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The benefits of embracing food safety standards appear obvious. After all, who needs to contribute to creating the general public sick or worse? Company boardrooms also are realizing that accepting food safety regulation makes economic sense likewise.

The obvious profit is to scale back foodborne sicknesses and fatalities. Escolar, Listeria and Salmonella, as an example, sicken thousands once a year and place lots of in early graves. The power to scale back outbreaks through prevention and quickly trace contaminated food back to its supply advantages everybody.

And the world is recouping at this. Abundant of the development is as a result of government focus. Recently, the food business has return beneath political scrutiny and legislation is rising worldwide to bolster food safety regulation.

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) passed in 2011 within the U.S. could be a sensible example of state reacting to preventable outbreaks with sturdy regulation. Of course, we’ll get to wait to visualize how well the FDA implements the FSMA to determine its effectiveness.

Change doesn’t return straightforward. Some firms are fighting back with a military of lobbyist claiming that fees levied against them to support enforcement of latest legislation can increase prices and costs. However the general public is not shopping for it, nor ought to them. Within the long haul, firms within the food provide chain can relish lower prices and avoid legal hassles by embracing the FSMA and its world brethren.

Less tainted food suggests that fewer recollects which suggests less waste, all of that drops to very cheap line. As food suppliers implement and enforce standards (like those benchmarked by the worldwide Food Safety Initiative – GFSI), prices can decease whereas safety will increase. Streamlined, consistent procedures, sanitized facilities, and rigid hazard analysis and management can drive down expenses whereas improving productivity.

What exactly is risk management you ask? The International Standards Organization (ISO) describes it as, “the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks, followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events.” On the other hand, how it is defined can range among industries.

In the financial industry, it is focused on dealing with exposure to credit and market risk by identifying its origins, followed by contingency planning and hedging. From a global viewpoint, like climate change and economic stability of under developed countries for instance, unique principles may be needed. The underlying point I’m trying to get across is that risk management correlates with the context it’s being used in.

There are specific principles that pertain to more or less all industries. Such principles are considered the “foundation” of risk management. They encompass global view, communication, proactive approach, information, integration and continuous process.

Global view looks at viewing all risk holistically relative to the things taking place around the world. Communication represents communicating with all stakeholders to make certain a strong understanding is obtained on every aspect of the risk involved. This is really important since risks are generally perceived in a different way by each person. The proactive approach principle is very important on the grounds that risk management is designed to foresee and plan for risks before they come about.

The information principle refers to understanding pretty much everything there is to understand about a risk. This is imperative for knowing how to deal with it. Among the more challenging principles will be the integration principle. Risk management just isn’t something that should be managed separately; rather, it should be an important piece of the all around business. Strategies must be built into daily business operations to make certain risks are averted, mitigated and appropriately prepared for continually. The last principle is referred to as continuous process. This principle advises you don’t simply implement risk management processes and walk away. A risk manager should continually apply and evolve the strategic activities day-to-day.

Earning a certificate in risk management requires the successful completion of an in-depth and skill-specific training curriculum. Risk management courses are an integral and important component of this or any risk education process. These courses can be undertaken through a number of different academic and industry organizations, some of which also confer on the individual a risk certificate at the conclusion of the courses. There are several different industry associations that monitor the risk management profession, and each approaches the implementation of courses and the conferral of certificates differently.

These courses are a significant requirement of completing almost any risk management certificate. Through these courses the individual is introduced to the tenets and principles of risk oversight, including identification, assessment, mitigation, and monitoring. By completing risk education courses the individual can improve their business management and analysis skills. The majority of training curriculum’s offer these generic risk education courses, but many also offer courses in more specialized areas. The range and variety of courses that are offered should very much be considered when choosing the conferring association to work with. Particular associations are better reputations than others for the quality of courses they provide, especially in the context of specialized courses.

These courses can be completed informally and with no connection to completing a full risk certificate. Many of the same associations that confer certifications also offer short non-certificate risk education courses across a diverse array of focuses. There are also non-certificate courses offered by private organizations that are accredited by professional risk industry associations. While the individual does not earn a certificate through these accredited training curriculum’s, they can rest assured that the quality of the education meets the educational expectations of the world-recognized industry association.

The Energy Risk Professional (ERP) is a new professional designation from GARP aimed at risk professionals working in the physical and financial fields of energy. I was actually studying for the CAIA (Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst) and the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) when I became interested in energy risk management. It was intuitive to me to use energy financial instruments for risk management and hedging, but the physical aspects of the energy risk professional designation were not entirely clear to me. Still, I took the plunge and registered for the November exam in summer of 2010.

Little did I know what I had signed up for: The ERP curriculum stretched over nearly two thousand pages, consisted of over 100 readings different and academic papers, some of them very lengthy. Next to a 60 hour work week, the study material was a mountain of work. Organizing the material, summarizing it, reviewing and practicing for the exam were made even more difficult by the lack of study material and preparation resources, as only one (!) practice exam was available at the time.

The curriculum stretches from physical aspects of petroleum (hydrocarbon genesis, refining, transport with tankers, pipelines) over coal and natural gas, to alternative energy such as solar, hydro, wind, and biomass. There is also a segment of nuclear energy, financial trading instruments, valuation of energy transactions, financial disclosure, and laws and regulations. A large part of the material is electricity. The finance part was easy for me, as it covered mainly options, futures, forwards, swaps and little structured derivatives. Energy futures was a different bag altogether, but not too remote from what I already knew.

A common question I get in emails is this one: “I already work in the energy industry. What will the ERP (Energy Risk Professional) designation do for me to advance my career?”

This is an obvious question often heard from energy marketers, energy commodity traders, engineers, and energy risk managers. The ERP designation is not widely known yet, but this may change soon. While the ERP (short for “Energy Risk Professional”) is relatively new, it stands on solid footing endorsed by GARP (the Global Association of Risk Professionals) and API (the American Petroleum Institute). There are approximately 500 ERP charterholders so far (as of 2010), and their number is expected to grow very quickly. The pass rate on the ERP exam has been about 35% in 2010, so this is definitely not a designation that you simply buy by enrolling for the exam. The ERP designation can be gained by passing one exam, held in May and November each year, but this may be amended in the future, just as has been the case lately with the FRM designation (short for Financial Risk Manager, also by GARP), which now spans over two exams. The time to gain the ERP designation is still relatively short with manageable effort, for the time being.

Having passed the ERP exam in the first go, I can say that the material is not too difficult. You should, however, take your exam preparation seriously: Start at least six months before the exam with the required reading material, and finish reading and summarizing the material at least two months prior to the exam, so you have ample time to review all the study materials and take practice exams.