Clodagh Fitzgerald is Honorary Chair of the National Hygiene Partnership (NHP). Here, she discusses their work and developments to update training programmes
The National Hygiene Partnership (NHP) was formed in 1995 after the EU Council Directive 93/43/EEC on food safety standards was published. This flagged significant changes in food preparation standards and practices across the hospitality and catering sectors. Today, the voluntary organisation has 13 member organisations, including the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, safefood, Teagasc, the Restaurant Association of Ireland and the National Standards Authority of Ireland. “In 1995 a small group of us got together on a voluntary basis to address the fact that there was no organised training in food safety, despite there being a legal obligation to do so. Furthermore, there was no standardisation of trainers, so we created a licensing programme to redress this and provided a management training programme for the hospitality sector. Today, our trainers organise courses for the public and for larger organisations, and this programme has also been integrated in some college courses.” The NHP also works closely with safefood on an ongoing basis and has a member of safefood on the management committee.
Each year, the NHP hosts a large training seminar for their trainers and invited guests (including environmental health officers and university lecturers), and in April 2015 and April 2016 this event was held at the Aviva Stadium to mark the beginning and end of the NHP’s 20th anniversary year. “The Minister for Health at the time - Leo Varadkar - officially launched the seminar last year and this year we had the CEO of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Dr Pamela Byrne, open the event.” A key initiative at this event is the announcement of the Student of the Year Award. “This is awarded to the student who has been the highest achiever in our NHP management of food safety programme within that year,” Clodagh explains. “It is a huge honour.”
Commenting on recent developments, Clodagh notes: “In the past year we have updated our food safety management and HACCP programme, which is now completely in line with European best practice for food safety training in the catering sector. Making sure our trainers are kept up to date and that they can communicate that knowledge is of critical importance.”
For more information see www.nhp.ie
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