Board of Supervisors Approve Changes to the Food Handler Program

On August 6th, 2014, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved modifying the County’s Food Handler Training Program, which protects public health by making sure the people who work in restaurants and food facilities know how to safely handle, prepare and store food, and practice proper hygiene. The changes the Board approved as part of an effort to make improvements to the food handler training program include:

• Lowering the cost of food handler cards issued by food handler instructors to restaurant and food workers from $6 to $3.
• Creating a new fee to directly charge new food handler instructors and training programs to cover the County’s cost of reviewing and evaluating new instructors and training programs.
• Phasing out the DEH-supervised renewal program for food handler cards through January 1, 2015. With this change, food handlers will complete both training and testing through an approved food hand handler training and testing program every three years. This change will not modify the process of conducting in-house training that some food facilities use.

If you would like to know more about these changes, please contact the DEHQ Food and Housing Division duty desk specialist at (858) 505-6900 or at fhdutyeh@sdcounty.ca.gov. Thank you!

Additional Information:

For additional information about the DEHQ food handler program, please visit us at http://www.sdcountyfoodhandlers.org.