UL Food Safety will help mitigate risk by employing science-based processes to help address industry concerns, new government regulations and heightened consumer awareness of food safety issues. The new offering builds on UL’s 117-year history of advancing public safety through the creation of actionable solutions beginning with a training curriculum through UL University. The training program is the foundation for a larger portfolio of services under development including traceability, validation and testing services.

UL Food Safety is launching the training platform with the first of three courses, “Food Safety Culture,” which is designed to guide food industry executives through the process of creating an organizational culture to ensure food products are safe and meet consumer and regulatory requirements. It also establishes a framework for corporate management responsibility, communication of food safety objectives to all company employees and continuous improvement in Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points (HACCP) and overall food safety systems. 

“HACCP is a step in the right direction, but it is not the final destination. It is up to the leadership in the food industry to create a culture of food safety as well as to keep up with the science,” says Frank Yiannas, vice chair of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) and author of the book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System.

The UL Food Safety training program will include succeeding courses on “Food Safety Awareness,” which provides actionable information to empower and equip food industry workers to the “first line of defense” in food safety, and “Evaluation of HACCP & Food Safety Preventative Control Programs,” which provides mid-level management and auditors with the practical knowledge to make effective decisions in critical situations. Both programs will be available Fall 2011.