Has food safety certification reached its use-by date?

Has food safety certification reached its use-by date?

Words by Bill McBride

In December last year I stepped aside (try not to say ‘retired’ - never say never) from my direct involvement in food safety certification – after twenty years in food and beverage manufacturing followed by thirty as a journeyman food safety professional.

During that time I had the good fortune to meet and work with dedicated and committed people in many sectors and countries - colleagues I audited, trained or consulted with, debated with, even argued with, but ultimately learned from and respected.

Food safety certification started in the nineties. Yes, there were second party Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and hygiene audits before that – I was on the receiving end of some of them - but the nineties was the decade when third party food safety management certification took off.

There were many reasons for this.

The launch of ISO 9000 in 1987 familiarised industry in general with management system certification, although the food industry soon recognised that a generic quality management standard did not adequately cover the fundamental needs of the food supply chain.

A number of unfortunate global food events brought this into stark focus and spooked the industry.

The fatal 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak became a catalyst for food safety reform in the USA. In our own backyard, E. coli 0111 in Garibaldi mettwurst resulted in haemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) in 23 consumers in 1995, including one young death. The very next year, around 500 Australian consumers were seriously ill from consuming peanut butter laced with Salmonella. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) peaked in the UK in 1993 and resulted in the onset of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in 1994-96.

The global food industry became increasingly nervous as consumer confidence waned. Food safety standards and second party audits became more formalised and more frequent, encouraged by regulatory changes that permitted a due diligence defence (eg, the UK Food Safety Act, 1990).

The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) methodology, which had been available in various forms for decades, was recognised by the Codex Committee on Food Hygiene in 1993, and adopted by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the joint body of the FAO and WHO, in 1997. By the mid-nineties, the seven principles and twelve steps of Codex HACCP became the norm for identification and control of microbiological, chemical and physical food safety hazards.

Third party standards appeared, along with accreditation processes, to maintain the rigor and integrity of food safety certification based on the pre-established ISO 9000 model. The second half of the decade saw the birth of third-party standards – the Australian SQF Code, the BRC Global Standards and EurepGAP (now GlobalGAP). The European-based retailer standard IFS followed in 2003. (As a footnote, it was not until 2005 that the international HACCP based food safety management standard ISO 22000 was published. Had it been earlier, would we have needed the commercial third-party food safety standards? It’s a moot point.)

In 2000 the Paris-based retail network CIES established the Global Food Safety Initiative – GFSI (now

part of the Consumer Goods Forum) in part to benchmark the requirements of food safety standards and counter the proliferation of second and thirdparty standards which were causing supplier confusion and audit fatigue. “Once certified, accepted everywhere” was, and continues to be, the intent.

Thirty years on, how have we gone? Have we achieved our objectives?

I think not. There is an improved understanding and management of food safety in the food supply chain, and many hundreds of thousands of FSM certificates globally. Undoubtedly lives have been saved and illnesses prevented.

However, we still have a long way to go. A DNV-GL 2019 survey commissioned by GFSI suggests the wrong motivation for food safety certification. The report indicates that most surveyed companies (79%) only view certification as a ‘passport to trade’, with just over half (53%) considering certification as a means of improving food safety.1 This was a similar outcome to previous efficacy studies.

Food poisoning outbreaks remain high. A 2020 WHO fact sheet reports“more than 200 diseases are spread through food, one in 10 people fall ill every year from eating contaminated food and 420,000 people die each year as a result”.2

The Food Safety Information Council reports that, “in an average year there are an estimated 4.1 million cases of food poisoning in Australia that result in 31,920 hospitalisations, 86 deaths and 1 million visits to doctors”.3 Of course, not all emanate from food safety certified sites, but the numbers suggests that many do.

There are many reasons for this – emerging food safety threats, a reliance on score/ratings rather than outcomes, misalignment between standards and regulations, poor audit processes, gaps in supply chains, and increasingly complex food safety requirements that are difficult to implement and audit.

In the nineties it was HACCP and GMPs. Then came allergen management, food defence and food fraud, and now the ubiquitous and often misunderstood food safety culture – all important aspects, but often clouding the key objective of supplying safe food and protecting public health.

What can be done to improve outcomes? I read many articles on ‘the future of food safety systems’ which quite simply tweak the existing paradigm – there’s a reliance on digital technology and remote audits, which seem to be more about protecting the food safety certification industry rather than improving outcomes.

With respect to the innumerable practitioners and auditors who passionately toil to keep the food supply chain safe, we talk about root cause analysis (RCA) for our clients, we need the same on food safety systems. I suggest that food safety certification in its current form has reached its use-by date.

Food safety audits were necessary and effective in the nineties and noughties. But now, with an ageing auditor cohort, complex requirements and the urgent need to integrate food safety systems with the oft competing sustainability and social welfare requirements, we need a reboot. Perhaps it’s time to reengineer the audit process so that it is more consultative and less punitive, to provide guidance and assistance to food businesses rather than a set of rules on which they will be scored.

Too many food businesses abdicate their responsibility to standard owners. It’s about surviving the audit, not improving food safety.

Data and digital technology are often proposed as the answer and developments in digital technology undoubtedly will continue to be a valuable resource. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that food safety occurs (or sometimes doesn’t occur) at the interface between people and product. It is in the design of processes, the protection of materials and product, and the cleaning of equipment, that the focus must remain.

Remote food safety auditing has limited application. It can work effectively for document and record review and was an adequate compromise during the pandemic, but food safety auditing is about implemented practices. The auditor must be able to look into dark corners, inside vessels, hoppers and tanks, and not simply rely on a staff member with a camera.

The world has changed, industry needs have changed, and community expectations have changed. Food security to meet a burgeoning population, and sustainability as per the UN SDGs are just as urgent now as food safety, yet we work on them as stand-alone and often competing priorities. We deal with, promote and work on safety, security and sustainability individually when integration is required. The food supply chain needs a synergistic approach.

I don’t have all the answers. I’m just sharing my thoughts and expecting a collective horrified response from many who will feel I am undermining food safety practitioners. I am not. It’s the system that needs an overhaul, not the people in it. But I strongly feel we need the debate. The model that was established in the nineties and noughties is not the one that is needed to protect the community and continue to supply it with safe, sustainable food moving forward.

References

1. “Food safety: What’s next to assure its future?”;

DNV GL; February 2019 https://mygfsi.com/wp-content/ uploads/2019/09/DNV-GL-Viewpoint_report_

FSM.pdf 2. “Food Safety; Key Facts;” World Health

Organisation; 30 April 2020. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/ detail/food-safety 3. “Australia’s Food Safety Report Card released for the UN World Food Safety Day 7 June 2021”; Food Safety Information Council; https://foodsafety.asn.au/topic/australiasfood-safety-report-card-released-for-the-unworld-food-safety-day-7-june-2021/

Bill McBride is the Principal of Foodlink Asia Pacific and a forty year veteran of food safety and quality management in the global food industry - https:// www.linkedin.com/in/bill-mcbride2018221b/ f