What is your why?

I drifted into food safety mostly because I liked food and the jobs in my degree area were badly paid.  When I started, my understanding of food safety was, largely and embarrassingly, to follow the standard.  Whether that was a retailer standard, GFSI, AIB etc.

I cared about audit results.

I saw an A (or AA, AA*, blue, etc etc) as a recognition of me.  I know we all say that it's a factory audit but back then at least, if the score was good, I saw it as personal validation.  I'm ashamed of that now, however, to my defence, it was how I was judged.  But because of that, I would stage manage audits.  To start with it was overt.  I picked up the bad practices of the generation before.  We'd even have people walking in front of auditors.  Later on, it became less so.  But I would still point in one direction and misdirect an auditor figuring "I'll sort that out later myself."  I even had a list at one point of "likes and dislikes" for auditors so when one arrived on site, I could bring them their favourite meal or drop something into conversation which I knew they'd engage with.  

I was acting like a used car salesman when you think about it.  I even trained health and safety to do the same as I was seen as such an expert salesman for food safety and quality on site.  That makes me cringe to even think about.  How I'd teach people to highlight relevant portions of trace documentation to draw the eye and avoid looking elsewhere, showing minimal documentation so the auditor didn't go down a rabbit hole.  

Over the years, as I've got older, wiser and less bothered about my appraisal, I have given less of a stuff.  Yet last year I found myself hiding something in an audit.  Just a simple thing.  A fly landed on me in the factory and I killed it before the auditor could see.

Now I've started being an auditor myself, I get to see the other side.  So far I've really been "led" around factories and told stories in a way which makes me really suspicious of the person I'm with, and these guys are normally Technical folk.  While that was me 15, 20 years ago, it's also depressing to admit how much Technical people are part of the problem in this and it's not changed.  Here we are being the champions for food safety attempting to misdirect people who are there to help us protect consumer safety.

So for me this comes back to "what is your why" in being a food safety professional?

Mine has changed over the years.  Honestly I would have said my "why" was to protect consumers back in the day but really and honestly my "why" was getting good audit scores.  That's what I was measured on.

Now my "why" is genuinely about changing our food system bit by bit to one which makes consumers safer.  But it's only having lived through crises and seen the really bad which has got me there and I still have slipped into bad habits.

What is your "why" and how much do you manage your auditor so they don't see what you do?  How much is your job about passing audits vs. making food genuinely safe?  Be honest.

I kind of drifted over from compliance. I kind of drifted into compliance from automotive (dealership) management. I guess that would mean my 'why' was simply opportunity.

Certain things clicked though. I appreciate meaningful and logical rules/standards. Certain things also didn't click. I despise idiotic rules that are in place because one certain issue happened under very specific circumstances, and the knee jerk reaction was to make wide sweeping changes that really do little to nothing (security theatre). I got into compliance to change those types of rules.

Lately the question I have been asking myself, is what is my 'why' for staying in FSQ?