SQF Edition 9 - Measuring Food Safety Culture
Was curious how other company's are approaching this change in edition 9. Having "Food Safety Culture" is one thing but how do you measure it?
I plan on tracking infractions post audit this year. Less infractions + more employee reports of issues = a growth in culture
We use these documents as reference. I hope these can help you.
Attached Files
Was curious how other company's are approaching this change in edition 9. Having "Food Safety Culture" is one thing but how do you measure it?
Did you notice the parallel SQF thread ? -
We use these documents as reference. I hope these can help you.
these are very good
also may want to review the GFSI position paper.
We use these documents as reference. I hope these can help you.
Thank you for posting this!
these are very good
also may want to review the GFSI position paper.
This is from 2018, correct?
Since I don't have much time to pull our mess of documents together for our unannounced audit which could be SQF 8.1 or 9.0 depending on the date the auditor shows up I've put a couple simple ways to measure / track. We already have these things in place.
- Employee compliance during our internal inspections / audits. It should trend in a positive direction if we have a culture of food safety / quality.
- Production quality issues. We have been tracking this for a while now. The rate and significance of the quality issues should reduce over time if we have a culture of food safety / quality.
- Customer complaint data.
- Shelf-life trending.
It should be easy for us because we fair poorly with our internal inspections and the frequency of product quality issues in the plant.
Since I don't have much time to pull our mess of documents together for our unannounced audit which could be SQF 8.1 or 9.0 depending on the date the auditor shows up I've put a couple simple ways to measure / track. We already have these things in place.
- Employee compliance during our internal inspections / audits. It should trend in a positive direction if we have a culture of food safety / quality.
- Production quality issues. We have been tracking this for a while now. The rate and significance of the quality issues should reduce over time if we have a culture of food safety / quality.
- Customer complaint data.
- Shelf-life trending.
It should be easy for us because we fair poorly with our internal inspections and the frequency of product quality issues in the plant.
Hi Ryan,
Thks for input.
I suggest that the word "positive" should precede the word(s) "culture".
Has this "Package" already been auditorially tested for "acceptance" ?
A quick scan through previous threads indicates that most people seem to find that an explicit FSC Questionnaire is somewhere expected within the Package.
JFI here is fssc/iso's thinking on the subject -
fssc22000-iso22000 - Guidance-Document-Food-Safety-Culture.pdf 356.63KB 547 downloads
Thanks for the input Charles. This is in it's infancy....I would say it is pre-infancy at this point because I've written up general statements regarding food safety & quality culture as part of our management commitment and values. Monday I got that part approved and signed off. The next step is getting suitable GMP requirements approved and signed off by executive management, things are such a process for us...once this is done on Thursday (crossing my fingers) we will have multiple meetings and training sessions with our associates on on a lot of topics, but including food safety & quality culture.
It would be nice if we could survey associates prior to the first meetings / training sessions to get a baseline. I will see about that, good input. I would be shocked if the survey showed a strong positive culture around food safety & quality given our observational results that say otherwise with our internal audits, GMP enforcement issues, and number of quality incidents.
Hi Ryan,
Thks for input.
I suggest that the word "positive" should precede the word(s) "culture".
Has this "Package" already been auditorially tested for "acceptance" ?
A quick scan through previous threads indicates that most people seem to find that an explicit FSC Questionnaire is somewhere expected within the Package.
JFI here is fssc/iso's thinking on the subject -
fssc22000-iso22000 - Guidance-Document-Food-Safety-Culture.pdf
I setup the survey with our HR department and we will have results back by mid-week next week. It will be interesting to see and compile the results. I basically followed the same questionnaire from Turjo's post only modifying the ranking to 1, 2, or 3 with one the weakest and three the strongest in terms of food safety / quality culture.
I'm thinking we conduct this survey quarterly since it is easy for us to do through our payroll app and see how it improves (hopefully), or gets worse (then I'm out of a job).
Has anyone able to share the food safety policy or food safety procedures that visible to staff and visitors?