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.

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.”

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)

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.

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.