Food Protection Manager Certification Exam

SDC Certifications (SDC), in cooperation with the American Culinary Federation, is developing the American Culinary Federation Food Protection Manager Certification Exam. This will be an ANSI-ANAB-approved Food Protection Manager exam valid in all jurisdictions that rely on ANSI as the standard for regulatory approval, as encouraged by the FDA Food Code (see 2-102.11 and Appendix 3).

The ANSI certification exam approval process involves several steps intended to assure industry and the public that any ANSI-approved certification exam is fair, balanced, and reliably demonstrates that those who pass the exam have an appropriate knowledge base.

Working with professional psychometricians, the first step in preparing for an ANSI-approved food sanitation certification exam is to form a Job Task Analysis (JTA) panel. This panel comprises a cross-section of members of the chef community. The panel's role is to list food-safety topics that any chef handling food may encounter.

To verify that the JTA panel has listed the appropriate topics, the next step is to create a Validation Survey. A large number of chefs took this survey. By having many chefs complete the survey, ANSI is assured that, based on demographic information, the results reflect the views of a representative sample of the chef community. The survey asks whether the topics listed by the JTA panel occur frequently in their professional lives and how important they are. The survey also asks whether there are any food-safety areas not covered by the JTA list of topics.

After the survey results are in, the next step is to create a blueprint for the new exam. The blueprint is a list of food-safety topics proposed by the JTA panel and validated by the survey.

Using the blueprint as a guideline, the next step is to form a new panel called the Item Writing panel. Item writing refers to the creation of proposed questions for the exam.

After the proposed questions are created, they are put together to form a proposed Pilot Exam. Many test takers are invited to take the proposed exam. Psychometricians analyze the test results to verify whether the exam questions are fair. Questions that do not meet that standard are eliminated from the test.

This process takes time. ANSI certification typically takes 9–12 months. We should have a better idea of when we hope to have ANSI approval sometime in the Spring.

The new ACF Manager exam will be available either as an in-house proctored exam or as a live internet-based proctored exam. For in-house proctored exams, the voucher cost will be $35. Those who fail the exam the first time may retake it once at no cost.