This review summarises the methods and results of studies conducted worldwide on the effectiveness of food safety and food hygiene training in the commercial sector of the food industry. In particular it focuses on those studies that have tried to evaluate the effectiveness of such training. Forty-six studies of food hygiene training are included which used some outcome measure to assess the effectiveness of training. The short-term nature and variety of measures used limited the majority of studies. The need for the development of evaluation criteria of effectiveness of food hygiene training is discussed.