Tag Archives: servsafe

Cannabis Trainers Expands To California With Custom Compliance Education

By Aaron G. Biros
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Last week, Cannabis Trainers, a compliance education and training services provider, announced their launch into the California market with their ServSafe® and Sell- SMaRT™ training programs. Ahead of the launch of California’s adult-use cannabis market in 2018, the programs will train employees in the areas of food safety and retail sales.

Maureen McNamara leading a Sell-SMaRT class

Maureen McNamara, founder of Cannabis Trainers, says that training and certification of employees is crucial to regulatory compliance in the cannabis space. “In few other industries could a frontline employee crumble an entire business with a single mistake,” says McNamara. “We aim to honor California’s cannabis pioneers by fusing their decades of hard work with cutting-edge approaches to safety and compliance.” She has over 25 years of professional training experience and has trained and certified over 15,000 employees across a handful of industries. In 2014, she launched Cannabis Trainers in Colorado and the following year in Illinois.

According to the press release, their ServSafe® program is essentially a food safety certification course based on food safety research and the FDA food code, but tailored to the cannabis industry for retailers and manufacturers of infused products. In 2015, their Sell-SMaRT™ program was the first to gain approval from the Colorado Department of Revenue Marijuana Enforcement Division’s Responsible Vendor Program, becoming the first state-certified cannabis vendor-training program. That course is an education program for budtenders and managers covering consumer safety issues, checking IDs and other key retail regulatory compliance issues.

According to McNamara, their Sell-SMaRT™ program is designed and customized to each state’s rules for cannabis sales. “We’ll be customizing our content to ensure it’s relevant to California regulations,” says McNamara. “We comb through the rules and pull out information pertinent to the responsible sale of cannabis in each state.” They’ll be doing the same for the ServSafe® program as well. “Although it’s a nationally recognized program based on the FDA food code, states may choose to create additional restrictions for cannabis infused products.”

Maureen McNamara, founder of Cannabis Trainers

She says they look at their programs like a translation for cannabis businesses; helping employees and managers make sense of the complex and confusing rules for cannabis compliance. “Most rules are written in legalese and can be a challenge to understand, says McNamara. “We simplify it and make it approachable and easy to digest.” Looking past California, McNamara says Cannabis Trainers is looking to expand to a few other states. She says their course curricula are based on state laws, but they try their best to incorporate regulatory compliance issues on the local level. “Our course information is based on state law,” says McNamara. “And, we realize local counties and municipalities may create stricter regulations and we do our best to include those variances in our courses.” Cannabis Trainers has incorporated variations in local rules in Colorado successfully.

“In addition to California, we’ll be customizing our courses for Nevada to launch this year as well,” says McNamara. “In 2018, we aim to provide professional development and certification courses to even more states.” McNamara says they have entered talks with teams in Ohio, Massachusetts and Maryland and are also actively looking to expand into Canada’s market. Their first California class will be the 3.5-hour September 20, 2017 ServSafe® course for cannabis producers at East Anaheim Community Center.

Cannabis Coaching & Compliance

Food Safety Training: A Story of Poo

By Maureen McNamara
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Cannabis Trainers: A Story of Poo

Are you an excellent hand washer?
Almost everyone answers this question with a big “YES!”

The reality? Researchers let us know that most people don’t wash their hands thoroughly or frequently. Especially men… sorry fellas!

I know, I understand that this sounds super basic. However, it is an integral part of ensuring that your business doesn’t contribute to any of the millions of food borne illnesses each year in the United States. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there are approximately 48 million cases of food borne illness, 128,000 hospitalizations and 3000 deaths resulting from food borne illness. 

For us in the cannabis industry, many of our products are known as “ready to eat foods” or, foods that do not require heating prior to eating. This allows us to keep things a bit simpler for our customers and patients. The most prevalent foodborne illness is the norovirus, which is linked to ready to eat foods and poor personal hygiene factors.

Keep in mind that even though we [typically] are not working with high risk foods (think: poultry, fish, beef etc.), we may very likely be creating food for a high risk population (patients with compromised immune systems), and great personal hygiene is imperative.

  1. Is your team using gloves or utensils to handle all ready to eat foods?

  2. Do you wash hands prior to gloving?

  3. Are hands being washed with at least 100*F water for 20 seconds?

One tool that I like to use in our food safety classes to illustrate the point that hand washing is typically done quickly and poorly is GloGerm. This highlights where the areas for improvement are for each person with hand washing.

I am often asked about hand sanitizer. For all you busy people out there… listen up! Hand sanitizer does NOT replace hand washing ever.
Seriously- never. Here is my analogy for you:
Hand sanitizer on dirty hands is like whipped cream on poop. You’re welcome for that mental image.

Frequent, thorough hand washing is essential to ensure that your team creates food safely and with integrity. The truth is, fecal contamination is a big deal. And although we may all claim that we are great hand washers, there is often room for improvement.

Ready to learn more? Join us for one of our ServSafe Food Handler courses that we customize to the specific needs of the cannabis industry.

www.CannabisTrainers.com