Some past and more recent tragic issues in sectors outside the food and beverage industry provide a valuable learning opportunity on the importance of rigorous standards, transparent practices, and ethical management.
Some of these issues have highlighted the critical need for a robust and pervasive culture where the emphasis on product safety supersedes economic pressures or market competition. The scrutiny of industry relationships with regulators has shown the risks of perceived leniency, and transparency issues in various industries have underscored the dangers of insufficient information disclosure. In some cases, reports have suggested that management had to adequately address feedback or concerns from specialists. Crisis response strategies criticized for lack of empathy and slow action demonstrate the importance of having a well-prepared crisis management plan. Innovations have been implicated in safety issues due to insufficient testing and rushed development. Finally, past challenges in various sectors underscore the importance of learning from mistakes.
What about the food industry?
These lessons apply to the food sector, which can leverage them to enhance its practices, improve food safety standards, and build a more resilient industry better prepared to face challenges and protect public health.
Fostering a food safety culture means creating an environment where food safety is everyone’s responsibility, from the CEO to the line worker. Maintaining a strong and transparent relationship with regulators is essential, as is viewing compliance not as a hurdle but as a foundation for safe food production and distribution. Transparency in labeling, ingredient sourcing, and processing methods is vital. It builds customer and consumer trust, and helps prevent food safety risks. This transparency should extend beyond compliance to maintain open communication about issues during crises, manage public expectations, and avoid misinformation.
The food industry should have active systems for addressing feedback from stakeholders. It is crucial to encourage and protect whistleblowers who report food safety concerns, establish effective channels for feedback, and ensure those who raise concerns are protected and heard. This means creating a non-retaliatory environment that encourages speaking up.
It should develop proper plans for dealing with food safety incidents, including clear communication strategies that are timely, transparent, and empathetic, grounded in ethical considerations and public safety. Any new processing technology or ingredient substitution should undergo a thorough risk assessment and review before being introduced to the market.
Lastly, the food sector should also implement systems to capture lessons from food safety incidents and use them to improve safety protocols, adopting a continuous improvement mindset where incidents are translated into opportunities to learn and enhance procedures and training based on these insights.
Auditing is a powerful tool that can drive improvements and ensure adherence to best practices across these critical areas. Here are some associated suggestions for audit managers and auditors:
Seven audit recommendations
- Audits to help identify whether food safety policies are merely on paper or are genuinely practiced throughout the organization. Auditors should assess the actual implementation by interviewing employees across various levels, reviewing training records, and observing daily operations to reveal gaps in the food safety culture, ensuring that policies are actively upheld and not just documented.
- Auditors to verify compliance with critical food safety regulatory requirements. They need to pinpoint compliance gaps before these escalate into significant issues and confirm the accuracy of the information they provide to stakeholders. Audits to evaluate the effectiveness of how this information is communicated, ensuring that transparency is ensured.
- Auditors should review how the company captures, investigates, and resolves feedback and whistleblowing reports. This evaluation includes checking the mechanisms for reporting issues, the follow-up processes, and the protections for those reporting problems.
- Auditing to test the adequacy and effectiveness of a company’s crisis management plans through scenario-based drills or reviews of past incidents to assess how the company responded, what steps were taken to communicate with stakeholders, and how outcomes were documented and used for improvement.
- Audits to target new product development processes to ensure that all food safety assessments, risk analyses, and regulatory requirements have been thoroughly addressed.
- Audits to examine leadership actions and decisions, particularly how they align with stated company values and ethical guidelines. This involves reviewing decision-making processes, conflict-of-interest policies, and how ethical considerations are integrated into business strategies.
- Audits to verify that companies not only document incidents and near-misses but also analyze them and integrate lessons learned into operational practices. This continuous improvement system ensures that lessons are actively applied to enhance safety protocols, preventing repeat issues.
When regularly assessing the aspects detailed above, I am convinced that auditors will help the food industry comply with the required standards and foster a proactive approach towards food safety and quality, which is much needed in today’s dynamic market environment.
By Marc Cwikowski
April 21, 2024
