What is Food Safety Culture?

Today, I’m going to talk about Food Safety Culture, and a few pointers to help you in developing a positive food safety culture within your business.

No one aims to deliberately put customers at risk but ensuring food safety isn’t just about having a food safety management system, record keeping, labelling, staff training etc. Certainly, these things are all so important but they all rely on one thing and that’s people. Effective food safety not only comes from how much someone knows but also from how much someone actually cares. This is where food safety culture comes in.

Food safety culture refers to the shared values, beliefs, and behaviours within an organisation. It is so much more than just having food safety procedures in place. It’s really about everybody having a mindset where food safety is a part of everyday practices and attitudes. It’s more of a “this is how we do things around here”.

Having a strong and positive food safety culture it needs commitment from everybody within an organisation. The manager or the owner within a food business definitely need to lead by example because if the team feel that they have a poor attitude towards food safety, then they’re going to think, well if they don’t care, then why should we?

Here are some pointers for food business owners or managers when it comes to actually developing a positive food safety culture including the things you need to consider now:

1. Making sure that you lead by example. People really do respond positively to role modeling but also, negatively, if they think that management don’t do as they say.

2. Providing your team with effective training. Don’t let it stop there. Ongoing instruction and ongoing training are key as well.

3. Supervising your team to make sure that they are following the food safety standards that you require in your business.

4. Providing timely and constructive feedback to your team on food safety behaviours and practices. When people do things wrong you need to address this immediately, but also when they do things right, provide positive feedback and reinforcement. If you do find any issues, make sure you take quick corrective action.

When building a positive food safety culture, it helps to show commitment to just building an overall, winning and sustaining team, you know, one that works safely. Also, when it comes to making decisions around food safety, it’s helpful to base decisions on evidence rather than opinions. There you have it, that’s food safety culture and some things that you can do to try and promote a positive food safety culture in your business.