Food Safety in Context and Global Food System – online course
Get insights into the many issues connected to food safety and sustainable food production, which are tied closely to the role that food has in our everyday life.
You will get an introduction to the embeddedness of food safety and sustainability in social conditions, and social structures.
Through the course, you will be introduced to the social science perspectives from sociology, economics, political science, and anthropology to understand food-safety assessment, management, and communication.
Furthermore, you will get to explore problems related to food safety and sustainability.
During the course, you will be working with:
Cultural practices and patterns of belief about risk
Social structures and norms
Socioeconomic conditions of food production and the process of distribution
Communication of guidelines
Trust in institutions and publics
Through e-lectures (live and recorded), exercises, and group-work, you will be working with the following themes:
The Global food system
Sustainable food systems and food safety
Roles of national and international economic conditions for food safety
Social science perspectives on risk, trust, assessment, management, and communication of food safety issues
Consumer perspectives on food safety, sustainability, risk, and trust
Profile of participants
The course is relevant for employees in the public and private sector working with food production, particularly, in the intersection between sustainability, food safety and security, and innovation.
Learning Outcomes
Your outcome
Once you have completed the course, you will be able to:
Explain the interaction between food safety, social, and cultural conditions.
Explain and discuss the importance of market relations and other conditional factors for food safety and food sustainability.
Describe the global food system and its relevance for food safety and sustainability.
Identify the relevance of different actors’ and stakeholders’ for food safety and sustainability.
Reflect on different actors’ understandings of food, food safety and sustainability and how these affect the handling of food safety issues.
Analyse food safety issues from a sociological risk perspective.
Analyse food safety issues from a political and economic perspective.
Analyse and assess a food safety problem and discuss its development in the context of food systems, markets, risk and differing conceptions and perceptions of safety, sustainability, and risk.
Outcome for your organization
Your organization gets an employee who will be able to:
Explain how social and cultural conditions may affect the uptake of new food products.
Understand and analyze specific food-safety issues or conflicts from a sociological, political and economic perspectives.
Identify important stakeholders and explain why they hold different positions towards specific food safety, food security and/or sustainability issues.
You can follow the course as part of the Master’s programme or you can follow it as a single course. Please note, that to get most out of this course, we recommend that you have passed two other courses linked to the Master’s programme. See more under prerequisites.
Part of the Master’s programme
If you wish to follow the course as part of the Master of Sustainable and Safe Food Production, please go to the Master’s programme page and sign up for the Master’s programme.
Single course
If you wish to follow this course as a single course, please sign up by clicking the button ‘Add to basket’ in the top of the page.
Admission
To be admitted to this course, you must:
have achieved a relevant medium-cycle education (a professional bachelor’s degree or the like) or a long-cycle higher education programme
have a minimum of two years of work experience in the food science and technology field
Furthermore, you must have a solid foundation in the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, mathematics) as well as an understanding of technical processes in food production lines.
The course is taught online, the language of instruction is English.
The education sessions consist of e-lectures, Q&A sessions, assignments, casework and a final report.
The e-lectures are available online which means that you can watch them whenever from wherever.
Furthermore, you are offered weekly live Q&A sessions to get in dialogue with the course lecturer and fellow participants.
Course material will be provided during the course (selected chapters from textbooks, scientific articles, popular science articles, newspaper article, reference webpages….).
As part of the course, you will work with a self-chosen case and analyse a relevant food safety issue, its cause, development, and handling. The work will result in a project report.
Exam
The exam consists of your final report, which counts for 100% of the grade.
Online Course
Master
English
7.5 ECTS
Master
English
60 ECTS
Online Course
Master
English
10 ECTS
Online Course
Master
English
5 ECTS
