The need for establishing a food safety CTI in a specific location has been done in different ways. To date they have been established in three ways.

1. The U.S. FDA recognizes a need for training based on either a large number of interceptions of contaminated product at the border or the identification of a large number of outbreaks of illness associated with specific food from a specific country. Once JIFSAN is made aware of a specific need for training, it begins the process of identifying and obtaining buy-in from potential in-country partners. These partners might include government agencies or ministries, industry, academia, trade associations, local institutions, or perhaps others. The partnership can be formalized with JIFSAN through the development of an Agreement of Cooperation or some other formal agreement that fits the policies of the partner institutions.
• The Bangladesh Aquaculture Program and the India Spice and Botanical Program are such examples.
2. The competent authority from a country directly reaches out to JIFSAN and requested training to enhance their country’s food safety and quality program. The government finds funds to support training efforts.
• International Food Safety Training Center (IFSTC) - Malaysia is an example of a countries that have taken this step.

Typical phased approach

The establishment and operation of a Collaborative Training Initiative follows a three-phased Train-the-Trainers (TTT) approach, with small variations by country.

• Phase I - JIFSAN goes to the host country to train a group of potential ToT. The in-country partner identifies eight to ten individuals from that group to become future ToT.
• Phase II - the selected individuals come to JIFSAN to participate in an intensive two-week internship. During the internship, the participants develop an action plan on how to promulgate the training to industry, government, primary producers, and other value chain actors. The action plan also includes a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plan to measure the impact of future trainings.
• Phase III - involves having the ToT develop country- or region-specific training materials that they use to train local food market players and implementing M&E activities including pre- and post-training factual tests as well as follow-up self-assessment a year after the initial training to understand the multiplier effect.

Such activities are flexible and depend upon the needs of the country/region. By following the TTT approach, the in-country training partners have the capacity to train a much larger group of participants and reach small producers in rural areas than a one-of training.