Improving food safety depends on culture change, speakers tell OFPA
April 10, 2009Contact Information:
Contact:
Dr. Justin Morris, Department of Food Science
479-575-4040 / jumorris@uark.edu
By Dave Edmark, Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station
479-575-5647 / dedmark@uark.edu
SPRINGDALE, Ark. – Instilling a culture of food safety and educating people – not merely training them – are the keys to improving the nation’s food safety, according to two professionals who delivered their ideas to the Ozark Food Processors Association on April 8. The OFPA gathered for its 103rd Convention and Exposition.
Asserting that food safety equals behavior, Frank Yiannas, Wal-Mart Stores vice president for food safety, told the OFPA, “If you want to improve the food safety performance of your company, you have to change behavior.”
Yiannas urged businesses to move away from traditional food safety management that simply trains employees in the specific technical steps for practicing food safety. He advocated a behavior-based food safety management that focuses on food science plus behavioral science.
“Behavior science is complex,” Yiannas said. “You’re not going to train someone to change their behavior.”
Yiannas defined a culture as a shared pattern of thoughts and behavior. Applied to food safety, that would include a culture of washing hands consistently, a practice encouraged through socialization processes.
A food safety culture is created through a series of strategic concepts, he said. The first is to maintain an expectation of food safety within the work place. Yiannas explained that at Wal-Mart, food safety is an expectation rather than simply a priority because priorities change over time. The company’s culture of beliefs includes caring about the customers’ safety.
Companies should have food safety communication plans to inform their employees what their work is about. “Your employees will know what you think is important by what you’re talking about,” Yiannas said.
Goals and measurements are often part of any plan, but Yiannas said it was important to realize that the measurements aren’t equal to behavior change.
“You should be measuring to catch people doing things right and not just doing things wrong,” he said.
Yiannas emphasized that employees must be educated and trained, but training isn’t the same as education. He noted that training tells only how to do a task but education explores what the task is about.
Similarly, Doug Powell of Kansas State University told the OFPA that marketing food safety should be based on educating people rather than looking for ways to compel them to practice food safety. Powell, an associate professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology, explained how he gets the word out through Web sites such as his Barfblog.com.
Powell started the blog because “using stories and narratives is better than statistics alone.” It frequently includes reports of food safety incidents as provocative as the blog’s title, so named because “food safety is food that doesn’t make you barf.” The aim, he said, is to get people talking about food safety. “We take a current event and wrap some practical advice around it such as on hand washing.”
The day of his presentation at OFPA, Powell posted on the blog this summary of his remarks to the convention: “The third-party food safety audit scheme that processors and retailers insisted upon is no better than a financial Ponzi scheme. The vast number of facilities and suppliers means audits are required, but people have been replaced by paper. Audits, inspections, training and systems are no substitute for developing a strong food safety culture, farm-to-fork. Marketing food safety directly to consumers, rather than the local/natural/organic hucksterism, is a way to further reinforce the food safety culture.”
Also speaking, after an opening welcome from Milo Shult, University of Arkansas System vice president for agriculture, were OFPA President Earl Wells, vice president of science and technology at Allens, Inc., on the 200-year history of canning, and Jerry Johnson, Ball Corp. director of technical services of food and household products and one of the foremost authorities on canning, on the use of Bisphenol A as an interior coating for cans.
The OFPA convention opened April 7 with its annual golf tournament held at Shadow Valley Country Club in Rogers. Sixty-eight golfers played in the event with proceeds benefiting the OFPA scholarship fund. The day's activities included the third annual Food and Beverage Innovations Competition in which University of Arkansas students demonstrated research skills and interacted with industry. The students’ products were on display at that evening’s dinner and OFPA scholarship winners, all UA food science students, were recognized. Scholarships sponsored by OFPA and its members were awarded to 12 students.
The OFPA Exposition this year attracted 79 exhibitors with over 500 people attending.