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.

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.

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.

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.