Julia Stewart:
Hello, this is PMA PR Director Julia Stewart, and welcome back to PMA’s audio blog, “Ask Dr. Bob.” PMA’s Chief Science Officer Dr. Bob Whitaker is with me today to continue discussing the importance of measuring your food safety program. We’ve been talking about verification as part of a series of posts about risk assessment and risk management.

Bob, in your previous post you discussed some of the tools we can use to verify food safety programs, but are there others?

Bob Whitaker:
Yeah, Julia. Another tool we can use to measure adherence to our food safety programs, and assess our risk management strategies, are food safety audits. As I’ve previously discussed, sometimes the food safety discussion in our industry is over-shadowed or somehow equated with discussions on what audits are best and how many we have to do. Remember, audits are only a tool; a snap shot in time.

Realistically, audits are like taking an exam when you know when the test will be scheduled, have all the questions already in hand, and you know what the answers need to be. But leaving aside the on-going discussions on food safety audits, in the context of verifying our food safety programs, food safety audits are a mechanism to demonstrate to yourself, your senior management, and your customers that you are following your food safety program – and that you can verify it through your audit that day. At their best, food safety audits are excellent training opportunities for employees, a chance to have an independent set of eyes critique your program, and a time when you can step back from all the other responsibilities and critically look at your food safety program and how it is being implemented. So an audit can be an important learning experience.

Just as we discussed in the last post about needing a plan of action for responding to microbial testing results, it is important to have a plan of action for audits. It is critical that once audits are performed, you assemble your food safety team and work together to develop corrective actions to address deficiencies uncovered during the audit. This is an important step in completing the audit; demonstrating to your team, senior management, customers, and possibly regulators that you have acted responsibly to address any food safety issues that might arise and were detected in your audits.

Remember an audit is not complete until the corrective actions have been developed and implemented. Preparing corrective actions is also an excellent training opportunity for your team. And be sure to document in writing all your corrective actions.

Julia:
Thank you, Bob. With all the talk about audit proliferation and audit fatigue, this helps put the usefulness and role of audits into perspective. Thanks very much to our listeners, please join us again next time!

Julia Stewart:
Hello, this is PMA PR Director Julia Stewart, and welcome back to PMA’s audio blog, “Ask Dr. Bob.” PMA’s Chief Science Officer Dr. Bob Whitaker is with me today to continue discussing the steps of risk assessment and risk management.

Bob, in your previous post you mentioned the importance of being able to measure your risk management program. Can you give us some more details about this?

Bob Whitaker:
Sure Julia, it is important that you make your risk management program measurable to the extent possible. Simply put, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. For example, if you identify irrigation water sourced from a well on a farm as a risk factor should it become contaminated, then define your risk management practice in measurable terms. That means, for example, that you can have a check list that calls for weekly physical inspection of the well head, and monthly microbial testing for generic E. coli. These are measurable activities, they generate data, and that data can be used to verify you are following your risk assessment and management plan. More importantly, these data may also help you identify improvements you could make in your risk management program to help improve your food safety performance.

However, remember you cannot test your way to safety. You need to be realistic about the uses and value for testing in your operations and how it helps you manage risks. Understand that testing is only a tool. Without the proper risk management practices in place, testing is meaningless. We are faced with the need to test water, soil amendments, process environments, equipment surfaces, and even seeds. You need to look at these in relationship to your risk assessment, and determine whether testing these factors will help you manage the risk better, or if the tests will help verify the effectiveness of a process.

And, just as important as having a way to measure, is also to have a plan for responding to the results. Know what a positive test result means and how you will handle it before you get that positive result. Decision trees are great tools in situations like that. Also know who will interpret the data, and who will make the decision to ship or destroy products, to harvest or to walk by a field. These decisions can be painful because they can have bottom-line impact, so be prepared for that beforehand.

Julia:
Thank you, Bob. As always you have tough but constructive information for us. We’ll look forward to hearing more about the role of verification in risk assessment and management in the next post.

To our listeners, thanks very much for joining us today!

If you haven’t already signed up to receive Ask Dr. Bob posts by email, we invite you to do so today – just type your email address into the “subscribe” field you’ll find on the home page of the blog.

We’ll see you next time!

Julia Stewart:
Hello, this is Julia Stewart, PMA PR Director, here with PMA Chief Science Officer Dr. Bob Whitaker. Welcome back to PMA’s audio blog, “Ask Dr. Bob”.

Bob, we’ve been talking about the importance of risk assessment to food safety, and how to get started. What are some of the most important steps we should be considering as we go through this process?

Bob Whitaker:
Julia, as we have already discussed, we’re already risk assessors and managers, so we’re well positioned to use the most powerful tool we have in our toolbox to build food safety programs.  I want to briefly outline some key general principles you need to bear in mind as you put that tool to work.

We previously discussed the importance of mapping the process for your operation. This is a key step in any risk assessment. A company must draw out each step in the operation and then evaluate where you might have a food safety risk.  

While each operation must assign a person responsible for leading that mapping and risk assessment process, it is important to note that this must be a participatory process. Everyone must participate in the process, so that they can ultimately take responsibility for the company’s food safety performance.   The best way to achieve this is by designating a food safety team, spanning from field-level employees to senior managers. That way, you can ensure meaningful input in the planning process, and get corporate-wide buy-in or ownership when the plan is complete.  Your food safety plan is only going to be effective if each employee owns it, if it is specific to your business, and your employees understand it in that context.

Next, use your internal experts. The president of the company or his or her designated food safety professional can’t sit at a desk and create a complete risk assessment and management program alone.  Involve your company “experts”. Every operation has people who are experts in their area, from growing to harvesting and cooling, to processing. They live in these operations daily and can help define the mapping process more accurately.  More importantly, they can help you develop the risk management practices that you will need. 

If your risk assessment and management planning process is iterative, as it should be to ensure your plan stays current and effective, you will generally find that your group of experts can be your most valuable resource in suggesting and implementing new management practices to mitigate the risks you identify.  Even better, because they had a role in developing those practices, your experts will turn into your most vehement enforcers of your management practices every day.

You also must be sure that you make your risk management program measurable to the extent possible.  Simply put, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.  You must build measurable activities into your plan. We will talk about this in more detail in a future post.

Lastly, risk assessment and management is never really done. You must re-assess and update your plans regularly, striving for continuous improvement. We’ll talk about this principle in another post.

Julia:
Thank you, Bob. These core principles make basic sense, I look forward to talking with you more about some of them in future posts. In the meantime, to our listeners, thanks for joining us. Please visit the Ask Dr. Bob audio blog again soon, and remember you can also sign up on the blog’s front page to receive future posts by email. If you are finding this valuable, please share it with your colleagues.

See you next time!