Food-Safety Culture: Influencing Behavior With A Foundation Of Values

By Lance Schultz, Food Safety Consultant

Reducing foodborne diseases will require the food industry to possess a culture that strives to reduce them. It is obvious that organizations need to actively perform safe food-handling practices, realize the impact of actions in a food-safety context, and care enough to make the right decision.

Part of an organization’s ability to practice food safety is training. Employee education and training on controlling hazards, both inherent to the process and those that could be introduced into the system, are important. However, it does not stop there. The concept of culture in an organization is determined by human behavior, which influences employees to behave in a directed way.

Culture is a more-subjective food-safety concept than measuring water activity, screening for pathogens on enriched agar, or allergen swabbing. Frank Yiannas’ Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-Based Food Safety Management System contains many great definitions of culture. A common theme found among those definitions of culture is that the pattern of human behavior can be influenced in an intended manner, directed by group values. Food-safety culture is not a written food-safety program that sits on the shelf.

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