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Food safety culture is a way of doing business. It’s how everyone in a food business thinks and acts to ensure food is safe.
Why it’s important
Consumers expect to enjoy their food knowing it’s safe to eat. A good food safety culture can protect your:
- customers from illnesses and death from unsafe food
- brand's reputation
- business from financial loss.
It is also a powerful tool to improve business performance, by:
- engaging staff and promoting a shared responsibility for food safety
- improving food safety outcomes
- strengthening compliance
- reducing risks associated with people and practices.
How to improve food safety culture
Successful culture change is more than having a process or procedure; it needs commitment, engagement, action and ongoing review.
Food safety culture starts with the business leaders (owners and senior managers), who lead by example. When leaders are actively involved in food safety, workers are more likely to get on board, follow procedures willingly and be more confident to raise issues.
Food handlers and those involved in cleaning, maintenance, purchases, recruitment and other activities all contribute to food safety and culture too.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) recommends a 3-step approach to improving food safety culture, outlined below.
Step 1: Know where the business stands
Assessing the business's existing culture and practices will help identify what needs to be improved.
FSANZ has developed a quick ‘health check questionnaire’ for decision makers and team members to rank their business's overall approach:
Step 2: Do something to make a difference
- Use the results of the health check questionnaire (PDF 218KB) to identify areas for improvement
- Choose up to 5 priority actions – for example, training, communications, or equipment. You may wish to use the FSANZ food safety culture checklist (PDF, 260 KB) as a guide.
- Read more about how to shape and strengthen your food safety culture, including real stories from Australian companies, on the FSANZ website.
Step 3: Follow through for continual improvement
Once things are in place to achieve a good food safety culture you need to regularly check systems and activities to make sure improvements are working and maintained.
Food safety culture in action
The following list provides example of practical actions demonstrating a strong food safety culture. View the full list at What does a strong food safety culture look like? (PDF, 84 KB).
Leaders (business owners, general managers, site managers):
- make sure there is regular meeting or get-together where the team reports and discusses food safety performance
- personally follow up on things that need to be done (for example, assign time, people or money to specific tasks, or make sure corrective actions are completed)
- assign time and budget for food safety training
- actively encourage and reward people/teams who have shown a strong commitment to food safety.
Managers and supervisors:
- schedule and lead a regular event (such as a team meeting, webinar, safety demonstration) where they personally speak to their teams about food safety
- communicate and follow up on their expectations that all staff spend 10 minutes each week in team meetings discussing and solving food safety challenges
- make sure leadership discusses and acts on suggestions about improving food safety
- make sure there is a plan for everybody to be involved in food safety observations (for example, food temperature, equipment sanitation), to check all know and do what is expected.
Everyone:
- speaks up and corrects anyone’s behaviour if they see something that goes against food safety practices or principles
- offers suggestions to improve the business’s food safety performance
- asks questions if they don’t understand why food safety practices are changed
- understands their role and responsibilities in food safety and that if they do not take them seriously consumers could become ill or die and the business could be harmed
- helps new colleagues and shares pride in what the business expects and achieves.
Real-life examples of how governments and food businesses have improved food safety culture are on the FSANZ Food safety culture in action webpage.
Resources
FSANZ has developed a range of resources to help food businesses understand, shape and improve their food safety culture:
- Poster What does a strong food safety culture look like? (PDF, 218 KB)
- Animation Food safety culture - for food businesses
- Animation Food safety culture - for food handlers
- Presentation What is food safety culture? (PDF, 676 KB)
- Step 1 Know - Food safety culture questionnaire (PDF, 218 KB)
- Step 2 Do - Checklists for change (PDF, 239 KB)
- Step 3 Follow through - Track and improve (maturity matrix and questionnaire) (PDF, 964 KB)
Other resources:
- Free Food Handler Basics training
- Questionnaire for EHOs to use with businesses (PDF 318KB)
- Small Business Maturity Model and Behaviour Change Guide (PDF, 272 KB)
- USA CDC restaurant food safety culture