RAJSHAHI, July 20, 2018 (BSS)- Promotion of good manufacturing practices
in factories can be the vital means of ensuring safety of processed foods
aiming to protect public health from various chronic diseases.
Generating competent workforce is precondition to promoting good
manufacturing practices in factories and that is why emphasis should be given
on bringing all the factory workers under requisite training.
Experts came up with this observation while addressing the closing session
of two-day training on ‘Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)’ at PRAN Factory
in Natore yesterday.
The training focused on GMP for quality control, food safety, production,
storage, maintenance and housekeeping.
SNV Netherlands Development Organisation with support from European
Commission arranged the training under the ‘Improving consumer awareness and
access to certified safe tomato and mango products in Bangladesh project’.
Chaired by Director of Bangladesh Food Safety Authority Mahboob Alam, the
session was addressed, among others, by BSTI Regional Director Engineer Selim
Reza, SNV Project Coordinator Mahbub Ullah and its Monitoring and Evaluation
Advisor Dr Rajwanul Haque, Agro-processing Trainer Nurul Islam, PRAN General
Manager Hazrat Ali and Lead Auditor of Bureau Veritas Masud Hasan.
More than 35 workers and staff of agro processing companies like PRAN,
Kishwan and Sajeeb as well as officials of Bangladesh Standards and Testing
Institution (BSTI) joined the training.
The four-year project is being implemented in 16 upazilas of Rajshahi
and Natore districts involving 10,000 mango and tomato farmers. At least 50
percent of the domestically processed tomato and mango products would be
certified safe at the end of the project.
In the training, the participants were given ideas on pathogens,
traceability and record keeping, mango harvesting materials, post-harvest
disease management, grading, sorting, storage, cleaning, washing, packaging,
loading, transportation, unloading, quality assessment procedures and
marketing.