Have you ever been in an organisation which has a really weak FSQMS?

What I mean by this is a company where even the systems are so bad or even absent they are a food safety risk?  Sadly I have and while it wasn't all that uncommon 20 years ago, this was recently.  

I ended up walking away because while the product was inherently low risk, the processes could still go wrong.  Ironically I thought the greater risk was we'd kill one of our staff or a contractor and my attempts at alerting the team to this and risk mitigation fell on deaf ears.

I cannot believe that organisations like this still exist.  But they do.

When I tried to explain the issue to the site director, he genuinely didn't believe that our constant "faking it" and stage management when senior leaders or auditors came round was a problem.  But that's what we were doing.  Faking it for everything.  We weren't compliant across any risk metric.  

I have not, nor would I.   I'd walk out the second I realized it was like that, and no I wouldn't try to fix the place, nor their culture, unless I was told beforehand I was being brought in to do so.   I don't need that in my life, lol.   I'm lucky enough to work at a great place, and honestly, I doubt I'd stay in the food business if I left here...

Yeah.  It was a shocker.  I stayed for such a short time but in real terms I should have left as soon as I knew.

But they were SO good at hiding it.  It was bonkers.  If they put the energy they spent in making stuff look good into being good, they'd be halfway there.  I am a bit gullible in real life but put me in an audit and I miss almost nothing.  Send me round a food factory and I thought even on an informal visit it would be the same.  But no.  I cannot believe how thoroughly they pulled the wool over my eyes.  It was only after I really started to dig that every surface I scraped was like a film set made out of flimsy cardboard.

But the site were SO bought into the fact they were great because they had been so infrequently called out on it.  So it took me a while to realise whatever I did, nothing would change.

Fortunately no.  They haven't been perfect, but tipped far enough in favor of good that I haven't been forced into an ethical dilemma, or been reluctant to sign my name to the records.

Hi GMO,

I've been recruited to sort out such a place. 1500 complaints in one week during summer peak the previous year and regular recalls. 

Back to basics starting with revisiting Food Safety Plans and working from there. What I will say is there was the necessity to change and the new site director there was supportive. It was remarkable what were able to achieve in a short space of time - where there is a will, there is a way  :smile:

Kind regards,

Tony

I agree Tony, it IS possible if you have the senior leadership support to make it happen.  I, sadly, did not.  The most senior leader refused to believe it was a problem.  The functional director saw it as only my problem to fix and kept focusing on minor issues not the major ones.  I had no support from site nor functionally.  

I won't share who it is because it would be a shock to some.  But it was awful.  And demoralising.  If I'd had just one ally I could have made change there but it's hard to get a platform for change when nobody else can see what's needed.

I was in one for a bit that was a chemical manufacturer and transitioning into food grade/USP grade chemical products. During my first year, I was sitting in a meeting with some of the EC to go over SQF certification progress (they were not yet SQF certified). I was explaining how a particular issue that would require a bit of resources to abate would be a N/C on an SQF audit, possibly a major, the V.P. of Global Ops said "well that's why we hired you, to convince them it's not a problem." I looked him right in the face and said, "so you're asking me to lie to the auditor?" 

I later met up with the consulting group they hired BEFORE me, who found that issue and several others I had listed. Was a bit of an eye opener that they just kept attempting to throw different people at it instead of actually addressing the issues those people found.

Hi GMO,

 

I've been recruited to sort out such a place. 1500 complaints in one week during summer peak the previous year and regular recalls. 

 

Back to basics starting with revisiting Food Safety Plans and working from there. What I will say is there was the necessity to change and the new site director there was supportive. It was remarkable what were able to achieve in a short space of time - where there is a will, there is a way  :smile:

 

Kind regards,

 

Tony

I think Tony gets the dub with 1500 complaints in a week, lmao, ho-lee cow.   I usually get 1 per year...

I think Tony gets the dub with 1500 complaints in a week, lmao, ho-lee cow.   I usually get 1 per year...

Exactly MDaleDDF but there were far more expletives from me when I found out  :yikes:

I invested time in my first few weeks in the job going through the old technical files and reviewing previous incidents and complaint performance. Time well spent.

Sometimes this technical thing isn’t rocket science at all - This problem was caused by running production continuously for a week! Standard GMP is for the plant and equipment to be CIPed every day.

Kind regards,

Tony

I think Tony gets the dub with 1500 complaints in a week, lmao, ho-lee cow.   I usually get 1 per year...

Not sure if Tony is UK based but certainly in the UK we have a fondness for complaining which is not matched by other markets.  I know this because I've supplied products internationally and even where good systems exist to collate data from other markets, the same product, with the same routine production issues will not garner as many complaints as from Brits.  It's a national past time...

I invested time in my first few weeks in the job going through the old technical files and reviewing previous incidents and complaint performance. Time well spent.

 

Sometimes this technical thing isn’t rocket science at all.

It's not but also even with the data this team did not want to change.  There wasn't a burning platform quite that bad but there were plenty of signs things weren't in control.  We just didn't have the resource to get out of fire fighting mode.  We did all kinds of data collection to prove this from hard technical data even to data around how the team were spending their time but facts were pushed back as lies.  The senior leaders didn't want to know.

I was explaining how a particular issue that would require a bit of resources to abate would be a N/C on an SQF audit, possibly a major, the V.P. of Global Ops said "well that's why we hired you, to convince them it's not a problem." I looked him right in the face and said, "so you're asking me to lie to the auditor?" 

The level of stage management of auditing was astonishing to me.  Down to changing routes while the auditor was on site because all hell was breaking loose.  I did my job and felt awful about it.  Then came the praise afterwards for doing a "good job" and it was awful.  All I'd done was make the site look good.  I was part of the problem so after trying one last time to fix it, I put in my notice.  It went against my values.

What I found most bizarre though was the customers.  When I arrived there were two customers who were livid.  One I knew, one I build a relationship with quickly.  I got the metrics looking ok and then left.  Neither have reached out to me.  Would I have thrown the company under the bus?  It could be career limiting to do so.  I'm hoping they took my actions as a sign they need to delve deeper.  But either way the changes I made were temporary.  There is no way they would or could be sustained.  So they will slide back now I've gone.  

After 25 years of working in food though, this experience bruised me more than most.  What was an interesting thing though for culture is the operators got it, the team leaders got it.  If I talked directly to them and worked directly with them, I was starting to get change happening.  But the supervisors and senior leaders were getting in the way and actively being disruptive to improving culture.  There were operators and Team Leaders who came up and shook my hand on the last day.  One said "I know you tried."

I appreciate your story here GMO. I came on to vent and found your post instead. Feels better to know I'm not alone in the struggle. 

What you say here about senior leadership is what I have been pushing to change in the food industry for many years, unsuccessfully. Anyone in a major management role (even finance and sales) and the c-suite should take HACCP or Preventive Controls certificate training to understand that the food industry is not the same as the generic business they were taught about in college. Food Safety & Quality is a major factor of success to the food industry and it blows my mind how one can be allowed to run a business in which they know absolutely nothing about.

I see VPs and CEOs taking pictures in their facilities without hairnets or other GMP violations in the background for their linkedin posts and I just think - I can't believe how many people have liked this post and are saying great job to something that they literally would be issued a nonconformance for. Last one I saw said great things in the works and I commented hope that includes food safety training because you are violating several GMPs in an exposed RTE product area. Someone else commented... I was thinking the same thing, no hairnet, no GMP compliant clothing, jewelry, and where are his safety glasses and safety shoes?! Needless to say, their marketing team took that post done real fast before more can chime in. 

As food safety professionals, we probably need to be more robust in challenging.  I tend to be quite meek on Linkedin.  I'm on there but even when I see clangers, I tend to grit my teeth and either message privately or ignore.  I know it's wrong but I've found when I have said something in the past, it's been badly received (even when I was right).  As that has an impact on my professional career, I'm now more circumspect.  Kudos to the people who did speak out and are braver than me.

But in real life in factories?  I don't know when to keep my mouth shut.  And it's got me in trouble a lot of times.  That's the job though isn't it?  An old job description of mine actually said on it "conscience of the site" which I would baulk at if I saw now "wtaf is the site director's job?  I have to be their angel on their shoulder?"