:Crisis Management Plan, as its name, indicated is only being used when there is a crisis. Thus, it is not as commonly reviewed, as compared to when we are facing COVID-19. We can say coronavirus has taken a toll on the importance of food businesses to have crisis management and being able to run through crisis management procedures when you need them the most. A crisis management plan has two purposes:
Many food businesses are certified with food safety certification recognized by Global Food Safety Initiatives (GFSI), and crisis management is one of the critical elements of the food safety management system. How is COVID-19 falls into place for the crisis management? In this article, we compared the requirements for crisis management for four primary certification programs, FSSC 22000:2018 Version 5 (Clause 8.4 and 9.9), SQF Version 8.1(Clause 2.1.5), BRC Issue 8 (Clause 3.11) and IFS Food Version 6.1 (Clause 5.9). Table 1 summarizes the similarities and differences for crisis management requirements for the following scheme: FSSC 22000 Version 5, SQF Version 8.1, BRC Issue 8 and IFS Food Version 6.1. All the certification schemes focused on the situation that can harm or cause food safety risks to the consumer and associate requirements for recall and traceability programs to ensure all products that are affected can be recovered from the market. Table 1 Summary of the similarities and differences for crisis management requirements for the following scheme: FSSC 22000 Version 5, SQF Version 8.1, BRC Issue 8 and IFS Food Version 6.1. Our recommendations: Regardless of the certification scheme that you are following, it is important to be able to
Have you run a mock crisis on the current COVID-19? If not, this is a good time to train your crisis management team on crisis management and be sure that you know how to handle COVID-19 incidents such as employee reporting positive COVID-19 cases or employee has been in contact with individuals with positive COVID-19. Although there are no specific risks associated with the transmission of COVID-9 through food, the virus may still be transmitted through cross-contamination of contaminated surfaces. All of us have a role to play in maintaining food safety and community safety. A well-prepared company that knows what to do can do it fast and effectively, and hopefully, minimize safety risk and spread of COVID-19. Note: If you are a business owner, crisis management is what you needed the most during this crisis. Expand your crisis management scope beyond food safety -to learn how -join us on our next webinar. More details at https://felicialoo.com/covid-19-support/ Introduction to Internal Audit Internal audit is the process of which food safety systems are analyzed against the written program to ensure the program is properly implemented. Internal audit is a required component to meet food safety audit requirements for GFSI recognized certification schemes such as SQF, BRC and FSSC 22000. It is recommended that the internal audits are conducted by another department independent from the audited department. This makes perfect sense as it eliminates bias from the inspector. However, these also create multiple challenges for completing internal audit including a high level of commitment from another department, etc. benefit
Besides being the most tedious task to manage, the internal audit is one of the best indicators for the status of food safety program implementation. It can also be used to measure the readiness of a food facility to move towards process improvement and reap the benefit of a properly implemented food safety program. Drawback
Internal audit is a highly resource-intensive process, which often is managed by Quality Assurance Managers, on top of their normal day-to-day firefighting activities. As such, internal audit inherited the challenges of a project management which include
Process
Here is a typical internal audit processes:
Reality
Often, Quality Assurance Manager are tasked to be the Internal Audit Coordinator because ultimately, it is part of their responsibility. Due to the tedious nature of the internal audit process, it is hard to get resources from another department to commit to the internal audit process. The personnel from another department are usually focused on their own day-to-day role. It is also extremely difficult to set a meeting to ensure team members are not left out. Perhaps, the hardest is to follow up to ensure the department is committed to complete corrective and preventative actions within the agreed timeline. helpful strategies
Here are few tips to make internal audit less stressful:
Bottom line
Internal Audit is an important tool to ensure our food safety program is what we said they are. If not, we know that what is wrong so that we can work on it. Personally, I use internal audit to assess the readiness of a facility to go to the next level for process improvement. If the facility isn’t ready for the basic food safety program, adding additional processes can be a burden to the facility. Thus, a priority should be given to set the foundation of the food safety program Don’t stress out your food safety team. Let them focus on the actual organization goals and shift internal audit focus on us. We’d like to help you make the best out of your food safety program and leverage the existing program to deliver exceptional return on investment -book a meeting with us. Numbers are key to sales and marketing professionals and by that, we often look at sales values and market shares. This is what you are missing out. You may say why do I need to care about a food recall when the quality team will be taking care of the recall? Let’s try this out. Download the below template to see how much it cost you in terms of a recall to recover consumer’s trust and handling consumer’s complaint. Cost-of-Recall-TemplateDownload. What's the value? Have you estimated the intangible cost? Don’t forget to add in all your effort to convince your sales portfolio to trust you to supply the product to them? Imagine the angry customer faces and voices from the incoming phone calls! Help prevent this situations. Here are 5 ways that you should consider for your food brand:
At SFPM Consulting, we believe food safety initiatives are key to support food branding and prevent recall. Help us be the voice of positive food safety culture and build your food brand. We love to hear from you. |
AuthorFelicia Loo, CFS is a Certified Food Scientist and qualified SQF Practitioner. She has worked with numerous food businesses to develop customized and improved food safety programs. She has worked with different food safety and regulatory schemes such as SQF, ISO 22000, Primus GFS, Organic, Kosher and Health Canada (Natural Health Product). Categories
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