NOVEMBER 20238IN MY OPINIONFor many years, the food and beverage industry has relied on HACCP as the overarching framework to manage food safety. Preventing food safety incidents has been and remains the focus of the industry. Food safety is a must, but it is not enough. Our brands are committed to delighting our consumers every single time, and to achieve this purpose, we must ensure 100 percent quality. From 1828 Food Safety marketplace incidents reported in 2022, approximately 65 percent were linked to microbial contamination. While there is public information regarding food safety incidents, there is very limited information on quality and spoilage issues.If we use the lens of consumer satisfaction to evaluate our programs, we can conclude that while a lot of focus has been put on HACCP (for good reasons), other programs have not been elevated to their maximum potential. Our responsibility as food and beverage manufacturers is to go beyond food safety and strengthen all funda-mental quality programs.In the case of high-risk products, environmental monitoring programs (EMP) have been in place for more than 15 years with a focus on pathogenic microorganisms. Although EMP is a mature program in these factories manufacturing high-risk products, we get news on a regular basis of food safety incidents traced back to the environment. With these insights, we have reflected in our company on how to evolve EMP to make it a fundamental tool to elevate good manufacturing practices. There were some key reflections on the weaknesses of traditional environmental monitoring programs in the industry:BY JOHANNA RAMIREZ, DIRECTOR OF MICROBIOLOGY & FOOD SAFETY, THE COCA-COLA COMPANYROLE OF PREVENTATIVE PROGRAMS LIKE EMP TO ENSURE FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY
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