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.
