Tag Archives: food safety culture

Deirdre Schlunegger, Stop Foodborne Illness
Food Safety Culture Club

Sharing Food Safety Stories Around The World

By Deirdre Schlunegger
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Deirdre Schlunegger, Stop Foodborne Illness

Last month, I spoke in Santiago, Chile at the Inofood Conference. I spoke about the impact of foodborne illness in the lives of individuals and families.

I showed photos of little Reese who died two years ago and talked about how Stop Foodborne Illness works with the food industry to drive home the importance of food safety and the consequences of foodborne illness. Together, we work to raise awareness, create and sustain strong food safety cultures and to promote the importance of food safety.

Deirdre Schlunegger will be speaking as part of a panel of experts during the Food Safety: Past, Present & Future Plenary Session during the Food Safety Consortium, November 29th at 4:00pm.

I was in good company with Frank Yiannas as he spoke of food safety culture and his book was even translated into Spanish for this conference. Tim Jackson from Driscoll’s and DeAnn Benesh from 3M addressed technical issues related to food safety and many others spoke. Food Safety representatives from Chile and around the globe were very interested and are dedicated to the topic and practice.

I am proud that we are among the nonprofit, behavioral and scientific experts and making a difference as food safety culture, tools, data and interventions improve. I have already been contacted to see if the video, which I showed in Spanish, can be used throughout Chile in the coming months.

Just a few days following his conference, I was in Greenbelt Maryland attending the JIFSAN (Joint Institute of Food Safety and Nutrition) Conference and Advisory meeting as I serve on the Advisory Council. The topic was Risk Analysis Tools and Data and it was a fascinating two days. Again, professionals who teach and share food safety knowledge around the world gathered to share vision, tools and practices.

The 5th Annual Food Safety Consortium conference will take place November 28 through December 1st and we will be there! We continue to see a strong drive and desire to improve food safety and we need to continue to press until the estimated number of people who die each year from foodborne illness diminishes significantly from 3,000 towards zero. No one should die from nourishing their body with food.

I am ending this blog with the powerful story of Aly: http://www.stopfoodborneillness.org/stories/aly/

Vicky Waskiewicz
FST Soapbox

Food Safety Issues Don’t Occur In The QA Manager’s Office

By Vicky Waskiewicz
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Vicky Waskiewicz

Just like many jobs, a quality assurance manager starts out with high hopes of creating a real difference in their day-to-day work. But that vision quickly gets blocked by stacks of paperwork and other to-dos taking top priority. Soon, QA managers find themselves far from the floor and far from where the real work is happening, usually stuck behind a desk in an office.

While this may have become standard practice, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing you can do to change this reality. And, the sooner you are able to do so the better, because we all know that the job of a QA manager, especially when it comes to food safety, is important, both to the company and to the public.

Why Food Safety Should Be At The Top Of A QA Manager’s Priority List

The roles and responsibilities of a QA manager are vast, which is why it’s so easy to get caught-up in tasks that keep you holed up in your office. But of all the duties you have, the one that shouldn’t get overlooked is food safety. Because food is consumed, and has the potential to endanger consumers if it’s not produced properly, it is capable of destroying a company’s reputation and their margins, not to mention people’s lives.

As a QA manager, you know this, but you might not be doing everything in your power to make sure the food your company is producing is safe.

How To Improve Food Safety

While you can do a lot from your office, you can’t know what’s happening on the floor without actually spending time there. You have to work closely with your employees to make sure they understand the importance of food safety and therefore the importance of their job.

Here are five ways you can begin to improve the level of food safety in your company.

  1. Work directly with the production floor. Make it a priority to get out of your office regularly to observe the practices that are being used. The more you talk directly with employees about food safety, the more they will understand why it’s important and the safety precautions they can take to ensure they are creating food that is safe.
  2. Demonstrate the importance of food safety. Consider setting up a meeting or talk that gives real life examples of people who have gotten sick or hurt from food that is produced with improper practices. Demonstrating the importance of things, like proper sanitation, can make individuals on the floor aware of the repercussions if they don’t follow the safety guidelines.
  3. Get employees involved in food safety. Spend time educating your employees on measures they can take to assure that the food they are producing is safe. Letting them hold each other accountable is a powerful way to make sure there are eyes on the floor even when you’re not there.
  4. Lead by example. When management walks out onto the production floor, all eyes are on them. Be sure that senior management is aware of the rules, handwashing, hair restraints, etc. and that they follow them every time they enter the production area. Teach employees to kindly remind them if they see them bypass one of the good manufacturing practices.
  5. Regularly change signage throughout the facility. The same old signage over time becomes part of the landscape and eventually the worker is blind to it. Take the time to change the signs, using different sizes, bold colors and positive messaging.

Becoming A Food Safety Hero

QA managers play crucial roles in companies, but without putting food safety at the top of their list, they’re overlooking one of their most important jobs. By learning about steps you can take to improve food safety, like the five mentioned above, you can become a food safety hero, protecting your company and its consumers.

Deirdre Schlunegger, Stop Foodborne Illness
Food Safety Culture Club

The Food Safety Culture Conversation

By Deirdre Schlunegger
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Deirdre Schlunegger, Stop Foodborne Illness

I learn and remember visually and I was recently thinking about the food safety world and culture; how the fabric of the culture is woven together with people who care about people. After all, that is what it comes down to, people who cultivate, grow, harvest, produce, distribute, deliver, store, prepare, serve and eat safe food. When there is a breakdown of the weave, people become ill and some die, families are devastated, business fails and trust is broken. The system fails.

It really comes down to each weaver, regardless of the level of responsibility performing their duty, knowing that they are the link between health and illness, success and failure, life and death. So, the question is how do we make sure that each person who comes in contact with food products is thoroughly educated, truly understands the impact and has a breadth of awareness of the importance of food safety?

Many companies are admirably deeply invested in food safety training. Organizations share food safety tips about safe food practices, including Stop Foodborne Illness. Stop Foodborne Illness employees and volunteers bring the stories of foodborne illness to light each time we speak, are present at conferences, participate in food safety trainings, deliver video messages and send out newsletters. We work with those impacted and pair them with others who have experienced the same thing and offer them an outlet to share their stories.

What more can we do? 3000 people in the US die each year, 128,000 are hospitalized and 48 million become ill. The numbers are much too high. Let’s keep the food safety culture conversation going and improvement in training and practices and ideas flowing. Here is one such story to start the conversation.

Tressa, Chloe, and Luke

 

Stanley Rutledge, Stop Foodborne Illness
Food Safety Culture Club

What’s the Point?

By Stanley Rutledge
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Stanley Rutledge, Stop Foodborne Illness

I’m surprised when I meet people who ask me, “What’s the point?”

What’s the point of…contacting people who’ve been impacted by foodborne illness? Sharing those peoples’ stories with industry?

Turns out, most of these people are speaking out of inexperience. For them, foodborne illness is a day or two spent home in bed, or the bathroom. They honestly aren’t aware that every year, for the families and friends of 3000 people*, foodborne illness is a destructive force much like the recent hurricane. It forces many people out of the lives they’re living into dire, and often extreme, situations where they’re required to rely on strangers and others for help. And before they reach a “new normal”—whatever that means—they face a myriad of physical, mental, financial, and social consequences. Unlike the hurricane, however, people who are victims of foodborne illness get no advance warning and are powerless to stop its effects, or even prepare for them.

At Stop Foodborne Illness we know the transforming power of story—of being able to recount an experience so powerful that it set you on a path different from where you started. For us, sharing those stories on an industry level is empowering for everyone involved. I’m always saying that everybody knows they need to wash their hands, but when that knowledge transitions from your head to your heart, then you have habits changing and behavior being modified.

Last month, a constituent from Wisconsin had the opportunity to share her story with about 120 employees of a fruit processing plant also located in Wisconsin. The following is an email we received afterwards that so clearly explains why we do what we do at Stop:

“You did an absolutely wonderful job. The impact on the group was exactly what I had hoped. Rest assured that you are making a difference by telling your story, and I know that was emotional and hard for you. Many people came up to me and said how different it makes them think of things now, having heard someone speak so close to home that almost died.

I can’t thank you enough.”

*The CDC estimates that every year in the United States, 3000 people die from foodborne disease, and that 128,000 people are hospitalized.

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

How Do We Incentivize Behavior Change?

By Deirdre Schlunegger
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Deirdre Schlunegger, CEO of STOP Foodborne Illness

In March, I presented and participated in a session regarding produce safety at The Global Food Safety Conference in Houston. In April, I was the keynote speaker at the BRC conference in Orlando, Florida. I asked: What incentivizes the human spirit and how do we draw on people’s creativity and their ability to have empathy and to solve problems?  Which interventions are more or less likely to stimulate one’s ability to care about food safety as it relates to human beings? Knowledge alone seldom changes behavior. The imagination benefits from stimulation—for example, listening to personal stories. For change to happen, there must be an emotional connection to the idea of achievable outcomes.

This past year we spoke at a large food company. During a pre-call to discuss what the presentation might look like, one man said that nearly 20 years ago, he heard Nancy Donley speak about her son Alex, who died at the age of six from a foodborne illness. He said since that time, he has never looked at food safety the same way, and he takes every single infraction dealing with food safety as a possible consequence for someone’s life. A rational understanding of what a better outcome might look like will often involve a deeper understanding and a connection with an issue and with the individuals related to that issue. Change is difficult. We often don’t learn until we risk collapse or fail. In a moment of crisis, we are presented with a unique opportunity for change. This idea could stand to be finely calibrated, as there are moments that are too painful to activate learning as one struggles with a deep sense of hopelessness, and there are moments when change lies outside the realm of possibilities. An analytic perspective without access to emotional content is unlikely to provide the conditions for change, but a link between the head and the heart may initiate transformation.

I met Will Daniels, formerly of Earthbound Farms after an emotional presentation he made at a conference. He spoke about a young boy who died from the spinach outbreak and he referred to his children of nearly the same age. He also presented the sequence of events that led to and followed the outbreak in a very factual and logical way. This link between his head and his heart delivered a presentation that was impactful, emotional, factual and sincere. A cold analysis of a problem is seldom sufficient, nor is the condition of people when they are stuck in an overwhelming emotional state. The challenge is to find middle ground and put together thinking and feeling in a context where a coherent narrative will be created. For individuals to change their behavior, we must influence not only their environment, but their hearts and their minds. What we do know about change and people’s readiness to change is that it has much to do with timing and ripeness. The crucial question is whether issues are close enough to the surface to break into the public discourse or to have an impact on a system. As a protective mechanism, people resist the pain of engagement and hold onto old assumptions, often adopting a deluded narrative. People may find that blaming others, scapegoating, externalizing the other party, denying the problem, jumping to conclusions, or launching a distracting issue might restore stability and feel less stressful than facing and taking responsibility for a complex challenge.

We often see change in companies and their policies after they have experienced an outbreak, not before. Over the years we have seen this with several companies whose confidence was high prior to an outbreak, as they had never had a problem before and felt as if they were immune. The challenge is to allow for conditions in that there is sufficient pressure to change but there is also a safety net in place. There is a real tension between the pressure to change and the conditions that allow for necessary creativity, flexibility and imagination to get us through a crisis.   Businesses that are transparent in their admittance to a problem often are better able to create change in a safe environment. In other words, “yes, we have a problem and what are we going to do to change course?” Crisis isn’t necessary but in reality, catastrophic events often precede modifications in policy and practice. Creating a head/heart connection during planning and training may deliver a sense of urgency to help individuals remember “the why” behind food safety.

Until we prepare for a future with a sense of urgency and commitment and fully integrate “the why behind food safety”, we will merely repeat errors of the past. It takes courage and true leadership to carry out a vision, a future that doesn’t deny or divorce itself from the past but uses it in such a way that opens the door to progress. We have improved our narratives and are better at risk analysis and detection, and I believe we will continue to improve.

Maria Fontanazza, Zephyr Wilson, Food Safety Consortium

Encourage Employees to Find Listeria

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Maria Fontanazza, Zephyr Wilson, Food Safety Consortium

Building the right food safety culture around environmental monitoring requires a realistic approach to your processes. “Culture starts with understanding your process,” Zephyr Wilson, product manager at Roka Bioscience told Food Safety Tech at the 2016 Food Safety Consortium. “You need to ask questions—a lot of questions.”

In the following video, Wilson talks about food safety culture in the context of environmental monitoring and how companies should approach environmental monitoring. “Understand all of your processes,” she said. “Take an honest look at your metrics and make sure you’re encouraging your employees to find the Listeria.”

She also reviews the steps a company should take when undergoing self-auditing, and encourages companies to work under the direction of an attorney to ensure that all results are confidential.

Frank Yiannas, Walmart, 2016 Food Safety Consortium

Moving Food Safety Culture Beyond Slogans

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Frank Yiannas, Walmart, 2016 Food Safety Consortium

“If you think about evolution and continuous improvement in food safety, it’s nothing new,” said Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Walmart at the 2016 Food Safety Consortium. In the following video, Yiannas introduces his perspective on how food safety culture has evolved and moved beyond a slogan or buzzword.

Stay tuned for more video clips from Yiannas’ presentation at the Food Safety Consortium.

FSC 2016

FSMA, Listeria, Fraud and Food Safety Culture Among Top Topics at Food Safety Consortium

By Maria Fontanazza
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FSC 2016

The 2016 Food Safety Consortium was a big success, from the preconference events that included the STOP Foodborne Illness fundraiser honoring heroes in food safety and the education workshops (SQF Information Day and preventive controls courses) to the record-breaking attendance we saw during the main program (with keynotes from FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine Stephen Ostroff, M.D., Walmart’s Vice President of Food Safety Frank Yiannas, and FBI’s Special Agent Scott Mahloch).

As the event winded down, the leaders of each session track shared their insights on lessons learned during the Consortium.

Understanding biofilm and how it forms.  If you’re seeing peaks and valleys in the positives and negatives in your environmental swabbing program, you may have resident Listeria that has formed a biofilm, which requires a deep clean. Focus on biofilm, not just mitigation of the Listeria bacteria itself. – Gina Kramer, Savour Food Safety International. Read Gina’s column, Food Safety Think Tank, where she talks about the latest technology and innovations.

This is the first conference I’ve been to you where food fraud is being more widely acknowledged as a serious, important concern that is distinctly separate from food safety. One of the more significant takeaways is the number of tools that are now available for people to mitigate their risk to food fraud in the supply chain. – Steve Sklare, USP

Warren Hojnacki, SGS
Warren Hojnacki, SGS

A while back food safety was a nice-to-have but not a need-to-have. It’s certainly an absolute need-to-have now. There are three groups of individuals out there: The third that has picked up the baton and is proactive, the other third that are in the middle of it right now, and the other third have their heads in the sand. I come across a sizable portion that is in the bottom third, and it’s slightly scary… It’s the documentation that a lot of companies are having the biggest challenge in dealing with—the death by paper. The resources out there are immense. It’s a necessity to have right now in order to be effective and compliant.  – Warren Hojnacki, SGS

FSMA regulations require us to be risk based, scientifically based and systematic in our approach to our concerns and issues. – Barb Hunt, Savour Food Safety International

There’s potential for greater data and actions: i.e., the microbiome study or particulate contamination analysis, PLM, IR spectroscopy, SEM EDS, [and] raman spectroscopy…Lab customers may need to depend more greatly on contract labs as FSMA develops and in return, labs need to work more closely with the customers to get dependable, defensive data results. – Eric Putnam, Wixon, Inc.

Trish Wester, PA Wester Consulting
Trish Wester, PA Wester Consulting

We need to do a better job of messaging upstream to our corporate senior officials so we get the money and resources we need—there’s still a gap there. We need to find ways to communicate to them.  – Trish Wester, PA Wester Consulting

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

Time to Reflect and Honor Food Safety Heroes

By Deirdre Schlunegger
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Deirdre Schlunegger, CEO of STOP Foodborne Illness
Robert Tauxe, CDC
CDC’s Robert Tauxe will be honored by STOP Foodborne Illness at a fundraiser during the 2016 Food Safety Consortium.

STOP Foodborne Illness is honored again this year to be given the opportunity by Food Safety Tech to hold a fundraising event at the Food Safety Consortium on Tuesday, December 6 at 7 p.m. in Schaumburg, Illinois (Chicago area). We are honoring Robert Tauxe, M.D., MPH, deputy director of the CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases at the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases with the Advancing Science for Food Safety Award; Scott Horsfall, representing The California Leafy Green Marketing Association with the Food Safety Training Award; and Jeff Almer, whose mother died from foodborne illness for the Food Safety Hero award. We will have a silent auction, music and food. This is a time to pause and thank those who have positively influenced our food safety system and we hope you will join us.

STOP Foodborne Illness is a national nonprofit public health organization dedicated to the prevention of illness and death from foodborne pathogens.

  • Advocating for sound public policy
  • Building public awareness
  • Assisting those impacted by foodborne illness
Scott Horsfall Dan Sutton Jeff Almer
Scott Horsfall Dan Sutton Jeff Almer

Last year’s Food Safety Heroes were Nancy Donley, former spokesperson for Safe Tables Our Priority and STOP Foodborne Illness and Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Walmart.

FDA’s Michael Taylor Joins in Honoring Food Safety Heroes

 

Deirdre Schlunegger, STOP Foodborne Illness
Food Safety Culture Club

Ten Years and Counting: Advocating Change

By Deirdre Schlunegger
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Deirdre Schlunegger, STOP Foodborne Illness

According to the CDC, people from 26 states were reported to have E. coli O157:H7 from fresh spinach: This month marks 10 years since this outbreak wreaked havoc on the lives of 205 confirmed persons, three of whom lost their lives. Something in the system, and the process, definitely needed to be fixed. A sea change was in order.

At the 2016 Food Safety Consortium, STOP Foodborne Illness will have a fundraiser to honor heroes in food safety. |December  6, 2016, 7–9 pm | LEARN MOREAmong those whose lives were irrevocably changed was Rylee Gustafson, a young woman whom STOP Foodborne Illness considers not only a friend and constituent, but also a powerful advocate for change. She was 9 years old when she volunteered to choose what her family was going to eat that day. She chose spinach, and what should have been an insignificant event—dinner with her family—became a monumental force in her life. Rylee was knocked down, but she got back up and has been telling her story, changing people’s lives, and enlightening government and industry decision-makers ever since. Subsequently, Rylee has influenced the life of every American.

Thanks to the hard work of advocates like Rylee, the question of how to create a food safety culture has been making its way into the consciousness of America. In October, STOP Foodborne Illness will be hosting a webinar addressing the very question of creating and sustaining a food safety culture. “Food safety culture” has become a buzz word in the industry. but what steps can be taken to strategically ensure that it not only happens, but that it thrives?

Together with Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety for Walmart, Mike Taylor, senior fellow at Freedman Consulting, and Steve Schluneger, principal of Intrinsic Leadership, I will present and answer these questions and more during this webinar.

Thanks to the generosity and technical prowess of Food Safety Tech, and our esteemed guests, this event is sure to be a powerful and enlightening discussion.

The webinar is titled, Food Safety Culture: We Know Why, Let’s Talk About How. It takes place from 1-2 pm CST on October 11, 2016. The cost of registration before October 4 is $129. Register here.

Please join us!