Main topics to be addressed in the workshops are:

• The WHO INFOSAN framework and tools for food safety crisis preparedness and management
  – Obligations, responsibilities and activities of the INFOSAN member states
  – Case studies within INFOSAN framework
• The EU framework and tools for food safety crisis preparedness and management
  – Obligations, responsibilities and activities of the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority and Member States’ competent authorities
  – EU food safety crisis management plan
  – Case studies within IMSOC framework (RASFF and TRACES)
• Global and regional early warning or emerging risk information platforms as source of information about potential crises or incidents
• Crisis-mode operational procedures to speed up effective action during the crisis and to enable coordinated crisis communication
• Common constraints, challenges, weaknesses and good practices.

Target participants

The workshop is intended for staff in charge of food safety controls and crisis management in both EU and non-EU countries:

a) staff of the competent authority/ies involved in contingency planning and operation of contingency plans relating to food crisis incidents and their management;

b) staff of the competent authority/ies designated as contact points within the INFOSAN network for the exchange of information on food safety crisis incidents and management;

Dissemination

The BTSF programme is based on the “train the trainers” approach, and for this reason dissemination of the received knowledge is fundamental for the trainings to have a greater impact. Participants will be requested to commit themselves to disseminate the information received via different methods, i.e. informing colleagues about the information received at the training, distributing the training materials, preparing informative articles in the professional national or, if possible, in international journals, preparing presentations based on the training materials for the staff of national Competent Authorities or other disseminating methods which could be appropriate to share the information received via the BTSF training. During the course participants will be provided with a training package to be used as supporting dissemination material.