Tag Archives: culture

Data not platitudes: market food safety but be able to back it up

Posted on by
Reply

I’m all for marketing microbial food safety at retail – directly to consumers – but only if the claims can be backed up with actions and data.

Schnuck Markets is expanding its so-called “Peace of Mind” initiative from pricing to quality assurance with a new website, www.peaceofmindquality.com, that emphasizes the chain’s dedication to quality and food safety.

Supermarket News cites one example on the website, a statement by Schnucks that “it intentionally applies shorter sell-by dates on meats and deli products to ensure products are fresher and last longer once purchased.”

“Through ‘Peace of Mind,’ you will have complete confidence that our foods are of the highest quality,” Schnucks writes on the website.

Quality and safety are seemingly used interchangeably on the website when they are actually two different concepts. The only evidence of food safety I saw on the website was that the company won some big-time award from the International Association for Food Protection in 2009.

I’m all for marketing food safety and providing comprehensive explanations of the food safety efforts of everyone in the farm-to-fork food safety chain, even the provision of testing data; some U.S. slaughterhouses are now doing this. Schnucks is going the right way, but it can be a lot better.

Foodborne illness outbreaks come from multiple failures, not acts of god

Posted on by
Reply

My friend Roy Costa (right, pretty much as shown) writes that he has now been involved in over 60 investigations of foodborne illness as an expert, for both plaintiffs and defendants, and concludes:

• most outbreaks that result in lawsuits have evidence of multiple major sanitation deficiencies;

• most have pest problems as part of the documentation;

• many have serious time and temperature issues; and,

• many have personal hygiene issues.

It seems like to have an outbreak that results in a lawsuit requires a lot of negligence. It is usually not some failure at a CCP, or an invalid HACCP plan due to some error in thinking. It’s gross sanitation issues that put people in this spot more often than not. Those that have at least a semi-scientific program with oversight of any type and are managing basic sanitation adequately seem less likely to get into deep trouble with litigation, and if they do, there is less likely to be a smoking gun.

Totally agree. Multiple failures that make an investigator wonder, why didn’t this happen earlier?
 

Do I have (duck) egg on my face; listeria in fried duck thingies in France

Posted on by
2

I make mistakes when I blog, trying to combine speed with accuracy. Usually they are corrected without much fuss; but when it involves language, and especially French, it gets dramatic.

My friend in France sends me stories about food-related recalls and outbreaks on a daily basis, usually from a French media source. Amy the French professor toiling away downstairs has her own work to do so I try not to bug her.

Lately I’ve been using goggle translate – oh, that’s google, I have a habit of writing goggle –to get the jist of the story and then blog it without bugging the French prof.

So when google translate suggested duck cracklings, I went with eggs, knowing I had a great picture of farm-fresh duck eggs from my colleague Kate. Turns out it was fritons or grattons or grillon, which was translated as cracklings, that showed up positive for listeria at Intermarche Figeac. They are, according to my French friend, small pieces of duck, fried with the fat of the duck (right, exactly as shown).

The French prof says she will use this as a translation anecdote for her students next semester and why humans are better than goggle – google.
 

Study looks at enhancing food safety culture to reduce foodborne illness

Posted on by
Reply

If providing safe food is a priority, why do large outbreaks of foodborne illness keep happening? Incidents like 2010’s salmonella-in-eggs outbreak sickened more than 1,900 across the U.S. and led to the recall of 500 million eggs.

A new study by a Kansas State University professor and colleagues finds how the culture of food safety is practiced within an organization can be a significant risk factor in foodborne illness.

Doug Powell, associate professor of food safety at K-State, said how businesses and organizations operate above and beyond minimal food safety regulations and inspections, or their food safety culture, is often overlooked.

"You’d think making customers sick is bad for business, yet some firms go out of their way to ignore food safety," Powell said. "Some places are motivated by money and efficiencies. The amount of regulation, inspection and audits just doesn’t seem to matter. And those ‘Employees Must Wash Hands’ signs don’t really work."

Powell, along with Casey Jacob, a former K-State research assistant, and Ben Chapman, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, examined three food safety failures: an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in Wales in 2005 that sickened 157 and killed one; a listeria outbreak in Canada in 2008 that sickened 57 and killed 23; and a salmonella outbreak in the U.S. in 2009 linked to peanut paste that killed nine and sickened 691.

Their study "Enhancing Food Safety Culture to Reduce Rates of Foodborne Illness" is being published by the journal Food Control and is available in advance online at http://bit.ly/hDh9EE.

"Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems," Chapman said. "Operators should know the risks associated with their products, how to manage them, and most important, how to communicate with and compel their staff to employ good practices — it’s a package deal."

According to the researchers, individuals focusing on food safety risks within an organization with a good food safety culture do the following:

* know the risks associated with the foods they handle and how those should be managed;

* dedicate resources to evaluate supplier practices;

* stay up-to-date on emerging food safety issues;

* foster a value system within the organization that focuses on avoiding illnesses;

* communicate compelling and relevant messages about risk reduction activities, and empower others to put them into practice;

* promote effective food safety systems before an incident occurs; and,

• don’t blame customers, including commercial buyers and consumers, when illnesses are linked to their products.

Source: Doug Powell, 785-317-0560, dpowell@k-state.edu

Enhancing food safety culture to reduce rates of foodborne illness

Posted on by
Reply

Snappy title, eh? But not bad for a peer-reviewed journal article in Food Control that was published on-line today ahead of print publication.

Almost two decades ago, E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box fast-food chain in the U.S. and propelled microbial food safety to the forefront of the public agenda. However, it remains a challenge to compel food producers, processors, distributors, retailers, foodservice outlets and home meal preparers to adopt scientifically validated safe food handling behaviors, especially in the absence of an outbreak.

Readers of barfblog.com will be familiar with the details surrounding the three case studies of failures in food safety culture documented in the paper: E. coli O157:H7 linked to John Tudor & Son in Wales in 2005; listeria linked to cold-cuts produced by Maple Leaf Foods of Canada in 2008; and salmonella linked to Peanut Corporation of America in 2009.

But anyone can be a critic, so we offer suggestions to enhance food safety culture, such as food safety storytelling through infosheets (Chapman, et al., 2010). And we end with my usual plea to actively promote food safety efforts, coupling a strong food safety culture with marketing to the world.

We conclude:

Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems. It requires commitment by an organization’s leaders, middle managers and food handlers. It also must be supported and demonstrated by sharing information within the organization and with customers. The food safety failures of John Tudor & Sons, Maple Leaf Foods, Inc. and PCA are illustrative of an emerging recognition that the culture of food safety within an organization is a significant risk factor in foodborne illness (Griffith et al., 2010a; Yiannis, 2009).

Individuals focusing on food safety risks within an organization with a good food safety culture:

• know the risks associated with the foods they handle and how those should be managed;
• dedicate resources to evaluating supplier practices;
• stay up-to-date on emerging food safety issues;
• foster a value system within the organization that focuses on avoiding illnesses;
• communicate compelling and relevant messages regarding risk reduction activities and empower others to put them into practice;
• promote effective food safety systems before an incident occurs; and,
• do not blame customers (including commercial buyers and end consumers) when illnesses are linked to their products.

The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent – whether it’s live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website – to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

I’ll add more as the paper becomes available, and if Chapman has anything witty to add (that takes time).

Enhancing food safety culture to reduce rates of foodborne illness

Douglas A. Powella, Casey J. Jacoba and Benjamin J. Chapmanb,
a Department of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
b Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family and Consumer Sciences North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7606, Raleigh, NC 27695-7606, USA
Received 2 August 2010;
revised 29 November 2010;
accepted 7 December 2010.
Available online 24 December 2010.

Abstract
A culture of food safety is built on a set of shared values that operators and their staff follow to produce and provide food in the safest manner. Maintaining a food safety culture means that operators and staff know the risks associated with the products or meals they produce, know why managing the risks is important, and effectively manage those risks in a demonstrable way. In an organization with a good food safety culture, individuals are expected to enact practices that represent the shared value system and point out where others may fail. By using a variety of tools, consequences and incentives, businesses can demonstrate to their staff and customers that they are aware of current food safety issues, that they can learn from others’ mistakes, and that food safety is important within the organization. The three case studies presented in this paper demonstrate that creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated food safety messages using multiple media.

Keywords: behavior change; foodborne illness; marketing; organizational culture; risk communication
 

Socializing for the holiday – food safety style

Posted on by
Reply

Michéle Samarya-Timm, a registered environmental health specialist with the Somerset County Department of Health in New Jersey (represent) writes:

Thanksgiving Day, as its name implies, is a time to give thanks. Many of us will travel far and wide to be with those who are important in our lives – you know – those whom we have been texting and Facebooking all year. In Thanksgivings past, socializing meant gathering with friends, family, loved ones and straggler students to share good food and good times. These days, being social around the holiday dinner table also takes on the meaning of regularly corresponding to all and sundry (a.k.a. our extended friends) about the food, the people, the football game, and the current goings on.

Modern technology and connectivity can be a wonderful thing for holiday fun.

Through sites like YouTube and Hulu, we can relive our favorite virtual Thanksgiving food safety moments –

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” (WKRP) www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FXSnoy71Q4

“I can’t cook a Thanksgiving dinner. All I can make is cold cereal and maybe toast.” (A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving)
www.hulu.com/watch/193930/a-charlie-brown-thanksgiving

“If I cook the stuffing inside the turkey, is there a chance I could kill my guests?” (The West Wing).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TcGEcKjSu4

Ever consider that the same modern technology and connectivity can also function as an essential ingredient to safely feed ourselves and others. No one wants to relive Thanksgiving dinner ad nauseum. Surely we all have stories about Thanksgivings that didn’t quite go as planned…Why take a chance that this year will top them all?

With electronic media and the web, we have everything we need at our fingertips, through on-demand videos, online metasearches, and virtual recipe collections. This year, put your laptops and iPhones to good use and avoid kitchen and food safety disasters by expanding your social network to include a few essential friends.

Share info on your favorite food safety apps with your loved ones – both those next to you and those virtually connected. Along with forwarding tidbits about Uncle’s Bob’s latest joke, or debating the aesthetic value of melting marshmallow peeps on sweet potatoes, you can help assure that while Thanksgiving gatherings may wreak havoc on the nerves, digestive systems won’t be affected.

Selected web apps:
Ask Karen: www.fsis.usda.gov/food_safety_education/ask_karen/index.asp
Butterball mobile site: www.butterball.com/tips-how-tos/turkey-experts/mobile-site
bites – Safe Food from Farm to Fork http://bites.ksu.edu/

Traditional phone:
Butterball Turkey Hotline: 1-800-288-8372
Reynolds Turkey Hotline: 1-800-745-4000
USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline: 1-800-535-4555
Doug Powell: deliberately unlisted ? 785-317-0560

Michéle Samarya-Timm is thankful for the many unnamed professionals who work to assure a safer food supply.

Food safety story time: researchers find stories can help improve food safety behavior

Posted on by
Reply

I never thought Chapman would finish — his degree, his fantasy football, and especially this paper.

We’ve been talking about food safety stories since at least 2002. I knew from research done in the 1990s about food and dieting and the power of exemplars – personal examples to get people’s attention. Chapman dug into the literature and found references going back decades.

The storytelling approach has underpinned much of what we’ve done over the past seven years, including food safety infosheets and the posts in barfblog.com. Now we, along with our colleague Tanya MacLaurin of Guelph (who used to be at Kansas State, go figure) can say, see, these things work. And here’s how it’s done.

From the K-State press release this morning:

Food safety advice may fail because it’s too prescriptive — wash your hands, use a thermometer — and it often doesn’t include stories to make such information relevant. Researchers at North Carolina State University, Kansas State University and the University of Guelph have found that using short food safety stories with vibrant graphics can be a better training tool for food service workers.

A new paper by the researchers in the British Food Journal details the concept, creation and distribution of food safety infosheets, like those found at http://foodsafetyinfosheets.wordpress.com/. These single-page posters are created around a current food safety issue or outbreak, and are supplemented with graphics and information targeted at the food service industry. The infosheets are used to provide food safety risk-reduction information to generate behavior change and support a food safety culture.

"Food safety infosheets were designed with the goal of communicating risk reduction messages with the objective of changing behavior," said Ben Chapman, assistant professor in the department of 4-H youth development and family and consumer sciences at North Carolina State. "These infosheets differ from much of what is currently used in training, because we focus on the consequences of mishandling food by providing real examples taken from recent events."

A recent food safety infosheet detailed an outbreak of E. coli O157 linked to a festival in Winnipeg, Canada, that sickened 40. Another focused on food preparation and cooling for large crowds, sparked by an outbreak at a church turkey dinner in Kansas that sickened 159.

"Whether it’s a waitress, a line cook or the stock boy, people learn through stories," said Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at K-State. "We want to reach out to the last person who touched your food and make it safer."

Over the course of two years and using multiple methods, food safety infosheets transformed from a text-heavy memo to compelling, story-laden posters supported with contextual messages on what a food handler could do to reduce food safety risks, according to the researchers.

As part of the design phase of the infosheets, Chapman spent 185 hours working as a dishwasher in a local restaurant.

"We felt it was important to really immerse into the culture of a food handler, and get a better understanding of what types of conversations occurred and what the hierarchy was like," Chapman said. "The experience directed us to refocus our messages to be a bit edgier and include references to celebrity and music where possible."

Food safety infosheets at http://foodsafetyinfosheets.wordpress.com/ are created semi-weekly and are posted in restaurants, retail stores and on farms. They also are used in training throughout the world. Since September 2006 more than 150 food safety infosheets have been produced. They are available for download at no cost. The website has been recently redesigned, adding a search function, automatic e-mail alerts and RSS feeds. The new database is also sortable by pathogen, location and risk factor.

Citation and abstract:
Food safety infosheets: Design and refinement of a narrative-based training intervention
British Food Journal, Vol. 113 Iss: 2 (pre- print edition)
Benjamin Chapman, Tanya MacLaurin and Doug Powell
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0007-070x&volume=113&issue=2&articleid=1895862&show=abstract

Purpose – Despite extensive investments in food handler training, research suggests that training programs are inconsistent, and rarely evaluated for efficacy. The generic prescriptive content and school-like delivery methods used in current food safety training may be a barrier to application. The purpose of this research was to develop a food safety communication tool, food safety infosheets, targeted specifically to foodservice food handlers utilizing popular media stories to illustrate the consequences of poor food handling.

Design/methodology/approach – Food safety infosheets were designed to be surprising, connect food handlers’ actions and consequences, and generate discussion through a verbal narrative framework. A Delphi-like exercise (n = 19), a posting pilot (n = 8) were carried out to assess the appropriateness of the concept of food safety infosheets. An intense participatory ethnographic study with an Ontario, Canada restaurant, and in-depth interviews with food service operators in Manhattan, Kansas, and Lansing, Michigan (n = 17) were conducted to gather qualitative data on the food service kitchen environment, including barriers to food safety practices, and the communication preferences of those who work in such kitchens.

Findings – The expert group, foodservice operators, and food handlers accepted food safety infosheets as an appropriate concept and valued storytelling as an effective communication strategy. Learning in the kitchen environment is largely hands-on and visual, and time pressure dictates practices. It is often difficult to attract and keep the attention of food handlers. Storytelling, celebrity and local outbreaks are of interest to the target audience.

Originality/value – This research provides a blueprint for the design and refinement of food safety communication tools targeted towards a specific audience. By utilizing multiple methodologies, this article provides a framework for other researchers to follow.
 

Wal-Mart to buy more locally grown produce

Posted on by
1

“No other retailer has the ability to make more of a difference than Wal-Mart.”

That’s what Wal-Mart president and chief executive Michael T. Duke said at a meeting Thursday morning, according to prepared remarks, as he announced a program that would focus on sustainable agriculture among its food suppliers, as the retail giant tries to expand its efforts to improve environmental efficiency.

The program is intended to put more locally grown food in Wal-Mart stores in the United States, invest in training and infrastructure for small and medium-sized farmers particularly in emerging markets and begin to measure the efficiently of large suppliers in growing and getting their produce to market.

The New York Times reports that given Wal-Mart is the world’s largest grocer, with one of the biggest food supply chains, any changes that it makes would have wide reaching implications. Wal-Mart’s decision five years ago to set sustainability goals that, among other things, increased its reliance on renewable energy and reduced packaging waste among its supplies, send broad ripples through product manufacturers. Large companies like Procter & Gamble redesigned packages that are now also carried by other retailers, while Wal-Mart’s measurements of environmental efficiency among its suppliers helped define how they needed to change.

I don’t know anything other than what I’ve read in the media, but it’s a fair guess that food safety culture Frank is going to have a lot to do with making sure any sustainability gains are coupled with enhanced food safety.

Michelle Mauthe Harvey, project manager for the corporate partnerships program at Environmental Defense Fund, said,

“This is huge. Once people are asked those questions, if they haven’t been measuring, they measure more.”

Go big or go home.

Traditional food safety management vs. behavior-based food safety management

Posted on by
1

Frank Yiannas, vp of food safety at Walmart and the author of the 2009 book, Food Safety Culture, penned a piece for GFSI’s (Global Food Safety Initiative) latest newsletter about why behavior-based food safety management is key to enhancing food safety. An edited excerpt is below:

The term food safety management system, as traditionally used, often refers to a system that includes having prerequisite programs in place, good manufacturing practices (GMPs), a Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Point plan, a recall procedure, and so on. It’s a very process focused system. A behavior-based food safety management system is process focused, but it’s also people focused.

At the end of the day, food safety equals behavior. And to improve the food safety performance of your organization, you have to change people’s behaviors.

Traditional food safety managers are focused on the principles of food safety, temperature control, and sanitation – the food sciences. They believe that managing these scientific principles will lead to food safety success.

Behavior-based food safety managers have mastery over the food sciences. But they understand that the food sciences are not enough. They understand that achieving food safety success requires not only an understanding of the food sciences, but of the behavioral sciences too. Accordingly, they are students of behavioral change theories, the behavioral sciences, and principles related to organizational culture.

Traditional food safety managers place an overemphasis on training and inspections in an attempt to change behavior and achieve results. They believe that desired behavior change can be achieved by simply training employees and inspecting processes and conditions against established standards. But as stated so elegantly by B.F. Skinner (1953), behavior is a difficult subject, not because it is inaccessible, but because it is extremely complex. While both of these activities (training and inspections) are important, behavior-based food safety managers realize they are not enough to achieve food safety success. They understand the complexity of behavior and, before jumping to an overly simplistic solution; they study and analyze the cause of the performance problem (lack of skill, ineffective work system, lack of motivation, etc) to propose the right solution.

Traditional food safety management often addresses specific food safety concerns and strategies in isolation or as individual components, not as a whole or complete system. In other words, it approaches food safety with a sort of linear cause-and-effect thinking. Behavior-based food safety management realizes that this sort of linear cause-and-effect thinking is not fully adequate to address complex issues related to an organization’s food safety culture or an employee’s adherence to food safety practices.

Behavior-based food safety management understands that there are numerous factors (physical, organizational, personal) that affect performance and they consider the totality of the numerous activities an organization may conduct and how they are linked together to influence people’s thoughts and behaviors.

Traditional food safety management relies on formal authority to accomplish objectives. Food safety managers get others to follow them or their program because they have authority over them and hold them accountable to the rules. Behavior-based food safety managers also use a system of checks and balances, but they use them differently. For example, they use them to observe employee behaviors related to food safety, give feedback and coaching (both positive and negative) based on the results, and provide motivation for continuous improvement.

More importantly, behavior-based food safety managers have figured out a way to go beyond accountability. They’ve figured out a way to get employees at all levels of the organization to do the right things, not because they’re being held accountable to them, but because they believe in and are committed to food safety. They create a food safety culture.

Food porn: some worry how to best photograph food to meet trends; people want it sloppy

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal reports that the popularity of cooking shows, the eat-local movement and the growth of casual-dining restaurants are reshaping consumers’ views of what makes food look appealing. Where making food look perfect was once a primary task of food stylists and photographers, the new challenge is making messy food look appetizing.

Alison Attenborough, a New York-based food stylist who specializes in editorial work for clients, says, "People are interested in small butchers, artisan producers, farmer’s markets—a more handmade look."

At a recent Food & Wine photo shoot, Ms. Attenborough was making recipes by celebrity chef Tyler Florence for the magazine’s October issue. She carefully assembled a cheeseburger so that the bacon and red onions would look like they were erupting from the bun. With a heat gun, she melted the cheese to make a corner of the slice dribble down. For a scallop appetizer, Ms. Attenborough intentionally left one fleck of parsley on the table, as if the cook had just finished applying the garnish and hadn’t bothered to clean up.

Whether for editorial or advertising purposes, the point of making natural food look appealing is to get people to buy the product, go out to eat or make a recipe.

Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, says the effectiveness of the natural trend lies in its ability to invite the viewer in. "It might enable us more to put ourselves in the picture," he says.