Food Safety Culture and its Elements

 

Intro:A new buzz word"food safety culture" has become highly common in food processing businesses lately.  Along with notions of food safety compliance and conformance, the most talked concept in food processing industry now a days is"food safety culture".  One of the extremely significant reason for it is introduction of the concept of food safety culture as part of the needs of the criteria like BRC, SQF and other GFSI certificate schemes.  So when organizations start growing food safety culture, they go with developing documentations like SOP, checklists and records as well.  

 Together with objective evidences of SOPs, checklists and documents, the food safety culture is going to be judged by a practical approach of the company towards food safety.

What's food safety culture?  Food safety culture is the values of a company with respect to food safety.  The culture especially means"doing the things with responsibility, awareness and ethics even if no one is watching".  It is only not about understanding of significance of food safety but also knowing what's person's role in safeguarding it. A strong food safety culture aids a facility both to stop and catch deviations in their procedures that impact the security, quality, and legality of their products and additionally likelihood and seriousness of a remember impacting that website. Just like the concept of PRP and HACCP, food safety culture also proves to be"preventative step " for ensuring food safety in business. Here is the list of a few important factors which are crucial for growing, always maintaining and improving food safety culture of the organization:

 1.   Direction: For any company, the culture in the business is defined by the leaders/ best management of the organization.  Their consciousness and actions decides the culture of business positively or negatively.   After completing all the essential activities in change area, we were just about to enter processing hall.  Suddenly a food handler arrived and said to plant head"sir you're wearing wrist watch, please remove it before entering the processing area".  I was amazed to see the response of plant head.  He said" Oh I am sorry.   Thank you for reminding me enter the processing hallway".   Best management need to first be aware enough to comprehend and follow the practices and make suitable environment for food safety to be followed by everyone in his/her business.  Thus leadership defines food safety culture of their organization.

2.   Empowerment of worker: Above mentioned instance is equally appropriate for empowerment of workers along with leadership.  The food handler may stop and say something about noncompliance of jewelry coverage by plant mind only because he felt permitted to do so.  Empowering and expecting the workers to take decisions and talk openly about food safety issues, problem solving and continuous improvement is the key strategy for ensuring food safety culture inside company.  Empowerment and hope of workers can be achieved through transparency in communicating and supporting each other.

3.   Encouragement and admiration: The environment and culture of the business, the actions of top management must reflect into reinforcement and appreciation of workers.  In 1 organization where I did job for food safety management system execution, I observed an excellent practice of devoting award to employees who'd done exceptional work in food safety or contributed in problem solving and continuous improvement.  These employees then discuss their story and actions with everybody in that award ceremony.  By this kind of practices within organization, the individual awarded feel appreciated and other hearing the story of awardees feel inspiration and motivation to do better things.  When employee gets appreciation, they're more likely to follow rules and procedures, be more adoptive to modifications and will be ready for greater involvement towards food safety.  They will always do more and much better than expected.  On the contrary if employees sense fear, discouragement and not valued, they will not feel responsible and liable for their actions and the results of the actions.

4.   Responsibility and accountability:The culture of the organization should be such that every worker should feel the feeling of their responsibility as well as liability in case something goes wrong.  The trust and surroundings in business is likely to make workers work with increased sense of awareness and understanding of importance of food safety.  Duty will see whether the action assigned to the individual is done or not while accountability will ensure that the action is completed appropriately and effectively.  Food safety culture needs employees to understand liability and responsibility towards food safety. Team work:Team work is just one of the very important elements in the recipe of of food safety culture of organization.  Team work frequently results into creating good culture in the business together with ensuring food safety.  Example In 1 business where I started food safety system implementation project, in kickoff meeting, director was mentioning proudly about nearly 80% girls food handlers and their exceptional team work.  In every step of execution, I realized how true and important team work in execution of system in that organization was.  While on the other hand in case company lacks the team work, creating and maintaining food safety culture will be"impossible task".

5.   Awareness and coaching:Food safety culture isn't a"fixed" formula or concept.  It's a concept that has to be constantly evolving for greater and much better food safety culture in the organization.  Creating awareness by providing valuable trainings importance of food safety, will motivate employees to learn and do better things leading to continuous improvement and thereby optimizing food safety culture of organization.  Trainings regarding values of organization, benefits of ensuring food safety and ways and means to achieve food safety will form a solid basis for food safety culture of their organization.

Conclusion: While creating food safety culture within organization, these factors should be taken into consideration that's responsible for producing deepest and strongest relationships of employees and organization.  Thus if food safety culture foundation is powerful, it goes beyond slogans, processes, checklists and documents and benefit the company for for food safety endlessly and easily.