FDA pushes for adoption of ETS mandatory testing plan

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 29, 1988 by Ken Rankin

FDA pushes for adoption of ETS mandatory testing plan

Several years ago the Food and Drug Administration sent shivers down the backs of food-service industry professionals by raising the specter of a nationwide, government-sanctioned testing and certification program for all food-handling personnel.

The implicastions for restaurateurs were ominous: a government-mandated "final exam" for the industry that could wreck the careers of hundreds of thousands of food-service managers and supervisory workers, an Orwellian national certification and testing plan complete with the forced "black-listing" of unsuccessful candidates.

The concerned deepened when it was learned that the organization envisioned by the FDA to develop and administer the job certification program was the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J.--a supersecretive outfit that has come under heavy fire for employing invalid testing techniques.

By the time industry leaders became aware of the situation the ETS had already concocted an examination that supposedly could measure a restaurateur's sanitation and food-handling know-how. Moreover, the group was pressuring state and local sanitation regulators to require food-service workers to become "certified" by successfully completing the test.

Ironically, the entire process would be financed by food-service operators and employees who, in order to obtain the necessary certification, would have to pay stiff testing fees to the ETS.

The National Restaurant Association was one of the first industry groups to raise strong objections to mandatory testing and certification requirements, arguing that it was especially inappropriate for the agency to endorse a specific private initiative, such as the ETS program.

NRA officials also questioned the appropriateness of a certification program that relied exclusively on testing, rather than training, to improve the industry's food-handling skills.

FDA officials promptly backtracked, assuring food-service operators that they had not "endorsed" the ETS program and that they were not pressuring states to establish mandatory testing requirements.

But now new evidence has surfaced, suggesting that the FDA is indeed pressuring state and local food protection officials to adopt the ETS food-service testing and certification program.

According to NRA staffers, the agency's Compliance Program Guidance Manual for retail food protection officials "appears to provide FDA endorsement of a private commercial enterprise" (that is, the Educational Testing Service). "Specifically, the manual directs regional FDA personnel to encourage state food protection agencies to utilize and accept 'reciprocal recognition of individuals whose knowledge of food safety concepts has been certified.'"

The problem, according to NRA executive vice president Bill Fisher, is that the program guide "goes on to specify that such reciprocity 'should be based on passing a nationally standardized . . . test . . . not directly related to the training course sponsor or the training materials publisher.'" (Emphasis added.)

Since there is "only one organization offering a 'national' test in food sanitation" that meets that criterion, Fisher charged that the agency's directive "certainly appears to constitute an FDA endorsement of a national commercial testing entity [ETS], to the exclusion of current or potential alternate programs."

There are several reasons for Fisher's concern about the ETS monopolizing the food-service testing and certification field, not the least of which is the fact that it would create competitive problems for NRA's own Educational Foundation (formerly NIFI).

The NRA foundation publishes and sponsors "Applied Foodservice Sanitation" (AFS)--the text for an industrywide sanitation educational program that has already tested and certified more than 160,000 people in the food safety concepts of the FDA's model codes over the past 14 years.

Unlike the ETS testing and certification program, however, that of the NRA also includes a training course for industry personnel. But because it includes a training course, FDA regional staffers are directed by the manual not to recommend that state officials grant reciprocity to individuals certified by the NRA.

In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Otis Bowen protesting this situation, Fisher charged that the FDA's position "directly and adversely affects the National Restaurant Association's Educational Foundation programs."

Charging that the FDA has a bias against programs such as the NRA's, Fisher suggested that the agency may incorrectly assume that tests conducted by trainers are invalid or even dishonest.

"If validity or integrity are the issues, then these FDA instructions impugn the professionalism and honesty of hundreds of training instructors in colleges, company programs, trade associations, and health departments nationwide, who currently administer training programs," he told the HHS secretary.

By implicitly discouraging states from granting reciprocity to individuals tested and certified by NRA and other non-ETS testing programs, the agency is weakening its own "credibility on the serious issue of jurisdictional uniformity," Fisher said.