New to Forum-lot of questions
Good Morning,
I have been working part time as an SQF Assistant in my family owned chocolate re-processor company. I may soon become the "acting" practitioner as we will be in need of hiring a new practitioner. Question....I have on-line HACCP training with the HACCP Alliance seal on my certificate. Does that qualify for "external" HACCP training as described in section 2.9.4.1 stating that practitioners must have external training and others involved may be external, on line or from within your company? I am thinking no, but have been advised yes....just would like to clarify.
Also...we need to begin protein swab testing for allergen management. I see numerous products available...3M, Neogen, others. Can anyone experienced with these recommend one?
Lastly, any recommendations of how to hire a HACCP/SQF/chocolate manufacturing experienced Practitioner? Have been locally advertising without success.
Thank you so much for any input! Look forward to hearing from the community!
Kind Regards,
Terri Szrama
I have used 3 M Clean Trace in the past and liked them. As far as hiring someone, that's a million dollar question. There are several sites that are for food careers that you can try advertising on. Careers in Food is one of them that I know of.
yes, your HACCP certificate is valid in the eyes of SQF.
TerriS, as someone above posted, your HACCP certificate is good and will satisfy SQF requirements. As for protein swab testing, I use the NeoGen AccuClean swabs for verifying my cleaning/sanitizing program. If you go to www.neogen.com and type in 9670 in the search box it will give you the link to the swabs I use, or you can use whatever fits your program best. As for hiring SQF practitioners, good luck with that. They are hard to come by. I would suggest if you had a person or two in the company that is very detail oriented and conscientious, you may be able to have them take the online SQF course and exam. I have done this here where I work. If you're interested, go to www.nsf.org for info. If you need any more help or want to bounce ideas off someone, let me know and I will give you my e-mail address. Good luck! Tad
Hello Terri!
As someone answered above your certificate is acceptable.
As for protein swabbing I have been using Hygiena products for the last 5 years. They work great and they have lots of varieties which also vary length of time for results.
I would recommend using LinkedIN to search for individuals that meet your criteria, contacting a recruiting company to let them know of the opportunity you have, or you can try contacting a university (career center, food science department).