So this weekend, I added a utility certificate to the mix. I now have my FoodSafe Level 1 Certificate! It will take 4 to 6 weeks to get to me on paper, but I have a temporary version they offered for download.
Many people in the past have had to register for in-person classes to get their FoodSafe, but the BC government began allowing people to do it online, on your own time, for up to 20 days in length if needed. This sounded better than trying to find in-person classes that fit my schedule, so I went to register.
I’m one of those weird people you meet, who often either read the fine print of a contract, or take themselves on a tour of the help files to learn how to do something before I do it. In this case, it was looking for anything prior to registration that might require preparation on my end before I take this course.
The first thing I came across on the FoodSafe page, was the word “invigilator”! What on earth is an invigilator?! It turns out that an invigilator is nothing more than a supervisor for your final exam. I could pick my own, or pick from their options depending on their schedules of course. A page on how to start the course provided all the basic information, including that a photo ID quiz would have to happen between you and your invigilator prior to taking the exam. That worried me a little, so I began a conversation with their support about both booking an invigilator and the issue of this photo ID quiz.
Initially, this was their response to my question:
“What is required for the invigilators photo ID quiz with the student-Marilynn Dawson
You will be required to complete the Photo ID quiz, It’s a small quiz the student and the invigilator will fill out together. It confirms that the student is the one writing the exam, and who they met with as their invigilator. the student is not required to submit photo ID to complete the quiz. If you know the person personally you will still need to select yes to confirming their identity.”
I took the lady at her word and registered for the course. Once inside, I clicked on the Invigilator tab to see what it contained, and found under the “Bring Your Own” tab, this list of requirements from the student:
“You have a webcam.
You have a microphone.
You can share your screen and audio with your invigilator for the duration of the exam.”
This was not in the public information!
The option to have an in-person invigilator under the Bring Your Own FAQ was not immediately visible to me and either wasn’t there when I first read it, or was added very briefly after I complained to them in their course survey. However, it now reads:
“Bring Your Own
If you’re unable to find an available online invigilator, you can opt to bring your own. As long as the individual is over 19 years old, unrelated to you or a member of your immediate family, not part of your household, and has a valid email address, they can supervise your exam using an online meeting application or in person.”
Notice how nowhere does it say that my screen and audio must be shared, but does assume I am starting initially with using an online invigilator. So the requirements listed inside the course’s invigilator tab was not taking into account that a person might want an in-person invigilator!
The support rep said:
“You can arrange to meet both virtually or in person through the Bring your own option. It’s up to the student to arrange this with their chosen invigilator.”
The invigilator tab had what appeared to be two empty fields that were to be used for booking the appt with the invigilator once they were approved.
Nothing in the publicly-available information prior to registration mentioned anything about how long it might take for a student’s choice of invigilator to be approved. Nothing inside the main Open School BC Course dashboard mentioned any wait time for approval of one’s invigilator either, so I assumed my invigilator was not properly registered, or hadn’t clicked the accept button inside their request tab.
It turns out they had been bashing that button over 7 times on their end! It wouldn’t be until I got to the final exam of the course, where it was mentioned approval of the Invigilator may take up to 24 hours! I was NOT happy, but shortly after reading that information, my invigilator was approved.
After they were approved, I went back to those two fields, and still could not use them on my end. It turns out, they are used on the invigilator’s end, and once my invigilator entered in the booking date and time for the exam, those fields populated on my end. , In addition, the password to unlock the final exam immediately appeared on her screen.
The last piece of exam supervision that was a bit surprising, as by this time, the level of frustration just had me shaking my head going ‘it figures. . . ‘, related to how the exam link would become active. Supposedly, according to internal course information on the invigilator tab, the exam link would not be unlocked until after the photo ID quiz had taken place.
When I went to click on “attempt quiz” (the button for the exam did not say ‘final exam’ it read “attempt quiz” just like all the other lesson quizzes. . .) Instead of the exam, I was met with the Photo ID quiz. I’d been wondering when and where I’d see that eventually, as it was supposed to happen before I took the final exam. I think the final exam page could be more clear about this. There is a video you can watch if you want, but if a person chooses not to watch the video, will they still get the same information? I don’t think so. I did not watch the video, expecting all relevant information to be presented in text. So the “attempt quiz” led first to the photo ID quiz, which appeared to be worded toward the invigilator rather than to me, although it was in my course, on my screen.
While I’d been told by the support rep that I would not have to show photo ID, there was a question in the photo ID quiz asking the invigilator which ID I had provided, so yes, you actually DO need to show some form of photo ID! Thankfully, it is not the mobile phone camera style where they want to see all views of your face, front, left, right, looking up, etc. That is known as video selfie ID, and considering the number of views they want, at high resolution, I find that invasive, particularly with the databases they want law enforcement to have handy not merely locally, but provincially, nationally, and the long-term plan being globally. But as the requirement for static photo ID was still a thing, I felt the system was not making sense with itself.
You have 3 chances to take the final exam, with 50 multiple choice questions to complete. Several questions referred to information you either don’t find in the course itself, or that was alluded to in a way suggesting “for more information” find in the appendix. But you aren’t told where that appendix is. It turns out, the appendix in reference, is at the back of the pdf workbook that you don’t know is there unless you’ve carefully examined your opening course screen to discover it way down near the bottom of the page! I found this out while trying to find the bacterial chart the course made reference to. It would be helpful if this workbook was near the top of the screen, perhaps in the first row of buttons, but it wasn’t.
Reviewing the workbook separate from the course lessons online, helped prepare me for the final exam. I read that thing from front to back before taking the exam (and before the ID quiz discovery). Doing so meant I only got one question wrong. There were 3 questions I wasn’t sure if I’d chosen the right answer for, as two of them were only in the workbook, but it appears only one question out of the entire exam was wrong, so I passed with 98% as my final score.
Information in the course was interesting to say the least, not because I didn’t know about it, or because it was in any way new to me, but because of what’s been coming down the pipe in recent years in the world stage, as well as what people and groups have been trying to do around the issue of commercial food waste.
When I still saw regulations building commercial food waste into the idea of food safety, I knew immediately that the BC government was not taking the concerns around food waste seriously enough. Their perspective was all about the possibility of bacterial infection and in no way concerned that actually edible food would be tossed into the garbage bin. There are regulations in the course that cause the food-service employee to reject perfectly edible food because the outermost container was damaged while the innermost wasn’t damaged. Food on self-service counters is to be tossed if trays are being replaced. There are other regulations that sound very wasteful as well. On the surface, the idea of avoiding bacteria-borne illness is wise and smart, but the regulations around it contribute to the larger food waste issue that other groups out there are trying to crack down on. These groups are going to restaurants, caterers, hospitals, etc, to take their unused prepared food, and delivering it to shelters, soup kitchens, foodbanks, etc, to reduce how much food gets tossed out in this country. The need to keep the public healthy should be balanced with not tossing edible food into the garbage!
Incidentally, a search to offer you one or more links about the above initiatives, led to a link from the Federal government, apparently setting up a food waste challenge in 2019.
In a 2023 article on Global News:
“Lori Nikkel, the CEO of Second Harvest Canada, is quoted in the government report saying that best before dates encourage people to throw out “perfectly good food” when many go hungry because of rising costs.”
The BC FoodSafe Level 1 Certificate also encourages food employees to toss out perfectly good food!
On the issue of overdone bacterial safety, the BC government also doesn’t think that crockpots are a cooking device, only that they are a reheating device! I guess they haven’t seen the myriad of crockpot cookbooks out there, or perhaps have never learned how to properly use one to prepare food for consumption.
Spoiler Alert: Scroll past “things that make you go hmmm” to continue reading. . .
The second observation was in a pop-quiz in unit One, where they were asking the student to identify the type of hazard being presented.
When I saw one particular question and it’s illustration, then saw it’s answer, I had to check the copyright date of the workbook!
It was last updated in 2019!
In 2019 they were saying if the cockroach that fell into your bowl of noodles had been cooked to 74C, it was perfectly edible and not a hazard! I could not believe what I was reading! This wasn’t after the pandemic opened the floodgates for Agenda 2030 to kick into high gear, this was the year before!
Now can insects be eaten?
God gave guidelines to the Jewish people in Leviticus, LONG before the WEF thought it was a good idea, saying the following.
Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.
Leviticus 11:21-22
There are cultures around the world that have been eating insects either as a delicacy or a survival food for a long time. It’s only offensive to western ears, and the medical warnings around it have mitigations that can be engaged in that God has already provided.
But seeing the rhetoric outside of God’s guidance, show up in a governmental 2019 publication fit squarely into the category of:
“things that make you go hmmm”
Needless to say, when the final exam’s last page encouraged the student to fill out a survey, I had a lot to say!
Too much of the course housekeeping was not made known before registering for the course.
My suggestions and feedback included:
1) Be 100% more clear on the preparation required for the student and invigilator BEFORE the student registers. The information provided right now is quite limited and not very helpful. Support was sort-of helpful, but incomplete and contradictory to the information that was provided.
2) The ability for the bring-your-own option for choosing an invigilator did not state anywhere, that they could be in person (I would eventually find this wording while preparing this review), only assuming online in the information available prior to registration. I had to inquire further after registration when in-person options were presented, only to learn that any invigilator I brought could also do their supervisory duty in person. If I’d known this ahead of time, it would have changed how I went about trying to find someone from among my contacts.
3) The fact that the bring-your-own option would take up to 24 hours to be approved did not become apparent to me until AFTER I clicked on the “attempt quiz” at the very end and the information popped up about how to get my invigilator into the system. This information should have been out front BEFORE I registered, in the invigilator FAQ area.
4) In addition, the “fields” in my invigilator area that appeared to be for future use to book the date and time for my exam, did not show any buttons or anything after my invigilator was approved, and the invigilator said that the password for my exam popped up after they had input our agreed upon test date/time, BEFORE the photo ID quiz was done. . . This is not what was stated for how the password would be released for the exam. So this stated flow of actions needs updating.
Related to course content, I sent them this feedback:
Separate from course housekeeping issues, is some of the course content. I looked through the workbook for an updated copyright date and found 2019. Prior to 2019, there were groups across Canada, many of them in Ontario, some in the Lower Mainland here in BC, that were observing the commercial food waste going on, and gathering unsalable food to distribute to soup kitchens, foodbanks, shelters, etc. The rules around 2 hours, and the rules around the buffet or self-serve stations, and the rules around customer-rejected food, are contributing to the high levels of food waste in our country, and the BC government would do well to revisit these guidelines to promote less waste!
It’s also come to light in the last 10 years, that many foods are still good well past their due dates/expiry dates. These dates contribute to a fair bit of food waste as well, and discussion did reach mainstream news sites at times over the past decade. Dry goods particularly often remain 100% useful years past their supposed expiry date. Canned goods can often last decades if not several hundred years if kept cool and well sealed. Of course swollen cans, rusted rims, etc should not be kept and may be spoiled.
And whose idea was it to begin the insects as food discussion in 2019?! It’s in the pop quiz “name that hazard” of unit one. I took a screenshot of it.
End of feedback I sent in.
Would I recommend taking your FoodSafe Certificate training online? Only if you have this review pdf’d and ready to refer to before you register so you know what’s coming when and how to deal with it. Otherwise, perhaps look for classes in your region and book a seat in one of those classes. The headaches you suffer will be far less that way.
Otherwise, now that this gauntlet is conquered, I have my FoodSafe Level 1, which allows me to rent and operate kitchens or meeting spaces with kitchens in the future.
