Tag Archives: food safety culture

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.

 

Hand washing

Free Food Safety Culture Toolkit Launched by Alliance of Advocates, Food Safety Pros

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Hand washing

The Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness (Alliance) is offering a free food safety culture toolkit tailored for small and medium-sized food businesses. Stop Foodborne Illness (STOP) is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting those affected by foodborne illness and advocating for food safety.

The kit, which is a guide to help manufacturing workforces find the ‘why’ behind their company’s food safety measures, is the result of a collaboration between STOP and Fortune 500 food safety practitioners at Amazon, Costco, Kellogg and more.

“Every year, one in six Americans are sickened by a foodborne illness. This toolkit helps companies shift away from ‘have to be safe’ to ‘want to to safe’ in order to protect overall public health,” says Dr. Vanessa Coffman, director of the Alliance. “Sharing our Alliance members’ best practices help smaller companies build a path toward stronger food safety cultures.”

Derek Stangle, Squadle
FST Soapbox

A Check on Food Service Safety

By Derek Stangle
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Derek Stangle, Squadle

Food safety is a primary concern worldwide. On a national scale, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earmarked $44.8M for food safety in the President’s FY2022 Budget Request, with more than half of that funding going to the New Era of Smarter Food Safety initiative—a blueprint for the use of new and emerging technologies and approaches.

The New Era of Smarter Food Safety is centered around four core elements:

  • Tech-enabled Traceability
  • Smarter Tools and Approaches for Prevention and Outbreak Response
  • New Business Models and Retail Modernization
  • Food Safety Culture

These foundational pillars cover a range of technologies, analytics, business models and values. Working together, these elements help create a safer and more traceable food system.

The focus on food safety culture is particularly interesting. The FDA calls upon restaurants and food service providers to define food safety culture goals, and to develop and launch internal training on the principles of food safety, starting with education on the tools available for food safety with a particular focus on tools that assess and measure progress.

Creating that safety culture is critical to any brand in food service. Employees, equipped with the proper tools and procedures, are on the front lines of food safety: from ensuring proper food storage and refrigeration, to keeping food prep areas and utensils clearly marked, clean and sanitary, and cooking food to safe temperatures.

According to the Safe Food Alliance, food safety culture refers to the specific culture of a facility: the attitudes, beliefs, practices and values that determine what is happening when no one is watching. A strong culture of food safety helps a facility both prevent and catch deviations in their processes that can impact the safety, quality and legality of their products.

How to Maintain Cleanliness and Service Standards

Yet a food safety culture alone is not enough. Equip your employees for success by providing the proper tools and training. For new employees, training should include: education of the restaurant’s cleanliness and service standards, where these standards are derived from (i.e. FDA Food Code), the purpose of restaurant inspections and the consequences of receiving a food code violation.

Starting with the basics, employees should carefully inspect the kitchen, eating and dining areas, as well as restrooms, to make sure the restaurant meets legal health requirements and store-implemented standards. Implementation of the FDA food code ensures cleanliness and food safety practices, including the most current science, technology and legal precedents. Adhering to these guidelines enhances the customer and employee experience by reducing the risk of foodborne illnesses, and the likelihood of physical injury.

Maintaining cleanliness and service standards can be difficult, and the tasks required for food safety can be cumbersome for employees. Manual checklists can help ensure tasks are completed. Newer technologies, such as digital checklists, can further streamline food safety tasks, with compliance and visibility into whether procedures are being diligently followed and completed.

One major challenge of using manual/paper checklists is the lack of transparency in completion rates and quality of tasks. This is especially true for operators of multiple locations. Digital checklists can require employees to provide managers with evidence of task completion—signing a form or capturing a task completion photo.

A manager also can assess the state of restaurant cleanliness and predict threats to food safety and customer satisfaction remotely. For example, if a manager identifies that the tables in the customer seating area are overdue to be wiped down, they can alert employees to this issue.

Having a digital record of completion provides managers confidence that their procedures are being followed, especially when it comes time for restaurant inspection. These insights also allow managers to refine employee education. With effective implementation, these good habits will become routine.

Without an accurate view of operations, food safety and restaurant cleanliness standards cannot be accurately assessed. Eventually, these inconsistencies may cause unforeseen customer service conflicts and food code violations.

Establishing a food safety culture, backed by routine and technology tools, will help your team develop the habits needed to achieve and maintain the high level of cleanliness and service standards required to prevent foodborne illness and increase customer satisfaction.

 

Laura Dunn Nelson, Intertek Alchemy
FST Soapbox

Three Ways to Ensure Food Safety During Supply Chain Disruptions

By Laura Dunn Nelson
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Laura Dunn Nelson, Intertek Alchemy

For the last two years, we consumers have experienced the global supply chain challenges associated with a variety of items such as lack of home appliances, favorite packaged foods or paper towels. And now the Ukraine war has sparked a new supply chain crisis with projected shortages of chemicals, oilseeds, iron, steel, fertilizers, wood, palladium and nickel. It’s clear that disruptions will continue as the world endures a crippled supply chain.

Most consumers don’t consider how supply chain interruptions affect the production and safety of so many of the foods we eat. Delays in any food ingredient or packaging can disrupt production schedules, delay shipments, and lead to empty retail shelves for thousands of food processors, manufacturers and retailers across the globe.

As manufacturers cope with these challenges, they frequently have to identify new suppliers or change processes and formulas on the fly. These unanticipated changes may often lead to shortcuts that can pose significant risks to consumers and cause food recalls.

It’s often hard to imagine all the interdependencies within the global supply chain, but one missed shipment or unavailable product can produce ripple effects throughout the globe. To reduce the risks associated with supply chain delays, food processors should implement resiliency measures such as effective change management and food safety vendor audit programs, detailed product specification and vendor expectation requirements, and multi-sourced vendor strategies.

To address these issues, this article reviews three ways food manufacturers can continue to minimize delays and reduce food safety risks when the supply chain interrupts production.

Learn more about how to address risks in the supply chain by viewing the Food Safety Tech Hazards Series: Supply Chain | On Demand1. Empower Workers to Report Issues

It’s always important to remember that employees can be the best defense against food safety threats. They’re the ones who interact with the products day-to-day and have the most familiarity with the ingredients. Their expertise is especially important now that supply chain disruptions are introducing new issues and anomalies.

Food manufacturers should train employees to understand which ingredients and products are acceptable and encourage them to speak up when they notice any anomalies. It’s also critical that training instills in workers the idea that they share the responsibility to ensure the safety and quality of the products they produce.

When frontline employees have the authority and the autonomy to alert their supervisors when they see something unusual or unexpected, they can become a powerful weapon in the food safety risk prevention arsenal. Harnessing the eyes of all your employees as your ultimate quality control team will help prevent costly recalls, product rework and further production delays.

2. Review Supplier Specs

When food manufacturers start working with a new supplier, they should take the necessary time to review their detailed product specifications to understand the technical and functional aspects of their product. From nutritional values and potential allergens to ingredients and chemical properties, it’s critical to have a full picture of what goes into the product before incorporating it into your manufacturing process.

As a best practice, manufacturers should also ask for a copy of the supplier’s recent GFSI food safety audits or equivalent and proof of liability insurance.

It’s also critical to thoroughly review vendor product specifications to confirm that a newly sourced ingredient meets your purchase expectations, label requirements, and food safety and quality risk profile. Considering how quickly an interruption can occur, it’s important to establish new vendor expectations and develop a supplier questionnaire. In addition, always plan ahead by sourcing multiple backup suppliers prior to ingredient and packaging disruptions.

3. Examine Supplier Labels

Understanding the product specifications is a critical first step, but it’s equally important to compare the label to the specs to ensure it is compliant and expected.

When a package arrives on the dock, receivers need to know if the contracted product has arrived as specified. Is the product packaged correctly, within expected shelf life, in a sanitary condition? Receivers should answer these and other questions by looking for inconsistencies per pallet like mixed lot codes and product shelf-life variances. Employees should also check the condition of incoming products including noting unusual odors or colors that might not seem right or for packaging that looks different from prior shipments.

The ongoing supply chain disruptions are predicted to continue this year, which means they can potentially cause food safety challenges based on inconsistencies in raw materials and undocumented process changes in production. Food safety leaders must hone their change management skills to successfully lead their organizations through these challenging times.

Adhering to the strict practices detailed in this article might seem like a lot of extra work and attention, but it’s actually something food manufacturers should be doing all the time as part of a mature food safety culture.