Addressing Unexpected Challenges in Food Safety

Today marks the sixth edition of the World Food Safety Day (WFSD), celebrated every year on June 7th. It’s a worldwide initiative to increase awareness about food safety and contribute to health and sustainable development.

Food safety is overall, everyone’s concern, since eating remains the daily basic action that we as humans being execute in other to preserve health and life. Nonetheless, food itself is not created safe. In the process stemming from its creation or harvest towards being eaten by a consumer, it has gone through steps that are suitable to affect its integrity and consequently its safety therefore leading to what is called in the food safety jargon, a foodborne illness.

Foodborne illness has been around for a very long time. It might originate from a simple misconduct from a consumer as much it might come as the severe aftermaths of a big pandemic. The world’s history is filled with food poisoning events whose impact couldn’t have gone unnoticed, for example: The 1985 Jalisco Cheese Incident in Mexico, The 1996 Odwalla E. coli Outbreak in USA, The 2008 Chinese Milk Scandal in China. Based on a WHO report, every year, unsafe food leads to 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420 000 deaths with 30% occurring among children under 5 years of age, worldwide [1].

All these events and data, highlight the critical importance of proper food safety practices and regulations in preventing widespread harm.

Preventing foodborne illness

The importance of maintaining food safety throughout the supply chain, has motivates key shareholders such as governmental institution, big scale non-governmental organization into developing some framework, code and norms have been developed, such as HACCP, Codex Alimentarius, ISO 22000, FSSC 22000 and so on. Among food manufacturing companies, HACCP remains popular with its particularity to prevent physical, chemical and microbiological danger. More than 60 years since its implementation, it still remains as relevant as before given there is no proper way to eliminate the risk completely; therefore, there is no activities within the industry which is not subject to risk. ISO and FSSC 2000 with a broader scope are also popular, with the latter specially addressing food defense and food fraud. All these norms and framework when applied properly contribute to reinforce Food safety management system as part of it, and support the company’s strategy to offer to its clients safe and reliable food on a regular basis.

Challenge to food safety

?No matter how strong the food safety management system is, there is one or several factors related within the macro-environmental framework of the company which make unexpected events, likely to occur continuously. Therefore, its mandatory to be prepared and equipped as efficiently as possible.

Among all strategies adopted by companies to face unexpected challenges threatening the performance of the food safety management system, we may consider: ?

·????? Advanced Technologies: ?To reinforce daily operations effectiveness and improve reliability throughout the production cycle.

·????? Fostering Education and Training: To increase awareness through educational programs for consumers and food handlers on proper food safety practices.

·????? Research and Innovation: To fund outstanding research leading to new methods for controlling foodborne pathogens and contaminants and to develop new technologies for specific operations such as packaging.

?Though the impact of these factors on improving food safety is not be once more demonstrated, it is important to highlight to get the best out them is to have them, they must rely on a strong food safety culture.

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Food safety culture

Food safety culture is not buzzword. It aims to ensure that all parties involved in the food supply chain will operate every day and make decisions with food safety as a top priority. It creates a win-win situation for company, client and customers altogether.

Generally, when it comes to addressing and solving culture related issues, companies’ leaders tend to rely on continuous improvement tools such as 5-why, Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) approach, wrongly leaving out the core of food safety culture which is “the people” [2]. That explains the fact that any improvements in food safety cultures must start with them.

The importance of people in the process of establishing a food safety culture is explained by the fact that primarily, they are the ones who make the system work on a daily basis. Most of the time they don’t understand totally food safety and food safety culture. When they do, they are faced with this tendancy of seeing it as a side project thus not embracing it as it should be. Secondly, this might come as a consequence of not feeling valued in well engaged within the companies’ food safety enhancement projects.

The process of establishing a strong food safety culture is a long run. However, it doesn’t require big steps to start with. Here are the most important steps to lay the basis of a food safety culture.

o?? Evaluation.

First, it’s necessary to make a diagnostic of the company’s situation. This can be achieved through quizzes and surveys administered to people to know what they think, how they feel. ?Because the surveys alone won’t tell you much about the people, they should be coupled with a GEMBA walk around the food processing facilities to question about how the work is being done, what is missing, and the employees feel about achieving food safety targets in this current situation.

o?? Management commitment

The commitment of the management board is essential for establishing a robust food safety culture. A strong, top-down dedication to food safety sets the standard for the entire organization and ensures that resources and attention are devoted to maintaining high standards. Leaders who prioritize food safety inspire their staff to exhibit the same level of dedication, creating a unified front against challenges.

Managers must be more intentional in their interactions with subordinate staff, providing opportunities for meaningful discussions. This approach enables managers to understand employees' needs and recognize how their expertise contributes to maintaining food safety.

Leadership building strategy.

?Coaching and mentoring are impactful strategies to encourage self-learning and professional growth. The knowledge transfer facilitated by coaching activities fosters thought-provoking and creative processes, inspiring individuals to maximize their personal and professional potential. The power of a robust food safety culture lies in its ability to ensure that each employee develops the necessary skills to address and manage unexpected issues effectively.

Conclusion

To sum up, we have to acknowledge that food safety has advanced significantly. But as long as there are bacteria, viruses, and foodborne illnesses in the world, there will always be a need to maintain and enhance safety precautions since unforeseen difficulties could jeopardize the stability of the food safety management system. Companies need to have a strong safety culture with people as it's primary focus if they are to successfully meet these difficulties. This ensures that you will move in the right direction and reach a nearly flawless level.

?[1]?? https://www.who.int/activities/estimating-the-burden-of-foodborne-diseases#:~:text=Each%20year%20worldwide%2C%20unsafe%20food,under%205%20years%20of%20age .

[2] ?Block, Peter.?Community: The structure of belonging. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018

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