Unravelling the Food Safety Web

We are fortunate in this country. When a customer enters a supermarket, considerations such as convenience to home or work, parking, product range, décor – even the width of the aisles and the style of muzak on offer – are likely to be of more concern than whether or not the food purchased there will be safe to eat. That tends to be a given.

So how have the major forces in the Australian food and grocery industry managed to achieve such high levels of food safety performance? What systems are they using and what philosophies and imperatives underpin their decisions? And what’s the best way for a supplier organisation to tap into the web?

It’s a real triumph of logistics, technology and commitment to know that even foodstuffs from the other side of the globe arrive in good condition, safe and ready for consumption.

And when you consider the concentration of the Australian grocery industry into a few key players – and the vast area that they serve – the feat of ensuring that even highly perishable products such as seafood and greengroceries are transported and distributed safely to our supermarket fridges seems even more remarkable.

Of course, like most feats, the more effortless they seem, the more hard work goes on behind the scenes – as our major grocery outlets, wholesalers and their thousands of suppliers can attest.

Maturing food safety management market creates new demands

An enormous amount of planning, checking and systemisation goes into ensuring that the products that make it to the supermarket shelves are safe and of reliable, consistent quality.

The aim of the ever-more-complex exercise is not only consumer protection, it’s also about a range of other critical factors that support the fortunes both of the big players and their suppliers.

For example, as well as risk management and evidence of due diligence, the market has seen an increasing prominence of brand protection and private label products.

In the past ten or 15 years, various food safety standards have proliferated, in some cases adding an additional layer of confusion and compliance on the web that makes up industry as a whole: from the growers and packers of the raw materials, through to the storers, transporters, manufacturers and distributors and of course those who come at the end of the chain, the servers and retail outlets.

More recently still, however, the market has settled and the standards and systems have either matured – or faded from view. Factors such as greater experience with various systems and standards, the evolution of those standards and systems in response to such experience, the cooperation of major organisations to create the Global Food Safety Initiative (GSFI) and changing composition of the Australian grocery market have combined to produce a streamlining and simplification of what has tended to be a more jigsaw approach.

Tailoring for different needs offers value across the food web

The role of food safety certification bodies has also played its part in this new market maturity. NCS International is one case in point.

Majella Furey heads up NCS International’s food safety division, which runs a comprehensive food safety training, education and auditing service across most of the major standards.

“We have seen the market settle down with greater awareness on the part of both the big chains and their suppliers about what they all need to do business,” she says.

“As a consequence we have in turn been able to tailor our programs and auditing practices to move away, where possible, from the multiple audit scenario that was such a bane for suppliers and such a huge difficulty for their client organisations to monitor and administrate.

“Whereas once upon a time suppliers may have been in a situation of eternal audit to a whole range of different standards for different suppliers, we are now very often able to conduct multiple audits where we assess to a number of different standards at the same time.”

The settling of major players on a number of key standards has also helped NCS International to further tailor food safety management services to meet those needs. Examples include the increasing uptake of the British Retail Consortium’s Global Food Safety Standard (BRC Standard), SQF 2000 and ISO 22000, as well as HACCP. Another is the broadening and refinement of proprietary standards from retailers like Woolworths, Coles, Metcash and Wal-Mart to encompass factors that might otherwise have required multiple assessments.

“We have a very keen sense of what’s going on in the market and align the services we offer to facilitate organisations at all levels working successfully within it,” says Majella.

“There is a real awareness now that without appropriate compliance one cannot operate in this environment so it then becomes a question of the best way of getting there, which is where we come in.”

For more information on Food Safety assesments please email info@ncsifood.com or call NCS International on 1300 856 554.