Food Safety is Value Driven, Not Cost

The best solution to manage risk most effectively is to focus on the little details along the continuum of the supply chain, explains Jorge Hernandez , adding that food safety managers should:  

• Look at the entire food supply chain; 
• Identify the safety risks at each step whether it be at production, processing, distributor, customer, or operations; 
• Identify risk mitigation steps for each; and importantly,  
• Identify how the mitigation will be monitored (think big picture beyond mere Certificates of Analysis). 

Value, not cost, must drive food safety, Hernandez says, and asked Food Safety Consortium attendees to identify best practices in their companies for value creation – whether it be in food safety systems, food safety tools, staff, providers.” 

Other tips from the speaker included: 

• Be redundant: “Do two or three checks. While being redundant can drive price up, it mitigates risk and establishes multiple barriers to food safety.” 
• Be smart about your auditors: “We make decisions based on information provided by third party auditors, but how much do they understand your business? There are often big differences in the auditors doing the audits – how can you distinguish a good one from a bad one? When we go to an auditor and ask ‘how come we are facing this problem with this product that you approved last month,’ often the response is ‘At the time of the inspection, we did not find anything amiss, and everything was fine.’ But that’s not what you want to hear.”

Source:
http://www.foodsafetytech.com/FoodSafetyTech/News/Value-Not-Cost-Must-Drive-Food-Safety-1706.aspx