The Afrotropic Cocoa Processing Company in Ghana celebrated World Food Safety Day again this year, with a pep talk and videos. Staff were also issued with a specially printed World Food Safety Day T-shirt.

The videos will continue to be shown in communal areas of the facility for several months. They include a mixture of food safety lectures from the Managing Director and operational managers, videos on basic food hygiene practices and World Food Safety Day videos produced  by FAO and WHO.

The pep talk covered a  number of subjects. Staff were told about the World Food Safety Day theme of this year, Food standards save lives”, and the World Food Safety Day slogan, “Food safety is everyone’s business”.

Regarding food standards, staff were told that “the law sets out rules that cover the preparation, handling and labelling of food supplied for human consumption” and these are rules staff must apply in their work. At Afrotropic global “BRC” standards are applied, as well as standards developed by the national Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of Ghana.

The point was made that food standards are also important at home, including hand hygiene.

During the pep talk, staff were also told it is important to have a of “always producing food without contamination”, a food safety culture. As such, the working environment must always be clean and personal hygiene must be a priority.

Photo © Afrotropic Cocoa Processing Company