Food safety culture

Food safety culture

Keeping food safe starts with people

Keeping food safe starts with people
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Food safety culture
Food safety culture
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Create a culture of food safety

Embedding a positive, strong culture of food safety is a challenge that many food organizations face. Work instructions and production processes are easily defined and measured, but encouraging the right actions, behaviours and group norms requires a different approach.

Beyond complying to a standard, a mature food safety culture embeds and prioritizes food safety in the actions and decisions of everyone, from the production floor to the boardroom. Embedding this requires a very different set of skills and tools and the integration of change management, which staff need effective training on.

Is food safety culture an assessment requirement?

Yes, food safety culture is now a compliance requirement for companies hoping to achieve certification to GFSI-benchmarked standards such as BRCGS, FSSC 2200, SQF, Global GAP and IFS.

The GFSI Benchmarking Requirements Version 2020 includes food safety culture as a requirement. This means that for schemes to achieve the GFSI’s benchmark they now have to include, “elements of food safety culture, at a minimum consisting of: communication, training, feedback from employees and performance measurement on food safety related activities” as well as “the senior management’s commitment”.

Improving food safety culture

Every food organization already has a food safety culture. Food safety culture maturity varies by company, site and sometimes even across teams. The level of maturity is determined by how a business makes food safety decisions, and the degree to which food safety is prioritized in the every-day decisions and actions of the people in the business.

Adopting a maturity model can help you highlight areas of strength and weakness. It can also act as a roadmap to help you engage colleagues to change behaviours or help others to do so.

Start embedding Food Safety Culture

Collaboration

BSI believes in the value that embedding a culture of food safety can bring to both the food industry and to consumers. Our work with Cultivate’s Lone Jespersen, Ph.D. in Culture Enabled Food Safety, is a sign of our commitment.

Our training courses are based on Lone’s 20 years of experience, so that you can be sure you’re learning the correct methods to embed a positive and successful food safety culture. Watch the video to learn from Lone how our on-demand training helps organizations put the consumer at the heart of food safety.

As a member of the steering group, Cultivate is also supporting the development of the content of a PAS (publicly available specification) to help organizations of all sizes throughout the food and beverage industry embed food safety culture effectively. BSI’s standards development team is managing the development of PAS 320: A guide to a culture of food safety, bringing together food industry representatives, academia and regulatory bodies to work together to ensure the content of the standard meets the food sector’s needs.