Center for Agribusiness and Rural Development Foundation

CARD Food Safety Department Manager, Zaruhi Davtyan, attended the ISO 22000 Lead Auditor training held in Tbilisi, Georgia, from May 28 to June 1. This training will help CARD continue to build its capacity and have specialists that can provide ISO 22000 food safety consulting services.

Recently, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, launched a new project that aims to improve the food safety system in Armenia. To achieve this goal, the IFC intends to build the local capacity of consulting organizations and through them assist food processors in the implementation of food safety management systems. The Project Management has already had several meetings with CARD and has discussed possible points of collaboration, and, as a first step, IFC invited CARD specialists to attend the training in Georgia.

The course was registered with the International Register of Certified Auditors (IRCA) and was conducted by Bureau Veritas. The course covered Food safety Issues; an overview of Food safety Management Systems; What to look for in a Food safety Management System; Auditing Techniques; What to look for in Management Responsibility; What to look for in Communication; What to look for in Planning safe products; What to look for in Updating and Improvement Accreditation Issues; and Practical Exercises and Feedback.

Training was attended by 13 private consultants, including 11 consultants from Georgia and 2 consultants from Armenia. All students successfully completed both the examination and the continuous assessment and were awarded a certificate of Successful Completion that satisfies the formal training requirements for IRCA FSMS Auditor Certification.

Trainings conducted as part of this project will build capacity for CARD food safety specialists to better understand the ISO 22000 standard and food safety management issues, how to plan an audit using a set of auditing criteria, how to successfully execute a food safety management systems audit, and how to create clear, concise and relevant audit reports and communicate those reports to the client.

Under the auspices of the World Wide Sires (WWS) Emerging Markets Program (EMP) funded by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), the US Accelerated Genetics Specialist, Humberto Rivera, conducted seminars, consultations, and analyses on cattle herd reproductive and genetic improvements in Sisian, in the Syunik region.