Fee or FREE?

What's the Best Option for Your Business?

From December 2023 it became unlawful for anyone to handle food in an Australian food business without having completed a food safety training course.
To meet this obligation, business owners can direct their staff to complete an online course made available by state and territory governments for free. Alternatively, they can enrol their staff in one of the many courses offered by private sector companies and pay a fee.
So, why pay for food safety training when it’s available for free?
It’s a valid question, but to answer it you first need to understand what led to this situation and why is food safety training so necessary.

 

What Prompted This Issue?

Prior to this, there was no legal obligation for food safety training, just a broad and undefined requirement for food businesses to ensure their food handlers had the knowledge and skills they needed to perform their duties safely.

How this was accomplished was for the business owner to decide. Those that took it seriously invested in formal training, others preferred on-the-job coaching while some did little or no training at all. Meanwhile serious outbreaks of foodborne disease continued, and cases of food poisoning remained at 4 to 5 million a year. This prompted a systematic review of cases that included tracking and tracing. This found that the majority of outbreaks were due to poor food handling by food service businesses, caterers, and food retailers. Following a comprehensive risk analysis, Standard 3.2.2A was added to the Food Standards Code in December 2022. All states and territory governments have since changed their food safety laws to include 3 food safety management tools that were to be implemented by December 2023. One of the these being mandatory food safety training.

 

Who Does This Affect?

The law for mandatory food safety training applies to practically every Australian food business – cafes, takeaway food stores, restaurants, hospitals, childcare centres, aged care facilities plus bakeries, supermarkets, deli’s as well as catering firms. As for who must be trained – it’s anyone involved in the making, cooking, preparing, serving, packing, displaying, storing, or the delivery of food as well as those who clean equipment, utensils, surfaces, or cutlery.

Make no mistake, it’s a huge undertaking – for example - there are approximately 14,000 registered childcare centres in Australia and each employ around 15 staff – that’s an estimated 210,000 people to be trained. When it comes to Cafés, restaurants, and takeaway services it’s estimated to be 680,0000.

To meet this obligation, most food business owners would have little choice but to pay for private sector training. Given the numbers involved the cost would be staggering. Although training expenses are a legitimate tax deduction, the money has to be spent before it can be claimed. The likely impact on business cash flow would no doubt jeopardise the financial viability of many businesses already facing tough economic conditions.

 

You Get What You Pay For

If the decision was based purely on cost, then you’d be mad not to choose the free training option. But it’s not that simple.

They say that in life, you get what you pay for, and this applies equally to food safety training as it does with anything else. In this case it’s a choice between doing the bare minimum and doing what’s in the best interest of your customers/clients with consideration of risk.

I am not suggesting the free training on offer is worthless, far from it. But government environmental health departments are experts in developing policy, regulations and creating administrative processes, they are not leading experts in training and development. The training on offer involves the passive delivery of food safety information. On the plus side the training takes less than an hour to complete, it’s easy to understand, it’s offered in many different languages, and it’s focused on the critical must know rules & principles.

But it’s the building of knowledge not just the exercise of providing information that delivers the greatest results and that requires a vastly different approach to training.

The free training offered has an important part to play as a quick fix stop-gap option with particular benefit for short-term, and temporary staff. It’s also ideal for staff with minimal contact with food or surfaces. As for regular staff – for some it offers a good foundation to be built on with further and more comprehensive professional training.

 

Why Pay?

Just because your business has not been guilty of a foodborne disease outbreak, the risk remains high. To date, 4 to 5 million people in Australian have suffered from this every year, more than 30,000 have been hospitalised, and around 86 have died. The real tragedy is that it could have been avoided.

So, if you are truly serious about food safety and consider it to be a core value of your business then you won’t settle for the bare minimum.

Professional food safety training is an investment designed to protect you clients, your staff, and your business against the risk of a foodborne disease outbreak. Imagine the consequences if you were found responsible for an outbreak of food poisoning and someone lost their life?

 

What Does Money Buy?

I’m not privy to how our competitors operate so I can only answer this question from my own Company perspective. Here’s what your money get’s you:

• Research conducted of legislation and government guidelines along with various reports, and research studies.
• High quality images and illustrations that support learning.
• Content developed with the help of leading experts in their field.
• Training that delivers nationally recognised knowledge and skills.
• A structured learning program that allows students to learn at their own pace.
• Training methodology that considers the diverse ways people learn and designed to engage them.