Running a food business
Let’s start making food products, selling wholesale food and drink items or lets go into business transporting and storing food products for other people. People are always coming up with new business ideas or taking over the family business. This means a lot of responsibility and a lot of different hats to wear. There are the obvious ones, the finance hat, the physical building hat and the hiring staff hat. Rarely do people think of a priority in a food business being food safety and all that entails.
The Food Safety Hat
Personally, I believe this is more down to lack of awareness than ignorance. With access to information continuously growing this area, things are starting to improve. We are still in a culture of not diving fully into food safety until you’re pushed as a food business into a corner from an EHO inspection, vet inspection or a potential customer demands food safety accreditation. More awareness is needed and better examples are required. There have been many occasions where a company has said that Jo Blogs down the road gets away with it. If more businesses lead by example and remembered that the protocols and requirements that are in place to protect everyone that eats and drinks the products the better our food industry would be. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself would I eat or drink this product?
Making the Food Safety Hat work
So that food safety hat has come out, now what? A simple place to start is break down what it is your planning on doing step by step. Once this is in place, starting to build on safety requirements that are needed for each step of the process is vital. Identify the potential hazards that could occur at each step, then devise controls to put in place which can aid in preventing hazards from occurring.
Team Building, Commitment & Resources
The best way to do this is build a team. Ideally a team that is spread across the business, from the warehouse supervisor through to production manager etc. Each role will have a different perspective of that particular step, bringing in invaluable thoughts and ideas. By bringing together a team from each department, this allows the why’s and the how’s to be filtered down to staff in each department. The why and the how is key, if more people understand why something is being done and how, they are more likely to follow the rules that are put in place.
Food Safety Guidance
Don’t be afraid of asking for guidance from specialists, At the end of the day you are expected to wear multiple hats. This does not mean they all have to fit perfectly. Ask a food safety consultant to come in and help guide you in the right direction. They can provide Haccp training so you can understand the potential hazards that can occur and how you go about minimising them. Everyone has the same goal… provide safe food and drink to the customer.
From here you have the start of your HACCP system. This can now be built on and the pre-requisites (control measures and monitoring documents) can then begin.
Making Food Safety work
Creating a food safety management system is like putting together a jigsaw, all the pieces will fit and interlock with one another. However, this rarely happens overnight because the key is breaking down the jigsaw pieces and building it with a team no matter what your goal is; achieving EHO approval or obtaining a food safety accreditation.
