Strengthening the cause of food safety with compliance.
Ever since the GFSI published white paper on food safety culture, food industry globally has been keen on understanding and promoting the role of people and culture in enabling food safety and product quality.
A food safety culture that prioritizes people and supports collaboration in manufacturing facilities, food service businesses, restaurants or retail stores can help improve quality, minimizing the risks of contamination or product recalls, while also benefiting productivity and talent retention.
The common factor in food safety incidents, quality failures and recalls is people rather than failures of machinery or technology. Equally, when issues occur, people are the key to avoiding recurrence.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), consuming contaminated food results in an estimated 600m people falling ill every year, leading to 420,000 deaths. A desire to tackle this led to a round-table discussion at the 2019 International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) Annual Meeting, and then ultimately the creation of an industry steering group. The resulting document, Developing and Sustaining a Mature Food Safety Culture (PAS 320), has been designed to guide organizations of all sizes across food, beverage and retail to create a culture where people are prioritized, all employees embrace food safety, take responsibility for reporting issues, and are empowered to initiate the change.
PAS 320 includes steps for identifying gaps and then implementing a plan for change. It makes recommendations related to the leadership; the organization's vision, mission, values and policy; organizational structure; responsibilities, accountabilities and authorities; guiding coalition team; interested parties; change champions; influencers; and food safety documentation. The guidance also includes advice on how prioritizing people in the sector not only supports improved food safety, but also brings other benefits including investment return, business performance improvement, reduction of the costs associated with poor quality, and enhanced efficiency.
A positive food safety culture that prioritizes people and gives everyone a stake in driving quality can have a transformative effect and help in reducing the risk that arises from unsafe food. This starts with the leadership taking steps to turn ambition into action in order to build and sustain the continuous improvements across their organization and the wider supply chain.
DNV is working with leading organizations to promote food safety culture across food industries. We participate in creating and delivering workshops, competency building, conducting surveys, assessing the food safety maturity. DNV SCPA business area offers solutions for the supply chain, including supplier audits, advisory programs, and customised trainings.
Reach us to know how DNV can help you.
Contact us
