08 Apr Food safety audits: do we have the system backwards?
So much food safety discussion is centered on passing a food safety audit. In fact, for many, the food safety audit is the basis of their food safety efforts. This approach is counter-productive, argues Bob Whitaker, PhD, Chief Science officer at the US Produce Marketing Association. Food safety audits, he asserts, don’t really make food safer.
Bob Whitaker writes:
During grower food safety events, we often talk about why having a food safety program is important and how it is critical to have a program to protect your own business, protect your customers and, ultimately, public health. We talk about emerging science, the importance of foundational food safety programs such as sanitation practices and worker hygiene and how to identify and manage potential cross-contamination hazards on the farm and in the packinghouse.
After going through this information and basically laying out the why, how, and what of food safety, often some brave soul in the audience will raise their hand and ask, “So what score do I need to get in order to pass the audit?” And that’s when the frustration sets in. How did passing an audit become a substitute for actually building a risk-based food safety program?
So much of the food safety discussion we have in this industry is centered on passing a food safety audit. In fact, for many, the food safety audit is the basis of their food safety efforts. A buyer mandates that a grower or supplier must have a food safety audit, so the goal is to pass the audit. Sounds logical enough, but food safety audits don’t really make food safer.
This all-consuming furore over food safety audits is unfortunate because audits are only a tool, a snapshot in time, actually a snapshot in time that you get to pose for. Realistically, taking an audit is like taking an exam when you know when the exam will be scheduled, you already know all the questions that will be on the exam, and you already have all the answers, too. How many of us wouldn’t want to have had that situation back in high school or college? I am guessing we might have made better grades!
How many times do we see a food safety recall and the report we read in the news includes a statement that says the unfortunate operation received a “superior” score on their most recent food safety audit? If you look deep in your soul, how many can say that they didn’t do a little extra cleaning the day of their last food safety audit and that your operation doesn’t always look quite so pristine as it does during an audit? It’s only human nature; we all want a good score, but how does that serve food safety?
Minimally, food safety audits are a mechanism to demonstrate to yourself, senior management, and customers that you are following your food safety program, and that you can verify it through your audit that day. At their best, food safety audits are excellent training opportunities for employees. Audits offer a chance to have an independent set of eyes critique your program and are a time when you can step back from all your other responsibilities and critically look at your food safety program and how it is being implemented. It can be an important learning experience.
I sometimes think that if we had spent half the time we have spent as an industry over the past decade discussing how to conduct an effective hazard analysis and train producers in this art instead of word-smithing existing food safety standards and audits and lamenting the duplicity of some of those audits, we might be better off as an industry…..