National Retail Food Program Courses

The National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) and the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) are working with the FDA's Office of Regulatory Affairs' Office of Training Education and Development (OTED) to provide free training to state, local and tribal regulatory partners. 

A full list of course offerings for FY22 can be found here. 

Note: These courses are currently only available to the retail food safety regulatory community with a .gov, .us, or .mil email address. If you are a retail food safety regulator without one of these email addresses please reach out to Deirdra.Holloway@fda.hhs.gov.

Courses Delivered by NEHA

• FD204 Temporary Food Establishments
• FD207 Plan Review for Food Establishments
• FD312 Special Processes at Retail

Courses Delivered by AFDO

• FD215 Managing Retail Food Safety (AFDO website)
• FD218 Risk-Based Inspection Methods in Retail (AFDO website)

For specific course information, please visit the OTED website.

What Participants Are Saying

“Very impressed. Exceeded all expectations.”

"I have taken several virtual courses over the last several months (Teams and Zoom). I have not attended any other course where the attendees were so engaged with the instructors and each other. You all really nailed it!"

“This was one of the best courses I have ever taken, either online or in person. Everyone was comfortable in their own space, the instructors were phenomenal. I would like to sign up for more FDA courses via Zoom as it saves my department housing/travel/food and it's just excellent.”

“This was very thorough and interactive. I found myself engaged at all times.”

“I'm going to be taking more classes - I love having a multitude of experts at the ready to teach.”

"As a regulator, one of the things I try to do is always be able to answer "why" when I make a requirement. This course helped me a lot with being able to give "whys" to my operators and answer technical questions that my staff may have."

“The instructors were great. They were very patient with answering questions and brought a great array of experience.”

“I learned many valuable things from the course and will definitely be taking this information and resources back to use in [my job].”

"This is the first online training in which I feel prepared to do independently the anticipated work that was taught. The pace was wonderful and was kept in a fun and upbeat way. The instructors seemed genuine, were prepared, and knowledgeable in their fields. The overall atmosphere made the presentation seem important. I REALLY appreciate that strict environment that was established and maintained throughout. This kept everything on-time and avoided unnecessary or irrelevant off topic discussions and questions."

Does this course qualify for NEHA CE?

Yes. Acceptable NEHA Continuing Education (CE) includes conferences, seminars, classes, lectures, online trainings, etc., related to environmental health – food, water, wastewater, air, vector and pest control, hazardous materials and/or waste management, radiation, recreation, housing and institutional health and safety, occupational health and safety, program planning and legal aspects, or general environmental health and scientific concepts. NEHA credential holders can self-report the time spent on CE activities by logging into their MyNEHA account, clicking “Credentials” (top-right) and then “Report CE’s” from the drop-down menu. 1 CE = 1 hour. Time is rounded up to the nearest whole 1.0 or 0.5, for example, 45 minutes is reported as 1.0 and 80 minutes is reports as 1.5. Scheduled breaks and lunches are not counted toward CE time.