State and development of safety initiatives

Fortunately, to meet the safety challenges in the food and beverage industry by legal obligation, the food industry has developed GMP and prerequisite programs that allow having a minimum basis of reliability in terms of the safety of the products. Additionally, since its creation nearly 50 years ago, a large part of the industry has applied HACCP programs that continue to be a fundamental pillar and needs to be extended to all human or animal-food related companies, both for food, ingredients, additives and material production processes, and logistics operations and retail. From my experience, to create and sustainably maintain a food safety system in companies, a perfect combination of technical and cultural aspects is required, including:

. The value of Third-Party Certifications. It is good to recurrently contrast and take the guidance of a demanding technical standard or a certification scheme that can help the company to, both internally and by third-party validation, correctly evaluation the food safety program. While, throughout the years, the company progresses in these audits, these become “unannounced”, thus enabling the company to constantly challenge itself to improve its standard, every day, everywhere.

.. Deployment of Risk Assessments. To know the suppliers of critical raw materials, as well as the strategic partners when outsourcing production or logistics processes (co-makers, co-packers, third-party logistics operators), in addition to the use of Risk Assessment and "On Site Verification" tools,

 which allows to verify the conformity of the products through cross-analysis, as well as to carry out audits to deepen safety culture, statistics, methods of self-control and incident handling.

 "Formula and Process Validation", especially for Critical Control Points. If the company does not have the level of expertise or certification required to validate its critical operational stages related to physical, chemical, or biological hazards, it is advisable to seek specific advice to have the required guarantees for consumers (for example: validations of thermal processes, stability of formulations, shelf-life tests, mixing efficiency, Aw or pH adjustments, foreign matter control devices, disinfection processes, etc.). Prior to any relevant modification of the process, this must be re-executed.

. Management of Change (M.O.C), associating the concept of safety in any innovation or transformational project. It is very important for the Quality and Food Safety team to participate in the company's innovation processes, as well as in the relevant changes that may arise, for example: new products or packaging, new ingredients or suppliers, Engineering Master Plans (Early Equipment Management), sudden changes in demand or production levels, as well as new business channels.

. Process Control and Management of Nonconformities and Incidents. Strict control of the process must be ensured, giving visibility to the incidents that have occurred and those potential incidents or "near misses" that require a deep root cause analysis (5W + 2H, FMEA, Ishikawa, etc). It is highly relevant for all internal incidents or deviations of control, from near misses to internal retention of non-conforming product, to be communicated within the organization, to undergo strict methodological analysis to find the root cause and for the lessons learned and action plans to be effectively implemented and monitored systematically. 

Today more than ever we must look for agile, ideally digital methods of monitoring that allow good representativeness, prediction and alert of trends or abnormalities, use of statistical process control (SPC), digital tools for process control, redundant verification of arts or "Poka Yokes" (which is Japanese for "error-proof"), which minimize the risk of safety incidents. Internal audit programs should consider recurring compliance review to ensure consistency of action plans over time and these should be worked on in conjunction with leadership and factory floor staff.

. Obsession or passion for customer / consumer service. It is important to maintain a robust communication channel with customers and consumers (social networks, Web, telephone line, surveys, etc.), and take charge of timely addressing their requirements, queries or complaints. For B2B businesses, it is important to address questions related to Quality or Safety in questionnaires, evaluations or visits.

And finally, one of the most important recommendations consists of deploying the Food Safety Culture in the entire spectrum of companies’ activities. This program must be strongly supported by the management team’s commitment and a governance model that grants a multidisciplinary approach to the key indicators of the system, by stimulating knowledge and leadership towards the production of safe food, the engagement of all employees, communication and awareness of the food safety hazards, investment in continuous improvement, as well as the constant development of technical skills in the HACCP system and its application. Many of these measures have been confirmed in this year's recent version of the FoodDrinkEurope Guidelines on food safety culture.