Interview with Catherine Francois - Director Food Safety Programmes - Consumer Goods Forum

Catherine Francois is the Director Food Safety Programmes for the Consumer Goods Forum. Catherine is one of the food sector’s most influential figures in the area of food standards and schemes. She has played an integral part in the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) work on harmonising global food safety guidelines. We talked to her yesterday on some of the key food safety issues.

The podcast interview with Catherine can be listened to or downloaded here

Catherine started off by telling us some of the history behind the GFSI

Back in the year 2000, food safety was very much top of mind with consumers around the world, there had been a whole series of several high profile recalls, quarantines, and a lot of negative publicity in addition to food safety scares, such as BSE, dioxins and that sort of thing. The GFSI is actually managed by the Consumer Goods Forum, which is an international food business association working with retailers and manufacturers from around the world, and their CEO’s really took the decision that consumer trust needed to be strengthened, it needed to be maintained and at the same time the supply chain needed to be made safer and they saw the ideal way to do that was through the harmonisation of food safety standards, which could at the same time could also drive cost efficiency for businesses in the supply chain, and that’s really why the Global Food Safety Initiative was created back in 2000.

She also talked about the process that the GFSI has gone through in harmonising the world’s multiple food safety standards and schemes

An Integrated Approach to the Food Sector

One of the largest global food organisations is pioneering a change in the sector. With many food companies focussing all of their energy, resources and time on food safety, this European giant is taking a holistic, integrated look at all of the issues that might impact on both the industry and on their business.

This global organisation started with their Quality Management System (QMS), rolling out ISO 9001 across their global operations. They followed that up by integrating their Environmental Management Systems (EMS) into their overall management system and gaining ISO 14001 certification across all of their global sites.

The Investment of Getting it Right vs. The Expense of Getting it Wrong

Scandal sells news. Tiger Woods and Toyota have filled our newspapers and screens over the past few weeks. The popular media highlight every detail and add rumour and intrigue at a dizzying rate, from news channels to late night interviews, through the constant retelling of the story. More and more in the past few years the same glare of scandal has been aimed at the food industry, and suppliers, processors and the service industries have come under scrutiny.
The food industry has probably never had such a critical audience. Scandal alarms us but also informs and as consumers we want to know that we and our families are bring protected. While the media alerts us to the big stories the smaller, less scandal filled details are also important. In February, LRQA Food Month, the USDA issued 7 recalls including concerns over salmonella in salami, E.Coli in 4.9 millions tons of beef and veal and potential allergens in soy flour.

Food Safety - Looking at the Regions

A lot of the global focus on food safety has been around the US and China over the last year. This post takes a look at the world's latest headlines on Food Safety - region by region.

Middle East

UAE Minister of Environment and Water Rashid Ahmed Bin Fahad opened the fifth Dubai International Food Safety Conference with some startling facts, including

The World Health Organization (WHO) indicated that there are more than 250 different food-borne diseases, more than 30% of the world population is suffering from these diseases and proves fatal for 2.2 million people annually.

On what the UAE is doing to address food safety issues, he said,

Brazil and the Food Sector, one step at a time

For a long time the food and beverage industry has been seen as not interested in embracing management systems (MS)standards such as ISO 9001. Apparently, the reason behind could be the number of regulations they have to follow; which until not that much time ago has given the impression that controlling the quality of their products was enough to keep them in business.
It was only more recently that they started thinking about the potential damage to their brand reputation that food safety scares could cause.
Perhaps another reason which has convinced the food industry sector to consider adopting a management systems approach to help them keep their business under control is the fact that in order to be more competitive, food organisations started seeking different alternatives to traditional suppliers; some of them being used for decades.

Doing more with much less

When it comes to growth, many experts hope that Asia will pull the world out of recession. Surprisingly, not many people in the western world realize that Asia-Pacific’s annual population growth has fallen to 1.1%, the lowest rate among the world’s developing region according to the United Nations (UN).
Even with the falling birth rates and emigration, some Asian countries are struggling to feed the poor. Poverty and hunger may cause political instability and will slow down economic growth. The UN also noted that food stability will be a key issue to the Asian growth story.

A Webinar and a Lecture

Yesterday I delivered a presentation in a Live webinar organised by LRQA. It was the third food safety webinar and this time we had even more attendees (with over 170 in total) then the previous one. With two sessions all time zones were covered so we had participants from around the globe.
I must say a webinar is always special. Knowing that so many people are listening without seeing or hearing them can make you nervous but on the other hand it is a great tool to provide information to a large group in a very convenient and cost effective manner.

175 Delegates attend LRQA Food Sector Webinar

Cor Groenveld, one of the world's leading global food safety experts, delivered the 3rd LRQA food sector webinar, "Assurance in the Food Supply Chain" yesterday. The webinar was delivered twice, once at 9 am UK time and again at 12 noon EST (US) to allow global participants to choose the time that best suits them.

The 60 minute webinar featured over 175 delegates between the two sessions, with the afternoon session topping 100 people! After Cor's presentation, the Question and Answer sessions proved to be very interactive, with each session featuring over 20 audience questions.

Words into Actions – moving from inspections to process based Assessments

ISO 22000, PAS 220 and FSSC 22000 are changing the world of Food Safety Management Systems (FSMS) assessments. The inspection method, long the standard bearer in FSMS assessments, is slowly giving way to the process based assessment. Put simply, the checklist approach is being replaced by one that takes a more in-depth look at the processes behind the results.
That was one of the issues discussed last week at LRQA’s FSMS Trainers Course in Orlando, Florida. Vel Pillay, Food Safety Program Manager - Americas, Erasmo Salazar, ISO 22000 Lead Assessor and Trainer from Mexico and Dave Sherring, UK Trainer Manager and course designer, delivered the latest ISO 22000 Auditor/Lead Auditor course to a group of clients from an interesting range of organisations across the food supply chain; including fruit processing, chemical processing and even the US Army.

Food Safety and Business Assurance

Recently, a food manufacturing client asked me why they needed a FSSC 22000 management system certification and Business Assurance from LRQA. The conversation was all about “what could a certified management system approach offer that a checklist approach could not?”

To answer this question, we need to first go back to a clear definition of management systems. Management systems can be defined as a company’s internal processes that help them safeguard their current and future business and provide confidence that they are meeting the needs of their internal stakeholders and promises they have made to their customers. Personally, I like the definition supplied by Henri Fayol from the book General and Industry Management, “Management Systems play a part in all undertakings, large or small, industrial, commercial, political, religious, or any other.”

TRUST comes by Food and leaves by Horse

A deliberate typo in relation to last week’s Global Food Safety Conference. Yet a relevant typo, as the issue is “who do you trust?” I will explain later.
It has struck me that GFSI has been very successful in creating awareness and acceptance in bringing food safety on the management agenda. Even so successful, that many customers today are regaining confidence that food safety risks are being managed. This is a great achievement and is a direct result of tremendous efforts across the entire supply chain. We at LRQA pride ourselves in being part of this success. It does not mean that we now can relax. Maintaining rigorous food safety standards, performing independent and experienced audits, and supporting our clients in continuous improvement and management of change, all remain as much a challenge as they were before.
A single lapse of attention and controls, and a major food safety incident may hit the market with devastating impact on the parties involved. We at LRQA set ourselves clear goals every day at every audit; avoid these disasters, within the scope of our work. Companies, their clients and their suppliers need to have trust in our work, and in the work of our clients.

GFSI, FSSC 22000 and Washington, D.C.

I just returned from the GFSI Food Safety Conference that was held last week in Washington DC. With a few days delay because as you all will know the weather conditions were extreme. It snowed for more then 30 hours this weekend and the centre of the city had 70 cm…
The conference was one of the best ever organised by GFSI. Especially because it was held for the first time in the USA. Third party certification in the USA is emerging. Mainly because the retailers and large food manufacturers realise that robust systems are needed to achieve the highest level of assurance of food safety and quality in the food supply chain.

Building Consumer Trust through Assurance

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) conference that took place last week in Washington D.C. is a very timely one. According to the IBM Consumer Confidence Survey conducted in June 2009, 80% of consumers do not trust their food. This is because of breakdowns in food safety protocols and fraud perpetrated by unscrupulous manufacturers that eroded consumer confidence.

The food industry has changed over the years and tremendous progress has been made in the way we look at identifying issues associated with food safety. The industry has moved from a reactive inspection based approach to a more proactive approach of identifying, evaluating and controlling physical, chemical and microbiological hazards at all stages of the process.

Food Safety - Stakeholder Views

The stakeholders for food safety are numerous. This blog takes a look at the latest news and views from some of those groups, including some stakeholders that are less obvious:

Consumer activists

Food Safety Defense Attorneys

Small Businesses

Meat Suppliers

Non governmental organisations (NGO's)

The Food Supply Chain

Cor Groenveld, LRQA's leading global food safety expert and chairman of the Foundation for Food Safety Certification, gave a presentation at the Global Food Safety Conference in Washington, D.C. His Food Supply Chain Presentation was one of the highlights of an outstanding conference, with organisations from across the food supply chain coming together to discuss the most relevant food sector issues.

Click here to listen to Cor's presentation

Please send me an email at alex.briggs@lrqa.com and I will email you Cor's PowerPoint presentation.

Below is the transcript of Cor's presentation

Global Food Supply Chain, Cor Groenveld

I have been doing this work for a very long time, and what I want to do, I want to share some of our client experiences, as well as our experience in working with risk-based management systems. It’s not only food safety, I think when you look in food supply chain, we have more risks and we have more worries and I like to share the things we see, the great things companies have achieved in controlling those risks.

Final thoughts from Washington D.C. and the Global Food Safety Conference

The GFSI conference is my first food conference and one of the most interesting and valuable conferences I have attended. The sessions have been amazing and I have certainly learned a lot.

Over the past few days, I remembered a comment by Peter Drucker, “if you want to understand a problem, you increase the size of the problem to understand the complexities”, and that is what we have here in the food industry, lessons in business assurance and risk management that can benefit all industries. While managing risk and attempting to keep people safe and increase food safety, there is no margin for error.

FSSC 22000 The standard of choice

This morning at the Global Food Safety Conference, we talked to Vel Pillay, LRQA Americas food safety expert. Vel talked about the road that LRQA has taken to FSSC 22000 and what lies ahead. Our interview took place on day two of the Washington, D.C. event. Below is the transcript of our interview (Listen to or download the audio podcast here)

Approximately three years ago, the North American food sector recognised the need for greater harmonisation, and adopted the five standards/schemes/programmes benchmarked by GFSI.

Andrew Smith Interview - day one at the Global Food Safety Conference

This morning at the Global Food Safety Conference, we talked to Andrew Smith, LRQA's Senior Vice-President, Americas. Andrew talked about some of his early discussions with organisations in the food sector on day one of the Washington, D.C. event. (Listen to or download the audio podcast here)

Well, the emerging themes I think we are seeing from the traffic so far this morning are very much on harmonisation and consistency, so organisations are looking to harmonise the standards they’re applying within their own businesses and their suppliers. They are looking to ensure that an audit completed in China is the same as an audit completed in Columbia, which is the same as an audit completed in Peru, they’re looking for consistency of audit.

Martin Brown Interview - day one at the Global Food Safety Conference

This morning at the Global Food Safety Conference, we talked to Martin Brown, LRQA's Vice-President, Americas. Here are some of Martin's first impressions on day one from Washington, D.C. (Listen to or download the audio podcast here)

The Global Food Safety Conference, is an interesting event, it not only brings the world of food producers, the retailers, and the service industry together, but it also starts to define the values that that sector needs in the business. What fascinates me with the food sector, is there are some irreducible minimums, the nature of safe, quality food, is more and more universally understood. It’s a situation that many companies are realising tightly ties their brand, their reputation and even their survival, to getting this right. The cost of getting it wrong can be so damaging.

Cor Groenveld Interview - day one of the Global Food Safety Conference

This morning at the Global Food Safety Conference, we talked to Cor Groenveld, LRQA's Global Food Safety Expert. Here is what Cor had to say about the conference and about the organisations gathered here in Washington, D.C. (Listen to or download the audio podcast here)

I’m in Washington DC, the capitol of the United States, and I’m attending the Global Food Safety Conference of the GFSI, the Global Food Safety Initiative. This is the largest food safety conference in the world, and this is the tenth year they have organised it, and this is the first time it’s in the US, outside of Europe, so that’s great. What we see here is a high commitment to food safety, we have seven hundred delegates in the conference, and it will last until this Friday.

J.P. Suarez on the role of the GFSI

J.P. Suarez, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Walmart Stores International and chairman of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), talked to the 700 person Global Food Safety Conference audience about what the GFSI does and does not do.

On what the GFSI does, he said,

I think that cost efficiency is one of the key aspects of GFSI, and the rationales behind GFSI, and quite candidly, I’m not sure we are there yet and we need to make sure that cost efficiency is one of our objectives, continues be realised, without compromising the quality of food safety inspections and audits that we do in our factories and in our plants and in our farms.

On what the GFSI does NOT do, JP added,

GFSI does not make policy for retailers or manufacturers, those companies do. We don’t make policy for the standard owners, we do not undertake at GFSI any independent accreditation or certification activities.

Global Food Safety Conference - Day One

We are at the Global Food Safety Conference in Washington D.C for the rest of this week. LRQA is one of the premium sponsors of the event, with our leading global technical expert, Cor Groenveld, giving two presentations during the conference.
This morning J P Suarez, the Chairman of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) started the conference off.

We will back later today with some quotes from his opening speech, as well as interviews with Cor Groenveld, Andrew Smith and Martin Brown.

INSPECTION TO PROCESS MANAGEMENT – THE EVOLUTION OF FOOD SAFETY MANAGEMENT

As we have all seen over the course of the past few years, the impact of food safety scares go well beyond the immediate costs of the incident itself.  The direct costs of such incidents can be relatively modest, but the impact on brand reputational risk can potentially put organizations out of business.  Global food organizations recognize this concern and are consequently bringing a clear focus to this concern at Board level.    

Historically, food safety has been ensured through inspection.  This approach has served the industry well to a degree for many years, however the fundamental problem with that approach is that it’s limited to what is seen on the day, and thus clearly has inherent limitations.  Indeed, many of the high profile food safety scares of the past few years had inspection regimes in place and they were being followed. However, because either the underlying weaknesses did not by chance result in physically observable problems on the day of the audit, or because these symptoms were not seen by the inspectors, remedial action was not taken and it was only a matter of time before a serious food safety event ensued.

Food Month Blog and Business Assurance

Welcome to the LRQA Food Month blog. I am the Managing Director for LRQA, a member of the Lloyd’s Register Group. We have dedicated this month to the food sector as we believe that is a sector where organisations and their application of management systems can be of most benefit to business, consumers and society as a whole.
The mainstream media is filled with news of food safety scares just think milk, beef, spinach and last week even pepper, to name a few.

Three days and counting....

Monday, February 1st is the beginning of our Food Month blog. We already have a series of interviews, podcasts and blog post lined up for next week. We will be in Washington D.C. for the Global Food Safety Conference.

Our leading food safety experts, Cor Groenveld from Holland and Vel Pillay for the Americas will be reporting live from the event....

See you there and/or then.

February 2010 is Food Month for LRQA

Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance (LRQA), the world's leading Business Assurance provider, has announced that February 2010 will be Food Month.

Throughout the month, a series of blogs, podcasts and videos will be posted on topics that are directly relevant to the global food sector.

Cor Groenveld, one of the world's leading food safety experts, will be leading the blog, with other contributors coming from all regions of the globe, as well as several blogposts looking at case studies in the food sector.

Information on the live LRQA Food Sector Webinar, with updates on the new global FSSC 22000 food safety management system standard, will also be available on this blog. The webinar will be delivered on February 16th, with two versions, one taking place early AM UK time for Asia and Europe, and the other taking place early AM US CET for audiences throughout the Americas.

Featured here will also be live blogging from the Global Food Safety Conference, February 3-5, Washington D.C.

So bookmark this page and check back every weekday throughout February for links, blogs, video and audio podcasts.

For further information on LRQA's Food Sector services, email enquiries@lrqa.com