Sustainable food safety culture

Since the 1950s, the agri-food industry has put in place a range of tools to ensure that products are marketed with optimum sanitary quality: incoming inspection of raw materials, in-process and finished product inspections, supplier audits, HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point), good hygiene practices, increasingly effective traceability systems, and so on.

For these tools to be effective, and for food safety to be sustainable, it must be an integral part of corporate policy. The GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) working group goes one step further, adding a human dimension and talking about a food safety culture, commonly referred to as "Food Safety Culture" (FSC). This concept, initially developed in Anglo-Saxon countries, is still too little used in French companies.

The GFSI's position on the subject, and the requirements of the various private Food Safety Management Systems (FSMS) standards (IFS Food and BRC Food), now require manufacturers to assess their level of maturity, in order to identify and implement actions to develop and improve their food safety culture.

This article presents the history of Food Safety Culture, the pillars on which it is built, and proposes a methodology for companies to implement and promote this new managerial approach.

At the end of the article, readers will find a glossary and a table of acronyms.