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This information can be used to develop food safety and quality programs that meet the requirements of modern Regulatory, Customer and Industry Standards:
When considering the development, documentation, and implementation of Food Compliance Culture within food safety and quality management systems, the following information should be considered to ensure effective outcomes:
Food Compliance Culture is the cumulative outcome of human beliefs and behaviors within a food business and the meaning people attach to those beliefs and behaviors. Food Compliance Culture determines how different levels of staff communicate with one another as well as how employees deal with clients and customers.
As an element of contemporary Food Business Management practices, the methods for implementation and management of a strong Food Compliance Culture vary from business to business and site to site. As such, it is difficult to ‘measure’ levels of Food Compliance Culture within any given organization.
At haccp.com, we consider the following concepts to be critical to the implementation and management of a strong Food Compliance Culture:
“Senior Management leads the way by willingly committing to the implementation and management of ‘best practice’ Food Safety and Quality Programs!”
Leadership is essential for any food business to meet customer and regulatory requirements and to continuously improve as a business operation. Strong leadership allows the quality objectives of the food business to be met with appropriate and sufficient support that filters from the senior management of the business through to all of the employees and contractors.
The benefits of Strong Inspirational Leadership include:
A statement of commitment or quality policy statement is often used to define the business’ commitment to meeting the objectives defined by legislative, industry, customer, and moral requirements.
“All levels of Business Management demonstrate their commitment to the Food Safety and Quality Policies by providing the human and financial resources required to facilitate them!”
An understanding of and commitment to the food safety program by senior management is paramount for any food safety and quality program to work effectively. Without management commitment, product safety, and quality, and indeed the success of the business operation could be in jeopardy. Demonstrated commitment from management also flows down to other levels within the organization, creating insight for everyone working with the product and processes. When this flow is effective, the ultimate safety and quality of the finished product are improved, often along with productivity and profit. The Management Commitment processes within leading food businesses are strongly linked to the Continuous Improvement Process.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure! Every Food Business must establish formal mechanisms for confirming whether or not their business is achieving the commitments stated within their documented Food Safety and Quality Policies:
“Everyone within the Food Business believes in the Food Safety and Quality Policies and plays a role in their implementation!”
The involvement of people is one of the most important factors in integrating and maintaining effective food safety and quality management system. Without the appropriate and adequate involvement of people, food safety and quality requirements cannot be met in a manner that facilitates the basic objectives of the quality management system.
The benefits of involving people include:
Employee participation should be encouraged throughout all aspects of any food business’ operational food safety and systems. This not only provides a genuine sense of worth for employees but also provides an opportunity to gather insight into the working elements of the business. Ways in which employee participation can be achieved include:
Key Suppliers and Service Providers may also be considered ‘Stakeholders’ in the context of Food Compliance Culture due to their scope of business interactions and related outcomes.
“Everyone within the Food Business understands their role and responsibilities and is responsible for their actions!”
Encouraging a strong sense of Acknowledged Accountability within the mindset of Food Business Employees, Visitors and Contractors is a vital element of maintaining a Food Compliance Culture. Contemporary Food Safety and Quality Programs must permit transparency in communication and Training Activities to ensure high levels of general and specific awareness of accountability. All levels of business management can support outcomes by ensuring employees are aware of their role and responsibilities and are un-encumbered when it comes to providing constructive feedback regarding the implemented Food Safety and Quality Program.
Accountability must be enforced to ensure the content and context of the documented Food Safety and Quality Policies are met at all times.
Effective communication mechanisms provide a clarity of purpose for all Food Business Stakeholders.
“Everyone within the Food Business understands relevant Food Safety and Quality Risk and does the right thing every time!”
Personnel engaged in food operations that come directly or indirectly into contact with food should be trained, and/or instructed in food hygiene to a level appropriate to the operations they are to perform. Training is fundamentally important to any food hygiene system. Inadequate hygiene training, and/or instruction and supervision of all people involved in food-related activities pose a potential threat to the safety of food and its suitability for consumption. All personnel should be aware of their role and responsibility in protecting food from contamination or deterioration. Food handlers should have the necessary knowledge and skills to enable them to handle food hygienically. Those who handle strong cleaning chemicals or other potentially hazardous chemicals should be instructed in safe handling techniques.
The nomination of training as a component of a Food Safety and Quality Program is to assess the skills and knowledge of participating personnel roles in Food Safety activities. It is not generally the intention of this inclusion to require mandatory training, as it is generally recognized that skills and knowledge may be gained in different ways. Depending on the location and type of business activities, you may be required to display details of officially recognized training on specified roles within the Food Safety Program. Persons managing or participating in food handling and/or processing operations must possess skills and knowledge concerning the scope of their workplace activities.
The skill and knowledge requirements for each staff member should correspond directly with the scope of work activities. The skills and knowledge required by a chef are different from those required by a cleaner. Skill and knowledge-based training may be considered in numerous forms, and it must involve food hygiene as well as general food safety concepts.
It is the responsibility of management to ensure that all employees are fully aware of food safety and food hygiene practices that are important to their job in the food business.
“Everyone within the Food Business participates proactively by identifying and communicating opportunities for improvement of the Food Safety and Quality Program. Senior Management implement opportunities for improvement to prevent the re-occurrence of Food Safety and Quality Program failures!”
Continuous improvement is all about developing and maintaining systems through which the business can always improve. The term continuous improvement refers to an ongoing need to improve the effectiveness of a management system. The effectiveness of any food safety or food quality system can be continually improved through the use of communications, management reviews, internal audits, corrective actions, system updates, and verification and validation activities.
Continuous Improvement is more of a philosophy than a process or system. It requires everyone in the food business, from senior management through to operational team members to adopt a mindset of continuously looking for ways to improve processes and systems by making them efficient and effective. In most contemporary food businesses, continuous improvement usually takes the form of process improvement activities or projects. A process improvement activity or project is a planned and structured activity to improve a process so that one or more of its outcomes are replaced by a more efficient or effective outcome.
Continuous Improvement relies on the following attributes to ensure success in the intended scope and purpose of the application:
The benefits of continuous improvement include market leadership through managing and applying a commitment to continually improving business performance, the ability to ensure customer requirements are met, and customer expectations are exceeded through flexibility and quick reaction to customer demand, consistency in the business approach to improving operational capabilities, increased participation from people through training in the tools and methods of continual improvement, the ability to measure continuous improvement through the establishment of goals and targets, and through the acknowledgment of improvement activities.
Within contemporary Food Safety and Quality Management Systems, the promotion and maintenance of a Strong Food Compliance Culture are one of the key roles of the Senior Management team.
Where the Senior Management team actively considers Food Compliance Culture within the scope of Management Commitment and mandates actions to address deficiencies and to support improving outcomes, the related food business will benefit in many different ways!
Basic applications of Food Compliance Culture maintenance and enhancement may include:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Food Compliance Culture Development requirements in relation to their items.
Document: A document provides guidance and/or direction for performing work, making decisions, or rendering judgments that affect the safety or quality of the products or services that customers receive.
Documented policies, procedures, work instructions, and schedules form the basis of any food safety and quality management system. The following documentation formats may be considered to ensure ongoing compliance with specified requirements for Food Compliance Culture:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Food Compliance Culture Documentation requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Food Compliance Culture Templates section of haccp.com for examples of Food Compliance Culture documentation, record, and resource formats commonly applied within food safety and quality systems.
Implementation: Implementation is the application of documented food safety and quality system elements into the actual business operation.
The implementation of a Food Compliance Culture within any food business requires genuine commitment from senior management, staff, and visitors to ensure the nominated goals of implementation are achievable on an ongoing basis. It is a step that requires significant planning and consideration of general and specific food business circumstances to ensure the outcomes of Food Compliance Culture do not negatively impact the safety and quality of the food items dispatched from the business.
Implementation of Food Compliance Culture must include a clear definition of responsibilities and authorities for all levels of participation by senior management, staff, and visitors to the site.
When implementing Food Compliance Culture within the food safety and quality system, you may wish to consider the following requirements before completion:
The Food Compliance Culture plan is the Food Safety and Quality Program – It is the roadmap to success!
Common points will need to be considered to facilitate implementation:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Food Compliance Culture Implementation requirements in relation to their items.
Monitoring: Monitoring is the act of reviewing and confirming measurable parameters of a defined process or product status.
Monitoring requirements within food industry sectors are generally identified against limits of acceptability defined within Food Compliance Culture plans, implementation procedures, and work instructions. Monitoring usually includes some element of record-keeping, which may be maintained manually or through digital systems. It is important to consider that advancements in technology have spawned many systems and processes which are self-monitored and or self-adjusted when variances are identified. Regardless of the system used; The goal of any monitoring activity is to provide sufficient evidence that any limit of acceptability has been met.
Traditional Food Compliance Culture monitoring requirements include manual recording and the application of corrective actions when the results of monitoring are found to be outside acceptable limits. Corrective Actions should also generally be strongly linked to the monitoring process where applied to ensure full traceability of the applied actions.
Common monitoring activities and record formats may apply to Food Compliance Culture:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Food Compliance Culture Monitoring requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Food Compliance Culture Templates section of haccp.com for examples of Food Compliance Culture documentation, record, and resource formats commonly applied within food safety and quality systems.
Corrective Action: Corrective action is mandatory action to be taken when a deviation to the Quality System occurs, particularly to a Critical Control Point.
Preventative Action: At any step in the process where a hazard has been identified, preventative action must be put into place to prevent re-occurrence.
Corrective Action and Preventative Action are implemented to ensure that any identified non-conformance issues are documented, investigated, and rectified within appropriate time frames. Corrective action is any action applied to regain control over a product, process, policy, or procedure that has been identified as being non-conforming or outside nominated limits of acceptability. Preventative action is any action applied to prevent any identified non-conformance from reoccurring.
The outcomes of corrective and preventative actions should result in regained process control after effective application. Specified corrective actions are commonly linked to the Food Compliance Culture Plans and the food business certification process.
Below are Corrective Action and Preventative Action examples which may be associated with Food Compliance Culture related non-conformance:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Food Compliance Culture Corrective Action requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Corrective Action and Preventative Action section of haccp.com for examples of best practice applications for this food safety and quality system element.
Verification: The act of reviewing, inspecting, testing, checking, auditing, or otherwise establishing and documenting whether items, processes, services, or documents conform to specified requirements.
Verification is the detailed review of all food safety and quality system elements to confirm that they are effectively developed, documented, implemented, monitored, and reviewed. All food safety and quality system elements, including documented policies, procedures, training, Food Compliance Culture plans, and their operational applications must be verified on an ongoing scheduled basis. The verification process commonly includes a defined schedule for which verification activities are required, how often they are conducted, who is responsible, and detailed documented procedures for each nominated verification activity.
The general goal of an established verification process is to ensure any systemic non-conformance issues are identified and rectified within an appropriate time frame. When non-conformance issues are identified through the verification process, Corrective Actions and Preventative Actions should be implemented to ensure they do not impact the effectiveness of the food safety and quality system.
The following examples of verification activities may apply to Food Compliance Culture:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Food Compliance Culture Verification requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Verification Activities section of haccp.com for examples of best practice applications for this food safety and quality system element.
Validation: The process of gathering evidence to provide a scientific basis for the documented act of demonstrating that a procedure, process, and activity will consistently lead to the expected results. It often includes the qualification of systems and equipment.
Validation is the provision of evidence to support the limits of control or acceptability for food safety or quality parameters nominated within systemic elements. Limits of control or acceptability are commonly included within documented food safety and quality systems elements such as procedures, Food Compliance Culture plans, and specifications.
Common sources of validation include regulatory and legislative standards, finished product specifications and customer requirements, industry codes of practice and guidelines, verified and validated research, historical product, and process control outcomes, and analytical testing.
The general goal of an established validation process is to ensure any systemic non-conformance issues are identified and rectified within an appropriate time frame. When non-conformance issues are identified through the verification process, Corrective Actions and Preventative Actions should be implemented to ensure they do not impact the effectiveness of the food safety and quality system.
Validation activities are commonly defined within the verification schedules and procedures of established food safety and quality management systems.
The following examples may apply to validation of the limits of control or acceptability for Food Compliance Culture:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Food Compliance Culture Validation requirements in relation to their items.
Skills and Knowledge: Skills and knowledge are attributes of human interactions commonly linked to competency within any specified job-related task.
Training and competency requirements for Food Compliance Culture must be ongoing, including regularly scheduled reviews to ensure the effectiveness of training and competency outcomes.
Team members who have defined responsibilities regarding Food Compliance Culture should have knowledge including:
Team members who have defined responsibilities regarding Food Compliance Culture should have skills including:
Team members who have defined responsibilities regarding Food Compliance Culture should have access to resources including:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Food Compliance Culture Training, Competency, and Resources requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Training, Competency, and Resources section of haccp.com for examples of best practice applications for this food safety and quality system element.
haccp.com was created to support food businesses and food industry professionals in achieving and maintaining the stringent requirements of food industry compliance.