[School feeding program in Guatemala: technology transfer to artisan bakers, producers of the nutritionally improved...

The Ministry of Education of Guatemala requested from the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP), the development of a solid food for delivery to school children who attend the official schools throughout the country. INCAP developed and transferred the processing technology to produce a nutritionally improved cookie to artisan bakers from the different regions of the country. The present paper describes the technological process, focusing on the training, supervision and quality control actions executed with approximately 100 micro baking enterprises, in 1988 and 1989. These actions have had a positive impact on the bakeries, a fact evidenced by the significant improvement of the conditions and processes of the nutritionally improved cookie production. The performance of the above-mentioned activities has allowed us to detect necessities, for the solution of which research and development of technologies are most important for their immediate transference to artisan bakers. Nevertheless, it is necessary to monitor and control the transferred technology, and efforts must continue to increase the effectiveness of the whole system which involves technology transference model, created for this project.