Cooking Instruction Validation workshop at CAFRE’s Loughry campus

By Hayley O`Neill,

Food Technologist, CAFRE

Loughry campus, CAFRE, welcomed learners from food companies across Northern Ireland on Friday, January 27, to its one-day practical workshop in Cooking Instruction Validation.

Instruction validation is the use of a methodology, procedure, or protocol to help ensure that the cooking or heating instructions for a food product are developed and tested to achieve a ‘safely’ heated product.

Customer feedback identified the need for a practical cooking instruction validation workshop.

Food safety legislation places the responsibility of accurate food labelling with the food business operator.

This workshop provides learners with the necessary information and skills to validate and generate their own internal cooking instructions.

The workshop introduces the concept of cooking instruction validation and enables learners to develop an understanding of all control, monitoring and corrective action procedures to ensure accurate labelling instructions are provided to consumers.

Programme Manager Hayley O’Neill says: “There is a requirement in the industry in relation to companies completing their own cooking validations within their own businesses.

“This practical workshop is beneficial as they can learn how appliance calibrations and product validations are conducted to enable accurate cooking or heating instructions to be provided on product labels.”

Attendee at the January workshop Jemma Waters, from Sofina Foods, Cookstown, says: “I thoroughly enjoyed the Cooking Validation course held at Loughry, I gained a greater understanding of the legislation surrounding cooking validations and the standard that is required to be upheld.

“The course highlighted the importance of calibrating cooking equipment and the importance of validating products before a product launch.

“The course had a great amount of practical work which was very beneficial alongside theory.

“The cooking validation course also highlighted the importance of due diligence within the food industry when developing cooking instructions.

“The course also provided me with the opportunity to communicate with other NPD technicians in the NI food industry, which was also great learning. I am now able to apply the learnings into my everyday work.”

n The next workshop will be delivered at Loughry campus, CAFRE, on Friday, March 24.

n Book your place now by visiting www.cafre.ac.uk/cooking-heating-instruction-validation

n Booking lines close on Friday, March 17. For further information contact Hayley O’Neill, email Haley.O’Neill@daerani.gov.uk or phone 028 86 768128.