Tag Archives: Food Safety Consortium

Fontanazza and Fields

Food Companies: Know Your Suppliers

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Fontanazza and Fields

Read the Q&A with Randy Fields, “Senior Execs in for a Rude Awakening Regarding Supply Chain Compliance”Both accountability and liability will play a role in how food companies work with their suppliers moving forward. “The global food supply chain has really been based on trust for the last 70 years,” said Randy Fields, chairman and CEO of Park City Group and Repositrak. In a video interview with Food Safety Tech at the 2015 Food Safety Consortium, Fields explains how companies must go beyond simply “trusting” their suppliers to having a keen awareness of their suppliers’ activities from a compliance perspective.

 

Food Safety Consortium

Moving Produce Rule Forward, United States and Mexico Partnership Critical

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Food Safety Consortium

During an FDA Town Hall at the 2015 Food Safety Consortium, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Watch video of Taylor’s speech: Part I and Part IIMedicine Michael Taylor was asked about implementation of the produce rule from the perspective of Mexico. Taylor touched on the partnership, announced about a year ago, between the United States and Mexico in recognition of the fact that working together will be the only way to move forward in verifying compliance with the new rule. “Our work with Mexico on produce safety is one of the most important things we’re doing right now in implementing FSMA,” said Taylor.

Rick Biros and Frank Yiannas, Food Safety Consortium

Apply Behavioral Science Techniques to Food Safety

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Rick Biros and Frank Yiannas, Food Safety Consortium

The human behavior that surrounds us contagious. Read the article about Frank Yiannas’ presentation, Catch the Food Safety Culture Bug. In keeping with this theme, Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Walmart, reviews behavioral science techniques that can be applied to a food safety management system. In part I of this video series from the 2015 Food Safety Consortium, Yiannas reviews the principles of consistency and commitment.

 

Make Your Data More Meaningful

By Maria Fontanazza
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Data can be a very powerful tool, but only if it is used in an effective manner. It needs to be easily consumable and understood by all levels within an organization. “It’s great to collect information, but if you don’t do something with it, you’re not doing yourself, your facility or your employees any favors,” says Holly Mockus, product manager at Alchemy Systems. “It can really trip you up during a regulatory inspection to have all of this information that you haven’t looked at, tracked, trended or reacted to.”

As FSMA places more importance on documentation and record keeping, FDA-regulated facilities will need to not only capture information but also translate data into easily digestible content for management and employees in order to drive continuous improvement. In a discussion with Food Safety Tech, Mockus shares some key points on how companies can transform their data from numbers and statistics into meaningful and actionable information.

  1. Collect meaningful data from the start. From the beginning of the data collection process, be mindful of exactly what outcome the organization wants to achieve. Having an understanding that the data will be measured and acted upon encourages facilities to avoid gathering information just for the sake of collecting it.
  2. Involve the employees who actually collect the data. Data is more meaningful when employees understand why they’re gathering information and are involved in the process from the beginning.
  3. React to the data. If the information reveals a good or bad trend, or that a process or procedure is out of spec, take action. In addition, document how the business reacted to the issue and the corrections that were put in place.
  4. Close the loop for continuous improvement. Establish a closed loop for data collection, focusing on how gaps were addressed, with an emphasis on continuously improving on the process.
  5. Really examine the data collected. Whether collected for a product, process or equipment line, sit down and take a close look at the data. This exercise is intended to reveal redundancies across departments and help reduce record keeping tasks.

Food Safety Tech: How do companies transform data into a meaningful tool for management?

Mockus: That’s such a challenge for us. It should be easily consumable, especially for management and the higher ups in organizations, because they don’t have as much time to sit down and digest a 20-page document that’s full of numbers and statistics. Work towards to summarizing the information in a way that allows executives and plant managers to look at a graph and know instantly what it means; they don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty. Simplifying the scientific data, whether environmental sampling, quality assurance data, or microtesting in general, and taking it down to base a level so that the non-scientist can understand it—I think that’s something we have to work on, especially for those coming under more regulation. Keep in mind that people who look at the tracking and trending [might not] understand graphs and scientific terms.

A lot of people put the data into a graphic format—it doesn’t have to be a line graph or pie chart, it can be a red, yellow, green [indicator] or a scale of justice. Look at the graphics that are meaningful to your specific organization and use those. Be creative, but keep it simple.

FST: When companies set metrics, how can they ensure that those metrics are taking them in the right direction from a food safety perspective?

Mockus: Especially when you have metrics that are tied to performance for a manufacturing facility, you want to be careful how you set them and how you reward them. For example, if your metric for environmental testing is very low or at zero, you’re encouraging your workforce not to find those Listeria niches or areas in which Salmonella can grow, because you’re telling them that they have to be at a zero rate to be incentivized. It’s more about measuring the outcomes of the activities—are we finding the niches and eliminating them so we don’t have those issues versus saying we want to be at “zero”? [It’s important] to work with upper management so that they understand the consequences of their expectations and the incentive programs that they put in place.

Syed Hassan of PepsiCo addresses Michael Taylor during FDA Town Hall. Photo: amyBcreative

FDA Investigators Take New Approach with FSMA

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Syed Hassan of PepsiCo addresses Michael Taylor during FDA Town Hall. Photo: amyBcreative

One of the industry concerns related to FSMA implementation surrounds the change in approach required of FDA investigators—from a resolutions approach to a systematic method of assessing systems and facilities. During an FDA Town Hall at the Food Safety Consortium, Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine at the agency explained that he was initially concerned about this shift, but is now pleased with the enthusiasm he sees among FDA investigators. “They’re part of a public health force that is out there empowered and supported in the verifying the systems… as opposed to the historic role of collecting evidence [and] going back to the office…” he said.

Deirdre Schlunegger, CEO of STOP Foodborne Illness
Food Safety Culture Club

An Inspiring Evening

By Deirdre Schlunegger
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Deirdre Schlunegger, CEO of STOP Foodborne Illness

November 17 was an inspiring evening at the Food Safety Consortium! Thanks to the generosity of Food Safety Tech and Chemstar, a number of friends were able to join STOP Foodborne Illness in celebrating two of its Food Safety Heroes.

We honored Nancy Donley, former STOP spokesperson with the Legacy Tribute award. Since the death of her son Alex, in 1993, Nancy has selflessly advocated for stronger food safety policies and practices. Our other esteemed guest was Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety for Walmart, a man known for passionately escalating the notion of a “food safety culture.” Frank received STOP’s Industry Advocate Hero award.

 

Another highly regarded guest, FDA Deputy Commissioner Michael Taylor, shared his reflections on the magnitude of the evening. Please take a moment to read Taylor’s eloquent and thoughtful words regarding this milestone celebration.

FDA Work Begins on FSMA Implementation

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Part II of Michael Taylor’s speech at the Food Safety Consortium gets into what’s at stake as the implementation stage of FSMA begins. “We’re regulating areas we haven’t regulated before,” said Watch Part I of Michael Taylor’s speech HERETaylor, as he acknowledged the work FDA has been doing with produce growers and the enforceable standards that will now be present on farms. He also indicated the challenges ahead in regulating imports and managing the supply chain—more than 150 countries send food products to the United States, and this continues to grow rapidly.

“We see the import aspect of implementation perhaps being the most daunting in the sense that it’s really requiring us to work in completely new ways with foreign partners, with the import community, and a whole new robust toolkit…that needs to be used in a strategic new way,” said Taylor.

Frank Yiannas, VP of Food Safety, Walmart

Catch the Food Safety Culture Bug: How to Influence Others

By Maria Fontanazza
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Frank Yiannas, VP of Food Safety, Walmart
Rick Biros and Frank Yiannas, Food Safety Consortium
Frank Yiannas (right), vice president of food safety at Walmart, answers questions about measuring behavior in food safety culture.

Are we winning the battle against foodborne diseases? How are we going to get better at this? How do you change employee behavior within food organizations to ultimately make food safer? Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Walmart, posed these questions to a captive audience last week at the Food Safety Consortium. “Human behavior can be contagious,” said Yiannas. “Food safety can be caught not only taught.”

While industry has increased its efforts in training, inspections, and microbiological testing, little progress has been made in lowering the rates of foodborne diseases over the past decade. As the global food system continues to change and grow at a rapid rate, a shift in the mindset of food safety managers—from process-focused to behavior-focused—needs to occur to facilitate a food safety culture that will in turn create a safer food supply, said Yiannas. He reviewed four tools that companies can use to implement a behavior-based food safety management system.

  • Consistency and commitment. “Humans don’t want to be wishy-washy,” said Yiannas. People strive to behave in a manner that is consistent with something that they’ve either said or documented publicly.  Watch the video
    • Apply the tool: When conducting training, go beyond simply having employees sign an attendance roster. Instead, ask each employee to commit, in writing, that he or she will apply the principles learned in the class into daily responsibilities.
  • Homophily. “Birds of a feather influence food safety for better,” said Yiannas. People with similar characteristics believe and influence each other.
    • Apply the tool: When communicating an important message, use a front-line employee rather than a corporate “talking head”.
  • Make food safety the social norm. “People do what other people do,” said Yiannas. In today’s society, we are flooded with information, and as a result defer to social norms as a short cut when making decisions.
    • Apply the tool: When trying to enforce a behavior, show the behavior more than once and show it being done by more than one employee.
  • Learning from the right way or the wrong way. Learning by being taught the wrong way can be an effective teaching tool, because it allows employees to learn from their mistakes. Learning from the “wrong way” also prevents complacency, which perhaps is one of the biggest dangers to food safety. “Complacency is driven out of overconfidence, and oftentimes poor risk assessment, and certainly poor metrics,” said Yiannas.
    • Apply the tool: Create training modules that examine the missteps other food companies have made and illustrate how employees can learn from these mistakes.

Frank Yiannas also received the 2015 Industry Advocate Hero award from STOP Foodborne Illness during the consortiumThe question of metrics in food safety culture often arises, as there is no defined way to measure employee behavior. Yiannas encouraged the audience to conduct a food safety culture survey within their organizations and ask the scary questions. “You need to have the courage to hear the truth,” he said.

All images by amyBcreative photography

FDA Reflects on Monumental Effort of FSMA

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Four years in the making and the FSMA implementation journey has begun. Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for Watch Part II of Taylor’s speechfoods and veterinary medicine at FDA, describes, from a high-level perspective, what lies ahead in his first public speech since five of the seven rules were finalized. The following video is Part I of Taylor’s speech at the 2015 Food Safety Consortium conference.