10 replies to this topic

[DSTechnicalManager]

Hi All,

 

Please can somebody suggest any activities i could include in our food safety culture program ? We have done survey, no issues identified, survey from customers also came back with no issues. Training for employees is currently in our plan as well as discussion about FSC in weekly meetings. 

 

Does anybody have any ideas what else to include ? Its difficult subject for A&B. We do not handle any product on site.

[BGAQA]

I am in the same boat. Food safety topics discussed at toolbox meetings, food safety training for all staff at induction. We've done annual surveys to benchmark staff awareness and it was at a high level.

 

This year I took a course on food safety culture, which I am leaning on as a new bullet point (the course was not helpful, I was hoping it would give me some ideas).

 

It's the only part of the standard I struggle with.

[beautiophile]

My bad habit had me check on the definitions of culture written by social-scientists. They guide me to another dimension different from GFSI's. It remains a big confusion.

 

 

Edited by beautiophile, 17 August 2023 - 04:39 AM.

[Kara S.]

Check out these conversations here : https://www.ifsqn.co...uality-culture/

 

https://www.ifsqn.co...safety-culture/

[Scotty_SQF]

What are your concerns with this?  My experience is that as an auditor sees your facility, talks to your staff and leadership and such, and that is how they determine a true food safety culture.  It's in the practices and the talk of the members of your facility.

[Konstantinos]

Activities: 

 

- Non quality/technical to carry out internal audits on the prerequisites or HACCP ,

- senior management to participate in some activities such as new product development assessment or a taste panel,

- Non quality/technical to collate data about food safety and present it to the company      

[Ishau]

I'd just make a few small comments.

 

It is important to remember that as auditors we cannot audit your food safety culture. What we can audit is your action plan and any reviews. Culture is day to day, it is not something we can review in a single day audit.

 

Ensuring your staff complete a questionnaire is an activity, so make sure that is documented as an activity on your action plan. Not only is it a defined activity, but it can also feed into the "review of the effectiveness of completed activities". Remember to make sure the survey is completely anonymous and some good questions to ask include "If a friend or family member needed a job, would you recommend they work here"? 

 

Your action plan does not need to be war and peace. If you a small agent and broker it would be perfectly reasonable to have 3 actions, those being the completion of the staff survey, the food safety training for all staff on induction and a discussion in weekly meetings.

 

A few other examples of objectives you could set:

• All staff to be involved in the setting of company objectives (clause 1.1.3) via an all company team meeting.
• Additional training implemented for sales staff to be able to carry out internal audits is a really good idea (as Konstantinos said above)
• Additional staff to receive role specific BRCGS training.

Don't feel like your action plan only needs to run on a year by year basis. It is perfectly reasonable to have a plan with some activities that lasts 3 years or 5 years.

 

Final comment, just because your staff survey showed their were no issues, doesn't mean there are no issues or that your food safety culture is as good as it could be. Like with internal audits where a site finds nothing wrong every year and yet there are issues we find during the audit, those types of questionnaires tend to get challenged to determine how effective they really were. So you may decide that an action is to review and update your staff survey with additional questions or clarifications in wording.

[delta_dad]

Hi,

 

Just checking if anyone can share their food safety culture plan.

 

 

thank you.

[GMO]

For those still struggling, there are two resources I'd recommend.  Firstly the GFSI position paper:

GFSI-Food-Safety-Culture-Full.pdf

 

Secondly PAS320:

Developing a Mature Food Safety Culture - PAS 320:2023 | BSI

 

The second paper is very complementary to the first.

 

If you're picking up no issues, I'd say you're not asking the right questions.  There is lots of literature out there on culture (google scholar is a good source) but also a lot of people doing it badly.

 

If you think about it as behaviours meet lean for food safety then to my mind you're on the right track.  So think about the relative weight food safety has in all discussions.  Think about how people are trained and incentivised.  Does that work for or against your food safety?  So for example, if your leaders only ever reward high production, the teams may misinterpret that as "quality doesn't matter".  

 

One thing lots of people do is a lot of "event" style stuff.  I'm a sceptic on it if I'm honest.  I saw one company have food safety team members dress up as super heroes.  What behaviour is that changing?

 

And that's what it comes down to, ultimately, behaviours.  I can guarantee you now that your teams are not always acting as they should for food safety, health and safety or any other risk.  Be really specific about what behaviours are important to you and be really clear on where you are, where there are gaps and design the environmental factors to improve those behaviours and the good and bad consequences for if they're not adopted.  That then forms your plan.

[Lynx42]

Stop Foodborne Illness also has a Food Safety Culture toolkit, and they did a series of webinars with the FDA.  That, along with the PAS320 GMO mentioned, helped me fumble my way through it.  The hardest part for me is the management commitment side of things because to them, if customers aren't complaining then our culture is fine and why would they have to do anything different than what they are already doing? 

 

https://stopfoodborn...ulture-toolkit/

[GMO]

Superb point from Lynx.  This page particularly is very helpful.  All around what your organisation values.

 

Vision and Value: Providing a Framework | Alliance to STOP

 

It might be really useful to also read this:  Assessing Food Safety Culture: What works best? | Alliance to STOP

 

It has some info in there on different ways to measure culture.  If your survey is not picking up issues, it might be worth getting a leadership focus group together to talk it through with some data to back it up.  Get an independent person in to do some observations.  In some factories with fantastic survey scores, you will also find that you set up a session like that and the site lead doesn't want to attend and all s/he talks about is money...