Project News

The captioned two-day online seminar was conducted on 12th and 13th August 2021, aimed to increase district food inspectors' competence, as a continuation of the collaboration webinar between Badan POM and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) last December. Badan POM is responsible for coordinating food control in Indonesia and has a role in ensuring the quality of district food inspectors for safe food production and distribution by SMEs.

Around 70 percent of SMEs (39.3 million from 56 million SMEs) in Indonesia is related to food. The source of food outbreak itself is 50 percent from home industries, 21 percent from street food and the rest is from processed food and catering. Proving that SMEs are still facing many challenges for food safety compliance, for instance, lack of competence for complete applications of good manufacturing practice standards, improper record keeping/documentation, and hygiene/sanitation control of facilities. Hence, public food inspector is needed with responsibilities in which all these primary works should be ensured.

This time the seminar focused on how to conduct monitoring for food SMEs, to provide details of more practical and technical subjects related to food inspection. More subjects are addressed, such as how to increase food-safety awareness of SMEs, what are rewards and punishment systems for SMEs that exist in Japan and/or other countries, SME food safety and quality control in Japan and other countries, also technical aspect in terms of food processing controls including hygiene/sanitation practices.

The seminar was started with special opening remarks delivered by no other than Head of Badan POM herself, Mrs. Penny K. Lukito. Then, all 8 (eight) relevant speakers were arranged to give lectures regarding the aforementioned subjects; those are: Dra. Rita Endang, Apt., M.Kes., Deputy of Processed Food Control, Badan POM; Mr Hiroki Tanabe, Senior Manager Food Safety Department, Hokkaido Prefecture government; Dr Sally Johnston, Director Programmes, New Zealand Food Safety, Ministry for Primary Industries; Mr Keita Minami, CEO of Champion's Curry, Co. Ltd.; Ms Noriko Iseki, Senior food safety officer, Food Safety Inspection Division of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare; Dr Haruo Negishi, Professor at Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Chubu University, Japan; Mr Noriyuki Karyu, Executive Secretary of the Committee for HACCP & Food Safety Training/Education; and Mr Takashi Miyashita, Visiting Professor of University of Tokyo / General Manager, Food Safety Science Center, Quality Assurance Division, Kewpie Corporation.

Approximately 900 DFI from 73 Balai POM in provinces, health offices from 514 districts or cities and representative of technical implementation units of Badan POM participated in the seminar.

Photo session of speakers and DFI representatives from some provinces in Indonesia