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.”

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.