Food Safety Culture Plan

Hello, I am now at implementing the IFS 7 in our company and at the point of the Food Safety Culture. How are you implementing this theme? I am not sure how the Food Safety Plan should look like. Should it only be the explanation of how the survey/ questionnaire gets evaluate? May you have some examples for me. Thank you very much!

Does not the IFS 7 define the food safety culture as

 

Shared values, beliefs and norms that affect mindset and behaviour toward food safety in, across and throughout an organization. Elements of food safety culture are those elements of the food safety management which the senior management of a company may use to drive the food safety culture within the company. These may include, but are not limited to: • Communication about Food Safety policies and responsibilities, • Training, • Employee feedback on food safety related issues, • Performance measurement.

It looks like you have to have food safety culture as part of the policy and as an agenda item during management review.

I think the easiest steps would be determine how will you evaluate food safety culture and what does that look like; a few things come to mind;

1. Is there urgency in all departments when a non-conforming product arises or is just quality?

2. How quickly and promptly are quality issues resolved? Who is involved?

3. Who is involved in GMP audits? Having a diverse GMP audit group from all departments will drive food safety culture (e.g. by training all people to correctly observe a GMP violation and/or something that needs improvement)

4. How quickly are audit findings closed? Do you track overage days vs. completion rate?

5. What is the general feeling about quality in the plant? If it is low then that means more meetings should be held by top management to drive importance through new initiatives (like the ones I mentioned above GMP involvement and Audits).

i have attached the GFSI white paper on food safety culture. I think it will help you understand what GFSI is wanting.
I also attached a food safety survey that i have used.  I think it could be improved tho
 
in MY OPINION, your progam should cover what i consider to be the 3 major areas of culture.  
 
1.  management.  How does your company deliver a clear and consistant message of the importance of food safety.
2.  education.  How (aside from & including the usual training) are you ensuring that employees are well versed in food
safety and can identify issues. see maturity model appendix in GFSI doc.
3. empowerment. How do you demonstrate employees our empowered and encouraged to maintain and improve food safety.

the GFSI document goes into much more detail in these and other areas of establishing, maintaining,
and improving food safety culture. I would start with a pretty simple program and try to improve it
over time.

Hi there

After rabbitholding the topic (back in BRC Issue 8 update times) I settled on this article as a guide: https://www.food-saf...afety-behaviors

And developed a plan and measurement system, it includes an employee questionnaire similar to the one posted by @kingstudruler1. There are so many things we already do to foster a food safety culture, it just needs formalizing into a spreadsheet!  :lol2:

Sheet 1 is the plan and measurement and sheet 2 is collating the score for each of the areas and plot it to include in Management review. 

Hope it helps someone!

BVRC

Enable GingerHi everyone,

what phrase would you recommend to add to policy statement for food safety culture?

Thanks,

There was a thread on here about food safety culture and it has some resources in it which included survey questions for personnel.  I recommend you check out that thread.

There was a thread on here about food safety culture and it has some resources in it which included survey questions for personnel.  I recommend you check out that thread.

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the reply, but I would like to know what should I add to our Quality statement in terms of food safety culture?

Hi Tresa

Tresa,

That depends on what is currently in your statement.  You can add something like, "Strive to ensure we maintain a strong Food Safety Culture."

Hi Ryan,

 

Thanks for the reply, but I would like to know what should I add to our Quality statement in terms of food safety culture?

Hi there

 

After rabbitholding the topic (back in BRC Issue 8 update times) I settled on this article as a guide: https://www.food-saf...afety-behaviors

 

And developed a plan and measurement system, it includes an employee questionnaire similar to the one posted by @kingstudruler1. There are so many things we already do to foster a food safety culture, it just needs formalizing into a spreadsheet!  :lol2:

 

Sheet 1 is the plan and measurement and sheet 2 is collating the score for each of the areas and plot it to include in Management review. 

 

Hope it helps someone!

 

BVRC

Hi BVRC,

Can i ask you how did you complete the food safety culture and measurement file?

This is my food safety plan, it is in italian but you can understand the aim of the plan. I hope it can help someone

Hi BVRC,

Thanks for sharing. It is really very helpful. Can you please share or brief on review scoring marks. How it calculate?

Bhargav

Hi there

 

After rabbitholding the topic (back in BRC Issue 8 update times) I settled on this article as a guide: https://www.food-saf...afety-behaviors

 

And developed a plan and measurement system, it includes an employee questionnaire similar to the one posted by @kingstudruler1. There are so many things we already do to foster a food safety culture, it just needs formalizing into a spreadsheet!  :lol2:

 

Sheet 1 is the plan and measurement and sheet 2 is collating the score for each of the areas and plot it to include in Management review. 

 

Hope it helps someone!

 

BVRC

Hi All,

I've used the attached doc to cover this for our FSSC 22000. Auditor seemed happy enough with it.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,

Ry

Hi there

 

After rabbitholding the topic (back in BRC Issue 8 update times) I settled on this article as a guide: https://www.food-saf...afety-behaviors

 

And developed a plan and measurement system, it includes an employee questionnaire similar to the one posted by @kingstudruler1. There are so many things we already do to foster a food safety culture, it just needs formalizing into a spreadsheet!  :lol2:

 

Sheet 1 is the plan and measurement and sheet 2 is collating the score for each of the areas and plot it to include in Management review. 

 

Hope it helps someone!

 

BVRC

Hi BVRC

I really liked your Food Safety Culture Plan and Measurement doc but can you please explain how the scoring and percentage progress is calculated. Thanks

i have attached the GFSI white paper on food safety culture. I think it will help you understand what GFSI is wanting.
I also attached a food safety survey that i have used.  I think it could be improved tho
 
in MY OPINION, your progam should cover what i consider to be the 3 major areas of culture.  
 
1.  management.  How does your company deliver a clear and consistant message of the importance of food safety.
2.  education.  How (aside from & including the usual training) are you ensuring that employees are well versed in food
safety and can identify issues. see maturity model appendix in GFSI doc.
3. empowerment. How do you demonstrate employees our empowered and encouraged to maintain and improve food safety.

the GFSI document goes into much more detail in these and other areas of establishing, maintaining,
and improving food safety culture. I would start with a pretty simple program and try to improve it
over time.

Quick one, how did you evaluate the culture example results?  

My apologies - I missed the questions on this post. 

I've updated indication of how the calculations work. 

Ideally, you'd set criteria for how you value activities, I used status of implementation. 

In hindsight after a few years of working with food safety culture planning/ standard upgrades one would update the plan with behaviour objectives. 

Best Regards

Bennii