3 Little-Known Secrets For Failing Food Safety Management System
Food safety is a critical part of the food industry, and it is important to have a system in place that can ensure compliance with regulations. However, many companies find that their food safety management systems don’t work as well as they thought they would. In this article, we will discuss 3 Little-Known Secrets For Failing Food Safety Management System and you don’t want to be following these!
1) You are not following best practices
2. Not Knowing How To Run A Food Safety Management System
3. Your team isn’t trained properly.
Not Following Best Practices
Food Safety is built upon a management system, not any system but one that is properly implemented. Ever heard of GMP or Good Manufacturing Practices, the perfect quiz question for our GMP training? What do they really mean and where does GMP come from?
The answers are they are really the industry’s good practices over the years -we compile them and treat them as the best practices when managing food safety programs. Here are some common keywords describing the GMP practices including handwashing, sanitizer, cleaning and sanitation, cross-contamination, protective clothing such as gloves, lab coat, hairnet etc, separate, cook, chill and store concept, pest control, eating, drinking, smoking etc. You get the ideas.
There is a reason these GMP programs exist -they are really about adopting industry best practices when it comes to handling food.
Are your team following the prescribed GMP policies? Why or why not?
Thoughts?
Not Knowing How to Manage Your Food Safety Management System
If you do not know how to manage your food safety management system, it will never work as intended. Although most food safety management systems are benchmarked to GFSI requirements, you must always ensure that the first thing that needs to work for you is that the food safety procedures must be uniquely yours and works for your team!
Having a food safety manager and/or food safety leads that can give proper direction to lead the team to identify, mitigate and solve food safety management issues are very important. Contrarily, if you have food safety managers that aren’t interested in solving food safety issues or do not care, that is when your food safety management system rupture.
Keywords for a functioning food safety management system is the system itself. If it is a truly functional food safety management system, then if we follow the system closely, it should work. And yes, we must not forget that in case the system does not work, we have a backup system -can you guess what’s the backup system called? PM me to see if you got the right answer.
Problems are we are not following the systems, lack of follow up and not knowing how to prevent or react when deviation occurs.
Competent Staff and Team
Nothing beats having a competent team and staff. It is important the food safety managers are competent to manage the food safety management system because they are seen as a leader of the program. Their competency often, is what breaks or holds the food safety program. Reading this article? Do a self-assessment of whether or not, you or your food safety managers are able to
- Identify and recognize food safety hazards
- Take preventative actions to mitigate identified risks
- Stand up to resolve food safety issues
- Take responsibilities and ownership of the programs
Note and reminder, that taking responsibility and ownership don’t mean that you or the person, are solely responsible for food safety. Food Safety should always be everyone’s responsibility.
Then, take a look at your employee (in particular, how are they trained for their tasks) and ask these few questions:
- Do they know the ins and out of their job?
- Are they capable of doing the tasks?
- Observe what happens if the key personnel is on vacation?
- Do they know or are encouraged to share feedback about their tasks and food safety issues?
Special tips for you: Do you know what happens when no one is watching?
“Do you need a complimentary GMP training? Check this out! If you like them, we ask that you share this with your colleagues.”
To conclude, you need to be proactive in your management of the system, not reactive. This means being proactive about identifying potential hazards and taking steps to mitigate them before they cause any problems. These include looking at your food safety management system holistically, to ensure you have the right
- process and procedures in-place
- right people that know how to manage the system
- trained and competent staff
Our favourite thing to do is help streamline your process and procedures to where it needs to be, build employee engagement and teach your team how to manage a food safety program in less than 3 months, to “follow” the actual system. That gives you an audit-ready system and saves time and money!
Finally, remember that your food safety management system is never going to be perfect – there will always be room for improvement.