Tag Archives: food safety culture

Laura Morrison
Food Safety Culture Club

The Intersection of Food Safety Culture, People Strategy and Technology

By Laura Morrison
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Laura Morrison

It takes a village to keep our employees, guests, and communities safe. Creating an organizational culture centered around food safety begins with creating a system of shared values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors at the top level. It also requires commitment from top leadership.

Food safety culture involves creating an environment where food safety is a top priority and all team members—from leadership to front and back of the house employees—are committed to ensuring that the food provided to guests is safe.

Optimizing your food safety culture through the intersection of technology, human resources and people strategy is critical to gaining a competitive advantage. When developing or re-imagining a food safety culture, it’s important to create a people strategy for your organization that is focused on recruiting and developing individuals with drive and passion who already have or have the willingness to gain knowledge, skills and experience of food safety practices. Additionally, providing ongoing training and education to ensure that employees are aware of the latest food safety practices and regulations should be an integral part of workforce development.

Developing a strong food safety culture requires a multi-prong approach that includes:

  1. People strategy. This is the way a business or organization manages its workforce. In the food industry, this can include hiring, training employees, and developing employee engagement and compensation programs. A well-though-out people strategy can help organizations attract, recruit, and retain top talent, build a strong company culture, and improve overall business performance.
  2. Technology helps to support the people strategy by streamlining processes, reducing manual labor, and improving employee engagement. Food businesses using tools such as automated scheduling, workforce management tools, digital training, and development tools to upskill employees can improve efficiency, reduce labor costs, and provide their team members with the knowledge and resources needed to excel in their individual roles. Leveraging technology to support food safety and the overall people strategy can improve efficiency, reduce costs and enhance the experience of customers by delivering high-quality service and products.
  3. An organization’s human resources strategy plays a critical role in developing and maintaining the food safety culture. Owners, operators and HR professionals should work closely together to develop policies and procedures to promote food safety that include training programs, performance metrics, accountability procedures and incentive systems to reward safe practices.
  4. Maintaining a food safety culture built around accountability and open and clear channels of communication and encouragement, allows employees to report food safety concerns without fear of retaliation. In this environment employees feel more comfortable both raising concerns and trusting that their concerns will be taken seriously and addressed promptly.

Businesses that prioritize food safety culture, people strategy, human resources and technology can create a competitive advantage in the food industry.

Additional Resources: 

Hetler, A. (2022). The future of the food industry: Food tech explained. https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/The-future-of-the-food-industry-Food-tech-explained

Febes, C. (2020). A Well-Rounded Restaurant Staffing Strategy Includes New Technology. Forbes

Mulligan, S. (2018). HR 2025:  7 Critical Strategies to Prepare for the Future of HR Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM)

2019 FSC Audience
From the Editor’s Desk

Earn Up to 26 CE credits at the 2023 Food Safety Consortium

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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2019 FSC Audience

Food safety and quality professionals attending the 2023 Food Safety Consortium can gain up to 20 NEHA-recognized continuing education (CE) credits, while taking advantage of two days of high-level panel discussions and professional networking, “boots on the ground” education on the mitigation, regulation and control of key Food Safety Hazards, and their choice from four pre-conference workshops.

The Consortium will take place October 16-18 at the Hilton Parsippany in Parsippany, New Jersey, and feature leading industry professionals as well as high-level members of the FDA and USDA. Session highlights include:

  • Anti-Food Fraud Tactics for the Entire Supply Chain
  • Regulatory Audits
  • Food Safety Culture: Creating a “Speak Up” Culture
  • The Rise of Previously Unforeseen Hazards
  • FSMA 204: The Final Rule – Looking Ahead
  • Audited and Validated Allergen Control Plans
  • Recall Trends and Predictions
  • And more

View the full agenda and speakers

This year’s Food Safety Consortium is co-located with the Food Defense Consortium and Cannabis Quality Conference. The Consortium’s two-day program is recognized by NEHA (National Environmental Health Association) for 12.0 Continuing Education (CE) Hours. If you participate in one of the Pre-Conference Workshops or Trainings and attend the conference (a total of three days), you can gain 20 NEHA CE Hours (or up to 26 with the auditor training program).

Pre-Conference Workshops (held on Monday, October 16) include:

Food Safety Culture Design Workshop, presented by the Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention in collaboration with Sage Media, will guide food industry professionals through the necessary steps to create an actionable food safety culture strategy.

CP-FS Credential Review Course. The Certified Professional – Food Safety (CP-FS) credential is the gold standard for those working in retail food safety, including cannabis edibles. Earning your CP-FS demonstrates your commitment to the health and well-being of your customers and shows the public you take their safety seriously.

Interested in becoming a food safety auditor or building your auditing skills? View the complimentary webinar, “What Does it Take to Become a Food Safety Auditor?” to learn more about this program.

Food Safety Auditor Training. This four-part series is designed to provide the knowledge, behaviors and technical skills attributed to a competent food safety auditor. The series includes three virtual 2-hour presentations conducted by a live instructor. These sessions are recorded and available for additional self-paced study for less experienced participants, while experienced auditors can refresh their understanding of auditing fundamentals before advancing to the more complex skills and critical thinking behaviors needed to audit high risk products. The course culminates with a full day of in-person instruction (Monday, Oct. 16) on advanced topics such as potential conflicts of interest, enhanced conflict resolution techniques and providing tips in advanced written communication skills to support the delivery of comprehensive audit reports.

The Seed to Sale Safety Workshop. Led by four veterans of cannabis quality and safety, this pre-conference workshop offers participants an interactive and engaging opportunity to learn about the novel seed-to-sale safety considerations associated with cannabis edibles. Participants will achieve an understanding of cannabis hazard analysis, learn the principles of cannabis edible GMPs, apply food safety best practices, identify risks in marketing and labeling and apply the fundamentals of state and federal regulatory compliance.

Register now for the 2023 Food Safety Consortium

Tami Dumond
Women in Food Safety

I Enjoy Being Afraid

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Tami Dumond

Those who work in the food safety and quality industry may know Tami Dumond, microbiologist and Director of Quality Assurance at Omeat, by her oft-changing vibrant hair color. Her career has been equally varied. Dumond has worked as a scrub nurse, QA lab manager and owner, motorcycling instructor and food quality manager and director.

Tami spoke at a recent meeting of the Women in Food Safety about the path that brought her to her current leadership position at Omeat, a tissue engineering company scaling cellular ground beef, and the value of varied work experiences.

I Like To Party

After graduating high school, Dumond entered a one-year hands-on certification program to become a scrub nurse. “It taught me a lot about showing up and the importance of processes and protocols,” she said. “Almost everything I do in food safety and quality brings me back to things I learned in surgery.”

She chose the program because it allowed her to pursue her interest in science without going to college. “I am dyslexic and I didn’t want to go to school anymore,” said Dumond. “I liked school, but it was very hard for me.”

When she became a single mom, she decided to go back to school to earn a Bachelor’s degree, and got a part-time a job at an external quality control laboratory that worked with several food companies, eventually becoming co-owner of the lab. “I learned I was good at managing things,” said Dumond. “I’m a partier and I want to invite everyone to the party. I solidify my teams by including everyone and making sure they always have fun during training.”

Different People Learn in Different Ways

When the economic recession of 2008-2010 hit, rather than cut staff or pay at her lab, she chose to take on the second job as a motorcycling instructor to help make ends meet. “The students would read what they’re supposed to do, hear what they’re supposed to do, watch the instructor and then we watch them,” said Dumond. “That repetition and format of learning—if you didn’t get it verbally, you got it visually—reminded me that different people learn in different ways, so you need to offer information in multiple formats.”

During this time she also joined a local Roller Derby team, “The Soy City Rollers,” as MRSA Nary (mercenary), an experience that brought into focus the joy of being part of a team and, again, the importance of having plans and protocols. “Teams that play well have a playbook,” she said. “If you don’t have a process in place, pull out a whiteboard and write one right away, and do it with your team.”

Time for a Change

After 20 years at the lab and 11 years teaching motorcycling, Dumond—now a microbiologist—decided it was time for a change. She moved to Austin, Texas, with an eye on entering the field of food safety. “I wanted to be more involved in the food industry, because that is where a lot of innovation was taking place,” she said.

She got a job as food quality manager at ATX Specialty Foods, before moving to Omeat. Her goal as Director of Quality Assurance is to empower her team and bring a culture of food safety to the entire organization by making it as easy as possible for people to do the right thing. “I try to empower my teammates and create trust so they know they can come up and talk to me anytime,” she said. “I involve the entire team in training and when anything new is happening. I have made everyone aware of the importance of everything that goes on in the lab. Maintenance team members come to our PCR training so they can better understand the equipment.”

She values the relationships she has built with her teammates throughout her career and stays in contact with many past colleagues and employees. “Even if you leave a company, you don’t leave the people you worked with,” she said. “You never want to burn bridges.”

Sharing Knowledge

Today, Dumond describes herself as a quality scientist who specializes in biological business modeling. In addition to her role at Omeat, she is the founder of Qronika Consulting, which focuses on food safety training and industrial biome investigations. The company is named after a video game character. “Qronika is a titaness of good and evil, who knows you must balance good and bad to move through life,” said Dumond.

In her free time, she volunteers with Texas Food Bank and Food Rescue, as it provides the opportunity to support her community and experience different approaches to how people work with food.

Looking back on her career, she credits her success to always meeting challenges with action. “You have to show up and make the best of the situation,” she said. “And we, as a food industry, need to start paying attention to cellular Ag, and being more high-level in the biological sciences of food safety and quality.”

During the meeting, Tami shared her “Words to Live By”:

I Like to Break Things. If you break things, they can be fixed. If something is wrong, then we’ve got to dismantle it and rework it.

I am Petty. Every quality professional is petty. We worry about the small things.

I Take Things Personally. My life and my career is personal to me

I Party a Lot. I am an entertainer. I am an artist. I try my best to make everyone comfortable in a conversation. With me, you’re going to have a good time and I’m going to figure how to get what I need to get from you in order to make your job better.

I’m a Time Traveler. Everything I’ve done since that first job as a scrub nurse at 18 has brought me back to what I learned when I was 18.

I Steal Things. If a teammate has a good idea, it’s going upfront and I want it. We’re always downloading stuff, incorporating it and making it our own. Don’t waste opportunities or other people’s knowledge.

I Enjoy Being Afraid. Fear means there is an unknown. When we’re afraid, if we can understand that it’s a fear of the unknown then we can learn and become less fearful.

 

 

 

Food Safety Consortium 2023
From the Editor’s Desk

Registration Open for the 2023 Food Safety Consortium

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Food Safety Consortium 2023

Registration for the 11th Annual Food Safety Consortium, which will take place October 16-18 at the Hilton Parsippany in New Jersey, is now open.

Presented by Food Safety Tech, the Food Safety Consortium is a business-to-business conference that brings together food safety and quality assurance professionals for education, networking and discussion geared toward solving the key challenges facing the food safety industry today.

In addition to two full days of high-level panel discussions, this year’s program will include a second Food Safety Hazards track. These “Boots on the Ground” sessions provide education on the detection, mitigation, control and regulation of key food hazards.

New this year is a strategic co-location with the Cannabis Quality Conference (CQC), a business-to-business conference and expo where cannabis industry leaders and stakeholders meet to build the future of the cannabis marketplace. Registered attendees get full access to both conferences.

Registration options are available for in-person and virtual attendance.

The Consortium will kick off with presentations from Erik Mettler, Assistant Commissioner for Partnerships and Policy in the FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA), and Sandra Eskin, Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety at the USDA FSIS, followed by a Town Hall with the regulators.

Other agenda highlights include:

  • The Future of Food Safety Culture
  • The Rise of Previously Unforeseen Hazards,
  • FSMA 204: The Final Rule – Looking Ahead,
  • Anti-Food Fraud Tactics for the Entire Supply Chain
  • Bridging the gap between food safety and cybersecurity
    Protecting Allergic Consumers through Audited and Validated Allergen Control Plans
  • Succession Planning for Food Safety Inspectors
    Utilizing Food Quality Plans to Ignite Positive Food Safety Culture
  • Recalls Trends and Predictions

View the full agenda and register here.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to take part in pre-conference workshops on Monday, October 16, including:

  • Food Safety Auditor Training
  • CP-FS Credential Review Course
  • The Food Safety Culture Design Workshop
  • The Seed to Sale Safety Workshop

Event Hours

Monday, October 16: 8:30 am – 5:00 pm (Pre-conference Workshops)

Tuesday, October 17: 8 am – 6:30 pm

Wednesday, October 18: 8:30 am – 3:45 pm

Register now

Tabletop exhibits and custom sponsorship packages are available. Contact Sales Director RJ Palermo.

About Food Safety Tech

Food Safety Tech is a digital media community for food industry professionals interested in food safety and quality. We inform, educate and connect food manufacturers and processors, retail & food service, food laboratories, growers, suppliers and vendors, and regulatory agencies with original, in-depth features and reports, curated industry news and user-contributed content, and live and virtual events that offer knowledge, perspectives, strategies and resources to facilitate an environment that fosters safer food for consumers.

About the Food Safety Consortium

The Food Safety Consortium is an educational and networking event for Food Protection that has food safety, food integrity and food defense as the foundation of its educational content. With a unique focus on science, technology and compliance, the “Consortium” enables attendees to engage in conversations that are critical for advancing careers and organizations alike. Delegates visit with exhibitors to learn about cutting-edge solutions, explore high-level educational tracks, and network with industry executives to find solutions to improve quality, efficiency and cost effectiveness in the evolving food industry.

 

Holly Mockus, Product Manager, Alchemy Systems
Food Safety Culture Club

Improve Employee Loyalty and Food Safety by Building Better Leaders

By Holly Mockus
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Holly Mockus, Product Manager, Alchemy Systems

No matter where you look, labor shortages continue to linger. Good workers are in short supply, whether at a coffee shop, retail store, or food manufacturing plant. In some states, the problem has gotten so bad that lawmakers are proposing changes to child labor laws. Iowa, for example, has introduced legislation to make it legal for 14-year-olds to work in meat packing plants, which could present significant challenges to food and workplace safety. We shouldn’t have to resort to such drastic measures to maintain a stable workforce.

In addition to using higher wages and bonuses to attract workers, more manufacturers are creating workplace cultures that foster a feeling of importance, opportunity for advancement, and employee well-being—which all hinge on the strength of their frontline supervisors.

Bad supervisors or managers are among the most common reasons people cite for leaving their jobs. Last year, the employment and background screening services company GoodHire conducted a survey to determine why employees quit their jobs. Of the 3,000 workers surveyed, 82% identified bad managers as the top reason for leaving.

Set Up Leaders for Success

Being a good manager or supervisor is about displaying leadership qualities and habits that foster employee loyalty and best practices. That’s why it’s crucial to invest in leadership development. Good leaders can impact employee engagement by up to 70%, which improves safety and quality, enhances productivity, and reduces absenteeism and employee turnover.

In manufacturing, leaders are often selected based on their attendance or job performance. But we know it takes much more to be a good leader. Leaders must learn how to properly coach frontline workers, conduct constructive conversations, resolve conflicts, and more.

Frontline supervisors need leadership and soft skills training to improve communication, create good first impressions, provide and receive feedback, and conduct difficult conversations. Leadership training can also build trust and employee engagement in a manner that values differences.

Balance Empathy with Discipline

One of the biggest challenges for supervisors is maintaining a balance of empathy and discipline. While it’s important to understand and appreciate the challenges that manufacturing workers have endured over the last two years, supervisors must still hold employees accountable for their actions.

Many employees who were classified as essential workers during the pandemic are still working without a significant break. They’re watching friends leave for other jobs with higher pay. And they are taking on more work while replacements are slowly hired. They’re struggling financially as inflation outstrips their pay. And they might still be working without a path for promotions.

So, it’s important for leaders to understand their pain without looking the other way when safety policies go unfollowed. Leaders should be taught how to listen and ask questions about the general well-being of their teams while holding workers accountable for mistakes and shortcuts that can lead to safety issues.

While it might seem like a time to tread lightly around employees, letting safety issues go unfollowed can lead to significant consequences and allow other workers to develop bad safety habits.

Actively Listen to Employees and Value Differences

Frontline employees often complain that their supervisors rarely listen to their concerns. Active listening skills are needed to create an environment where employees feel included and valued. Training can help emerging leaders improve their listening skills and turn that feedback into something actionable.

Employees also need to feel included, which means leaders must learn how to understand and appreciate different backgrounds and cultures. In manufacturing plants with employees from multiple cultures and nationalities, it is essential for leaders to understand what drives and motivates employees before, during and after work.

This is also the time to improve overall listening skills, such as maintaining contact and eliminating distractions during conversations. Effective communication involves more than speaking clearly; it’s also about knowing when to stop talking and give others a chance to speak. Not all employees are comfortable with face-to-face meetings and being asked questions in a crowd. So, it’s important to know how employees like to communicate. This might involve email vs. direct or group conversations.

Make the Leap from Co-Worker to Leader

As leaders are selected from their groups, one of their biggest challenges will be transitioning from co-worker to supervisor. Too often, this conflict creates an environment where exceptions are made for friends. Training can help new leaders set clear expectations and boundaries for their friends and understand when they need to be firm and when they can be flexible.

These are just a few training areas that can help set new leaders up for success. Other areas of leadership training may include anger management, how to deal with difficult people, disciplinary actions, performance evaluations, and providing and receiving feedback.

When it comes to recruiting, new employees might come for the perks, but they’ll stay for a good supervisor.

Candy factory employee

Challenges and Best Practices in Developing a Strong Food Safety Culture

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Candy factory employee

On December 12, The FDA released a systematic review of the scientific literature on food safety culture (FSC), which identified barriers, as well as best practices, for organizations seeking to develop a stronger culture of food safety. The FDA noted that it will use this research to inform its continued efforts in support of food safety culture.

While food safety culture is defined in various ways in the literature, the review identified the most frequently cited definition of FSC as “the aggregation of the prevailing, relatively constant, learned, shared attitudes, values and beliefs contributing to the hygiene behaviors used within a particular food handling environment.” (Griffith, Livesey, and Clayton 2010).

Best practices for promoting FSC include:

  • Promoting FSC as a topmost goal of each member of the organization, not just a goal of a specific group within an organization.
  • Branding your commitment to FSC and promoting it everywhere. This includes displaying food safety messaging in break rooms, hallways, elevators, parking lots, or anywhere employees congregate so employees don’t forget it. In his book Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-Based Food Safety Management System, Frank Yiannas, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response wrote that, “Messaging should be simple, communicate what the desired behavior is, be placed where the desired behavior should occur, and changed often enough to prevent desensitizing.”
  • Building your food safety messages on the concept of “we,” and clearly defining how employees’ job objectives align with food safety.
  • Promoting FSC not only within your organization, but also within your entire supply chain.

Challenges and barriers to a strong and effective FSC include:

Over-reliance on Food Safety Management Systems (FSMS). Because FSMSs do not address the human impact on food safety, they do not guarantee a good FSC. A combination of a well-elaborated FSMS and a favorable food safety climate is ideal.

Prioritization of Cost-saving and Money-earning. A commitment to food safety must take precedence over other objectives and cultures that compete for priority within an organization, including the culture of saving money.

Frequent Staff Turnover. Continuous turnover can be detrimental to key determinants of FSC, such as risk awareness and accountability.

Optimistic Bias. Reviewed studies found that some organizations or employees have an “illusion of invulnerability,” which may hinder effective implementation of food safety behaviors. Without perceiving a susceptibility to food contamination, people often resist a focus on it unless they can see the value.

Download the Food Safety Culture Systematic Literature Review.

 

Intertek Alchemy Logo

Intertek Alchemy Launches Customizable Food Safety Culture Training Program

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Intertek Alchemy Logo

Intertek Alchemy, which offers workforce training solutions, has launched a new online food safety culture training program for food industry leaders to help them build and maintain an informed culture coalition within their organization. The program includes GFSI-based food safety culture instruction, a best practice case study and a food safety culture gauge that provides custom action plans and resources.

The program was developed in partnership with Cultivate SA, a Swiss-based company led by Dr. Lone Jespersen, food safety culture professional and chair of the GFSI Food Safety Culture Working Group.

“Strong food safety cultures are essential to reducing recalls and employee turnover, while maximizing productivity and ensuring compliance,” said Laura Dunn Nelson, Intertek Alchemy vice president of food safety and global alliances. “We are excited to work with Dr. Jespersen and the Cultivate SA team to develop our latest course that will help companies of all sizes efficiently and effectively educate their leadership on creating a collaborative and successful food safety culture, specific to their business.”

The training program is available online via Intertek Alchemy’s Zosi Learning Platform. Individuals or cross-functional teams of any size can take the course, which includes two in-depth learning modules on food safety culture and an industry-specific case study on how it positively impacts a food business.

From there, the program features an interactive food safety culture gauge that assesses the organization’s maturity level in regard to GFSI’s five dimensions of a food safety culture. Based on the organization’s responses, the program provides a customized action plan and set of culture tools leveraging social science principles.

 

Women in Food Safety

Highlights from the 2022 Food Safety Consortium

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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The 10th Annual Food Safety Consortium took place in Parsippany, New Jersey, on October 19-21. The event attracted food safety and quality assurance professionals from around the globe to discuss some of the biggest challenges in food safety.

Keynote speaker Denise Eblen, PhD, of the USDA FSIS opened the Consortium on October 19 to share the science and data behind the agency’s recently proposed Salmonella framework.

Denise Eblen
Keynote speaker Denise Eblen, Ph.D., of the USDA FSIS, presents “Leading with Science at FSIS.”

Day one of the conference focused on the future of food safety and food safety culture with panel discussions moderated by Dr. Darin Detwiler of Northeastern University and Deb Coviello, founder of The Drop In CEO.
Day two included panel sessions covering technology, food defense, reformulation challenges and more, followed by a networking cocktail reception with Women in Food Safety and The Foundation FSSC.

Session Highlights

Digital Transformation of Food Safety & Quality 4.0: Data Analytics and Continuous Improvement, moderated by Jill Hoffman, Senior Director, Food Safety and Quality, B&G Foods

Shawn Stevens, Attorney with the Food Industry Counsel, Jorge Hernandez, VP, Quality Assurance, The Wendy’s Company, and Elise Forward, Founder & Principal Consultant, Forward Food Solutions, discussed the Biggest FSQA Challenges, including the evolution of microorganisms, food fraud and adulterated products, workforce shortages and supply chain disruptions.

Shawn, Jorge, Elise
Shawn Stevens, Jorge Hernandez and Elise Forward discuss the Biggest FSQA Challenges at the 2022 Food Safety Consortium.

April Bishop, Senior Director of Food Safety at TreeHouse Foods, Peter Begg, VP of Quality and Food Safety, Hearthside Food Solutions and Melanie Neumann of Matrix Sciences tackled Product Reformulation Challenges and offered a five-step protocol to prepare in advance for potential reformulation:

  1. Write down your top five-selling SKUs
  2. List all ingredients
  3. Identify any single source suppliers
  4. Identify any potential risks, including geopolitical and weather-related to those suppliers
  5. Develop alternates
  6. Ask, “Do I need this ingredient?”

Jason Bashura, Senior Manager, Global Defense Pepsi Co. moderated a panel discussion on CybersecurOTy, Food Defense and Infrastructure Protection, followed by Audits: Blending in-person with Remote, led by Laurel Stoltzner, Corporate QA Manager OSI Industries, and a discussion on FSQA Technology: How Far is Too Far? How to Properly Analyze new FSQA Technology.

The final day of the Consortium brought attendees together to discuss Environmental, Social Governance (ESG), Diversification of the Supply Chain and How to Blend Employee Culture with Food Safety Culture.

Tia Glave and Jill Stuber of Catalyst were the final speakers of the event with a presentation and breakout group discussions designed to help attendees identify their personal, professional and organizational goals and provide the tools to help make those visions a reality.

What People Are Saying

“It was wonderful to reconnect and see so many industry friends in person!”

“I got to listen to some great speakers during the Consortium. Jason Bashura’s spirit and passion were infectious, Let’s make food safer for the world!.”

“So interesting to hear insights from across the food industry and related suppliers, as the landscape continues to evolve post-COVID. The panel discussion on communicating with the C-suite was so on point.”

Scenes from the Food Safety Consortium

     

Melody Ge FSC 2022     

Steve Mandernach    Jill Hoffman

Exhibit Hall FSC 22

About the Food Safety Consortium: ​Organized by Food Safety Tech, the Food Safety Consortium Conference, launched in 2012, is an educational and networking event that has food safety, food integrity and food defense as the foundation of its educational content. With a unique focus on science, technology, best practices and compliance, the “Consortium” features critical thinking topics that have been developed for both industry veterans and knowledgeable newcomers.

 

Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D.

How To Implement a Strong Food Safety Culture

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D.

Creating a company culture that embraces food safety is paramount to protecting your business and end users. But, developing a strong food safety culture takes time, effort and a buy-in from leadership.

We spoke with Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D., director of the Alliance to STOP Foodborne Illness, to discuss what it takes to create a company culture committed to food safety and what is holding companies and employees back from speaking up and taking action when safety concerns are identified.

Food Safety Tech (FST): How do companies get started in implementing a strong food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: I think it’s really important to remember that every company in the food space already has a food safety culture. They may just not know it. So, a good first step is to assess your current food safety culture. What’s going right? What’s going wrong? From there, outline where you would like to go.

FST: How do you assess your current food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: Talking with your employees and asking questions is a good start. There are some questionnaires available online to help you assess your current culture. It’s hard, though, because a lot of them are not scientifically validated, largely because food safety culture is amorphous and it’s also new.

We have a number of resources available on our website, including a Food Safety Culture Toolkit for businesses.

FST: How do company leaders motivate employees to play an active role in ensuring safe food processing and handling?

Dr. Coffman: That is really, really important. You can incentivize people through a rewards and recognition program, which is what a lot of our Alliance member-companies are doing.

I also think that getting into the heart and not just the mind of the employee is important. We have a lot of video resources and stories from foodborne illness survivors and people who have lost loved ones to foodborne illness. These are good motivators to help your team understand what can happen and how important every single person’s role is in the the production of safe food.

FST: How are companies incentivizing their employees to embrace food safety practices?

Dr. Coffman: It can be as simple as recognizing an employee of the month—a food safety culture employee of the month—and having a parking spot dedicated to that person or putting their name in the company newsletter.

Sometimes those big outward shows of recognition aren’t the best for every employee, and maybe somebody would rather get a little monetary bonus. Some businesses have taken employees or teams that have done really well out to lunch with the executives or someone who is well respected in the company. Getting an hour off from work may be a really great reward.

There are a lot of example of ways you can incentivize folks to do the right thing, but ultimately you want a culture of people wanting to do the right thing. That’s the most important aspect of a good food safety culture. You’re not doing it because you’re going to win a prize, but because it’s the right thing to do.

FST: Who, ultimately, is responsible for spearheading and developing a company’s food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: That’s a really complicated question. Everybody needs to be a part of it and everybody needs to buy in to building a positive food safety culture at a company. That includes frontline workers, maintenance workers and the top executives.

We have been doing a webinar series in partnership with the FDA, and we have gotten a lot of questions about who should be leading these efforts. While it is the front-line workers that have the ability to stop the line, note a problem or report a safety issue, if you do not have buy in from your executives, there is no motivation for the people on the front line to do the right thing. So, getting the company leaders—the C-suite and the middle management people—involved is critical.

FST: Do you have any tips or recommendations on how to speak to the people in the C-suite to help them understand the importance of food safety?

Dr. Coffman: A lot of times people who are not involved in food safety day-to-day are incentivized by different things or see things a little bit differently. Some of things we have found that people who are in the C-suite respond to or are concerned with include the cost of a recall, the cost of getting sued and the cost of brand damage. Those things are really, really important for business leaders to understand. But, as with other employees, you also need reach their hearts.

Join us at the Food Safety Consortium in Parsippany, NJ, October 19-21 and take part in our panel discussion, “Communicating to the C-Suite.”

Everybody has a family, everybody has friends, everybody has people they love and they would never want to see those people get hurt by something that they fed them or by something that their company created. So, really tapping into the hearts is important in addition to presenting those cold, hard numbers, which you do sometimes need.

FST: What prevents employees from being proactive about food safety or raising safety concerns?

Dr. Coffman: Termination. Getting in trouble. A lot of the companies within the Alliance have said that every single employee in their organization is allowed to stop the line. Their employees know that you will never get in trouble for stopping something if you see a problem. Unfortunately, that is not as commonplace as it should be. People who are whistleblowers get in trouble. People who bring up problems to their bosses get in trouble. And when we’re talking about food safety, if you let things slip you are putting people in danger

FST: What is the biggest misconception about food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: That this is a linear task. That this is something that you can just do and then it’s fixed and in place. It takes a lot of planning, a lot of energy and a lot of time.

Food safety culture is not something you have to do to meet an auditing requirement. The components are not going to be black and white, yes or no. This might seem frustrating at first to those who are used to following detailed checklists and written procedures, but once a positive, mature food safety culture is established, problem areas on your checklist will likely diminish.

STOP Foodborne Illness
Food Safety Think Tank

Food Safety Culture Webinar To Broadcast Live from IAFP

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STOP Foodborne Illness

The FDA and the Alliance to STOP Foodborne Illness have announced that the fourth installment of the “Collaborating on Culture in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety” webinar series will take place on August 3 from 12:15pm – 1:15pm ET.

The webinar, entitled “What More Do You Want to Know About Food Safety Culture?” will be broadcast live from the International Association for Food Protection 2022 Annual Meeting. Speakers and attendees will have the opportunity to engage in a question-and-answer session. Registration is available for both in-person and virtual attendance.

The webinar series was designed to bring together experts from the public and private sectors for a collaborative exchange of ideas and experiences related to the importance of food safety culture in ensuring safe food production.