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.

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.

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.