Hi Simon
I am a Quality Manager in Australia where this concept orginated. It was developed by a company that has undergone some major chances over the last 10 years and was founded by Ross and Debbie Peters, two people very highly respected in Food Safety in Australia.
Originally the company was called Food Operations and was primarily dealing in food safety auditing and training. Around 2003-4 (not sure of the dates exactly) the company sold off the auditing side of the business to focus more on training/consulting and that was when the company became, AFS - Advancing Food Safety. This was also the time HACCPTown was establised, not sure exactly what happened there though...don't think it quite worked out as the original idea was intended. As a previous poster said "it was rather childlike". The site was then abondoned and that is why now when you click on your attached link you are redirected to the AFS website.
I have attended many training programs with AFS and they are indeed a great training organisation. I have also used some of their trainers to come into businesses that I have worked for and conduct training and HACCP awareness to shop floor level employees with a great deal of success. The trainers and founders are all very talented, and highly knowledgable people, not to mention just down right lovely.
I believe, AFS also have branches into Asia, New Zealand, and North America.
As another poster mentioned their is an awards type scenario run by AFS. Annually within Australia AFS run a HACCP conference, which combines some training, conferences, discussion based conference, presentations by leaders in Australian food industry and also an awards ceremony to acknowledge those people within the Australian food industry that are making great contributions, discoveries etc.
I hope this helps to clear up the issue of HACCPTown and exactly what it is or was (personally glad to see the little lorry gone)
Narelle
