to provide this background in a region that has been troubled by a high incidence of foodborne disease and where governments typically have not prioritized food safety in the past.
"A professional inspector cadre would enable the countries of the region to improve public health, help modernize their regulations and contribute to eventual recognition from trading partners of the region's attention to food-export safety," the IICA said.
"This is the first of this type of training in Latin America," said Flores, one of six members of the advisory group and the only one from the United States.
The advisory group will help design the project to establish the training program, which will be offered face-to-face and online and then will assign responsibilities for the teaching materials to member universities.
Flores said the project is an example of the international reputation the FPC and FST department have. "This speaks to the importance of our work at UNL," he said.
The FPC also is taking its better process control food safety training to Colombia and Guatemala on the recommendation of the Food and Drug Administration.
Flores said the FPC and Food Science and Technology Department also are starting a new one-year non-degree food processing management distance program for people who work in the food industry.
"Food science is very dynamic. It's a very direct, very applied science," Flores said. "We are going beyond Nebraska and the United States."
The Food Processing Center is part of the university's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.