3 Must-Have Qualities Of A Successful Food Safety Program

By Greg Scher, food safety program manager, Sysco

Food safety is a team sport; you can have the best programs in the world, but it takes people to carry out those programs. Many food safety programs fail for one very simple reason: there is not a culture fostered that promotes food safety at every level. From the very top, throughout the entire organization, there needs to be a commitment to food safety and a commitment to continuous improvement. 

When you institute a third-party audit scheme, you are not only changing the way you ensure food safety and quality, you are committing to changing the way you document everything. Meetings, customer complaints, and verification activities will all take more resources than if you are not already running all these programs. Incentives that worked in the past have to be done away with or recalibrated to ensure employees know what the priorities are. Is the priority production as an isolated activity? Or is it production with time built in to ensure checks are accurate?

Here are three ways to ensure that your food safety programs are successful: