Maple Leaf Foods Reduces Safety Incident Rate By 60%

Maple Leaf Foods is Canada’s leading consumer packaged meats company. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Maple Leaf produces a variety of high-quality food products under several leading brands including Maple Leaf, Schneiders, Country Naturals, and Mina. Maple Leaf employs ~12,000 people across Canada and exports to more than 20 international markets including the U.S. and Asia.

Several years ago, Maple Leaf experienced a disastrous breach in food safety, “We had a tragic incident where people lost their lives,” says Lone Jespersen, Director of Food Safety. “We diagnosed our safety culture and realized we needed to do something different.” It was clear that all operations needed to align with Maple Leaf’s corporate commitment to create a culture of food and worker safety.

But creating a common, shared safety culture was daunting because Maple Leaf had acquired many other companies over the years. “We’ve purchased 32 sub-cultures all with different ways of behaving,” says Jespersen. Maple Leaf needed to align all operations throughout the 32 sub-cultures under one common goal of achieving a single, sustainable safety culture.