Regular and consistent systematic monitoring of internal systems and practices associated with a food safety management system is often left to too few people within a food operation. As workloads increase, many business owners and managers struggle to keep pace with all of the necessary requirements in managing food safety within their operation. In some cases, it’s performed poorly, particularly, in small to medium sized food processing and food service operations as highlighted each year with food prosecution registers.
Having regular and consistent monitoring of your system is vital, as this may lead to the identification of problems or highlight areas of risk.
Your food safety system should detail the systems or approaches to be used to monitor and evaluate performance and to verify compliance is being achieved.
So what is required? Your systems:
- need to be comprehensively documented
- reflects what actually happens in your operation
- are simple, practical and easily understood and implemented
- provide an opportunity to analyse records and other data
- provide traceability of product through the supply chain
- enable the tracking of performance and provides opportunities for improvement
- demonstrates due diligence and manages business risk
In recent weeks I’ve been speaking to a range of managers across the broader food industry and increasingly, many are relying on second party internal audits as their sole means of measuring performance and identifying areas of risk. Others rely on an inspection from the food regulator without any robust analysis performed by themselves.
Timely reporting of performance to senior management or to the business owner is critical. It should:
- provide a picture of overall performance
- identify gaps and variances
- present information clearly and concisely.
Regular, consistent and complete monitoring of performance with a food safety management system can effectively manage risk and strengthen accountability.
Think ST Solutions offers you practical solutions at a management level and to your staff whether you operate in hospitals, aged care facilities, restaurants, hotels or the food industry generally. We specialise in developing useful tools to assist you in the areas of food safety, strategic planning, business management, risk and compliance training and easy to implement business consultancy solutions.