Food safety - We have a problem

By ahhb
Tuesday, 15 September, 2015

The standard of food safety occurring within your organisation roughly equates to ‘what happens when you’re not there.’ Yes, your staff have been trained and have their ‘food handler’ certificates, but are they really applying their skills and knowledge when you are not there to check?

The reality is you cannot always be there to monitor. You will never really know whether the food service assistant who dropped the plate of sandwiches on the coolroom floor discarded them or whether she quickly reassembled and served them; or whether the food handler making today’s salad secretly has a bout of diarrhoea.
The behavior that occurs when no one is looking reflects the food safety culture of the organisation and is a critical and often overlooked factor in this compliance driven environment. Although it is unlikely food handlers in your organisation will go out of their way to intentionally cause food contamination, it is likely that you can identify at least some staff who:

comply only because they have to and who doubt the significance of the risks posed; or

will take the view that a food safety issue they discover is ‘not their problem’.

Identifying a poor food safety culture is one thing, changing it is a significant challenge. Simply giving a directive to supervisors to ‘address the problem’ will not suffice. Changing a culture is a difficult task and will be even more problematic if members of the senior management team also hold a similar ‘doubting’ or dismissive viewpoint.
An important early step towards change is for the leaders in the organisation who value food safety to demonstrate their commitment and ‘walk the talk’. If the organisation has previously placed little value on food safety, changing to a culture that views food hygiene as a critical business issue and rewards better practice will not happen overnight, but is achievable.
Changing a culture with the attitude of ‘it’s not my problem’ is a related and perhaps more difficult challenge. It requires those leading change to genuinely involve food handlers early in the process by seeking their feedback and encouraging their input on issues and improvements. For food handlers who have previously had no input to decisions and have only ever been told ‘what to do and how, where and when to do it’, it may take some time before they adopt the team based approach of ‘we have a problem’ when they discover an issue.
An important consideration that can help drive change is recognising the other benefits an organisation can gain when it chooses to improve its food safety culture. It has been my personal experience, after 13 years as a food safety consultant, that foodservice businesses who genuinely demonstrate a commitment to food safety can, and often unexpectedly, improve their bottom line. This occurs not just through the reduction in food waste and failure costs. Hotels and hospitals who have chosen to ‘lift the bar’ and become HACCP or ISO 22000 certified often have a foodservice team who are proud of their certification. They exhibit a higher level of staff morale linked to improved customer service and productivity.
Culture is a key consideration when Infocus Food Safety undertakes its services, whether that be developing a HACCP or ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System or delivering food safety refresher training. Senior food safety consultants at Infocus complete postgraduate management qualifications as part of their PD and are well equipped to assist organisations improve their food safety culture.
We are keen to assist you to be as confident as possible that your food safety risks are being managed, even when you or the auditors are not there.
Melinda Chapman - Director, Infocus Food Safety