Press Release: Food safety: European Commission seeks ways to further improve its successful Better Training for Safer Food initiative

Since 2006, the EU has trained 23,000 professionals worldwide to improve food safety through its Better Training for Safer Food initiative (BTSF). Now, the European Commission is seeking to further improve this initiative. It is launching a dialogue with all key stakeholders, including the African Union, starting on 18 November 2010 at a two-day high-level conference in Brussels. A working document recently adopted by the Commission on the BTSF programme serves as the basis for discussions. It identifies the challenges BTSF is facing and a series of possible actions to overcome them – including, for example, a study to accurately estimate training demand. The Conference will analyse the working document's proposals, both in terms of BTSF's core training activities within the EU and third countries and in light of actions taken in Africa on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) issues within the Better Training for Safer Food in Africa programme (BTSF Africa).