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GFSI is very proud to publish the results of 18 months of work from our Technical Working Group on Food Safety Culture. This multi-stakeholder group produced a practical document to help food industry professionals establish and maintain a culture of food safety within their respective organisations. They also refined a definition of food safety culture to tailor it to the food industry. The group was selected carefully to ensure variability, with representation from different sectors of the food industry, academia, service providers and different regions of the world. This was crucial for a group that essentially explores the concept of culture in professional organisations.
Responding to the need for safe food practices to be embraced on a more fundamental, cultural level beyond simply relying on written rules and legal oversight, GFSI is publishing this position paper alongside a shorter aide-mémoire aimed at those who have read the full document and need a quick reference guide to support their work to establish and sustain the right culture in their business. This marks the beginning of a journey for GFSI to further explore the opportunity for a culture of food safety to support the production and supply of safe food to consumers, in the context of increasingly complex and fragmented food delivery systems. Continuing from this, GFSI is currently working to establish how to include food safety culture as an element of our GFSI Benchmarking Requirements and how it could be considered objectively during food safety audits.
A big thank you to all members of the Technical Working Group for their valuable contributions to this work and for making this achievement possible. We applaud them for their commitment to GFSI and advancing food safety globally.
Both the full version and a summary of the GFSI Food Safety Culture position paper are available. As with many of our guidance documents, it is available as free and open-source material in the GFSI Library as part of GFSI’s best-practice sharing approach for the benefit of the global food industry and consumers everywhere.
This work is also mentioned and recognised in a special publication dedicated to food safety culture in the the June/July 2018 edition of Food Safety Magazine.
Be part of the discussion in the free webinar on “How to Strengthen Your Culture of Food Safety with GFSI’s New Guidance Document” with featured panellists: Mike Robach, Dr. Lone Jespersen, Bertrand Emond and Ray Bowe! September 26th 2018, 12:00 pm (UK time). Send an email to richard.powell
This blog was co-written by:
Marie-Claude Quentin
Senior Technical Manager, GFSI
Lone Jespersen
Principal, Cultivate Food Safety
