Culture is often considered the core of a flourishing organization. Culture is based on a firmly held and widely shared set of beliefs supported by strategy and structure. A strong culture empowers employees to deliver their best consistently. 

Frank Yiannas, FDA Deputy Commissioner of Food Policy and Response, drew a brilliant analogy of building a food safety culture and envisioned this as a trademark for every food safety organization. As written in his book, Food Safety Culture Creating a Behavior, “Your goal should be to create a food safety culture – not a food safety program. There is a big difference between the two. Culture is one of those terms getting used often in today’s society, maybe even overused.”

Food Safety Culture and its Importance

Developing a Food Safety Culture in the food safety industries will lay out a longer-term thought process, which can help industries stay away from safety failures. This will shape attitudes towards food safety, willingness to discuss food safety concerns, and enhance the attention to the details regarding food safety.  

The consequences of not having a solid Food Safety Culture can have an adverse impact  

• Consumers health 
• Brand’s reputation
• Business finance

Maintaining a qualified Food Safety Culture can reduce the dangers of food safety incidents. In organizations with a weak culture, incidents are not acted upon sufficiently, and instructions are not followed, which means the business is at risk of more incidents. On the other hand, a poor safety culture settles for lesser food safety. 

For example, if incidents are not reported and lessons learned, they will continue to occur; this is neither efficient nor effective for long-term food safety goals.This may affect employees morale,discourage them from taking ownership and bring operational deficiencies. 

Planning or establishing a food safety culture will require strong commitment at all levels of the organization, starting from the top to bottom. This will develop a more practical long-term analytical thinking towards a long lasting food safety culture. In today’s times, focusing on food safety programs may not give the expected deliverables whereas a Food Safety Culture shall ensure successive deliverables.

How to create a Food Safety Culture?

Developing a food safety culture is a vital and the very foundation of the food processing industries.The starting points to create a food safety culture in the organization are:

1. Focus on changing behavior to make a long-lasting impact.
2. Focus on real risks and consequences while setting food safety priorities.
3. Keep things simple, Complex concepts or tasks are less likely to be understood or followed.
4. Make employees believe in what you are trying to do rather forcing them to do
5. Empower employees to take ownership of what they do and encourage reporting food safety incidents.
6. Use Foodborne diseases surveillance data and the associated contributing factors of disease to create the foundation of food safety training priorities.

Developing a Food Safety Culture At Smart Food Safe

As quoted by Prasant Prusty, “A smart technological evolution in the food safety management system will foster towards developing a niche Food Safety Culture,” we at Smart Food Safe swear by it.