The Department of Science & Technology Negros Oriental Provincial Science & Technology has taken disaster-preparedness one notch higher in the Province when it conducted a technology training for Emergency Food Reserve production.
Around 25 participants from government, academic, and food manufacturing enterprises attended the training-workshop held April 30 at the SU Nutrition & Dietetics laboratory.
“We wanted to train people how to produce ‘relief’ food which can be easily distributed easily as relief food to disaster victims in times of calamity,” said Alvyn Klein Mana-ay of Silliman University, one of the resource persons.
One of the food products developed by the Industrial Technology Development Institute is Sagip-Nutri flour, a blend of indigenous crops like cassava, sweet potato, moringa (malunggay), squash, and mungbean (mongo). Sagip nutri flour can be made into noodles, breads, cakes and pastries, powdered drink, or soup to add balance the need for nutrition, and add variety to emergency food rations.
After a lecture on disaster preparedness, food safety, and the relevance and implications of EFR production, the participants learned how to produce Sagip nutri flour and its by-products like chocolate bars and polvoron.
The ITDI first introduced the EFR technology in Negros Oriental last year through a training-workshop participated by Manaay, Dr. Michele Naranjo, and Ruth Ann Entea. The technology has since opened up enterpreneurial opportunities for community livelihood generators and for individual food processors.
Meanwhile, some 30 entrepreneurs from micro, small and medium enterprises also attended the Good Manufacturing Practices Awareness Seminar conducted at the SU Nutrition & Dietetics department.
“We need to eliminate the hazards that make food injurious to the health of our consumers. From farm-to- plate, let us make our food safe,” Evelyn Fajardo advised the participants. She added that many of the potential hazards in a processing plant are prevented by implementing a standard set of principles and hygienic practices.
During the one-day lecture, Ana Vee Riconalla and Geraldine Quiñones, members of NOFST, discussed GMP relevance, implication and hazards, personal/ environmental/industrial hygiene. They also demonstrated the proper hand-washing technique.
The Basic Food Safety Seminar and EFR Training were part of a series of trainings set this year by the DOST-NegOr in partnership with Silliman, and the NOFST. (DOST-NegOr S&T Media Service)
