The consequences of unsafe food can be detrimental to a food company’s reputation. Food safety management systems (FSMS) are in place to provide companies with a structured approach to managing safety when it comes to food products. With an FSMS, all stages of a food supply chain are analyzed to ensure every process, procedure, and resource is monitored for potential hazards.
Not only is ensuring food safety important for a company’s brand, but it’s critical to protect public health, maintain trust with consumers, and comply with regulations. Unsafe food can lead to illness, outbreaks, or serious health issues, and without a robust FSMS in place, these risks are harder to detect.
This blog post will examine the importance of a FSMS including its different purposes and what companies can do to successfully implement one using advanced technologies like aiOla.
The Purpose and Benefits of Implementing a Food Safety Management System
There are many advantages of using an FSMS, but besides the benefits, the purpose of implementing one is often legally necessary. FSMSs enable businesses to keep track of compliance standards they need to adhere to while simultaneously protecting both consumer health and brand reputation. Let’s take a closer look at the purpose and benefits of FSMS implementation.
Ensures Compliance with Regulations
Compliance is an important aspect of food safety management. Regulations are in place to ensure businesses are meeting a certain standard when it comes to food safety. Certain regulatory bodies, like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the European Union (EU) set various regulations to establish food safety standards across the board.
With an FSMS, companies can better ensure they’re meeting these legal requirements. It offers an organized framework for maintaining food safety practices that are in line with regulatory requirements, such as ongoing inspections, record keeping, and preventative actions.
Compliance is essential to protect consumers, and when businesses adhere to these standards, they can better mitigate risks related to allergens, foodborne illnesses, cross-contamination, and other hazards. Not complying with laws set by regulatory bodies can also result in fines or other legal consequences, so it’s important to have an FSMS in place to avoid legal consequences.
Protects Consumer Health
Foodborne illnesses can be dangerous to public health. Contaminants like bacteria, viruses, parasites, and chemicals can reach food at any stage of the supply chain and can lead to outbreaks or widespread illness. Without a reliable FSMS, these contaminants can be difficult to detect.
Food safety management systems play an essential role in controlling contaminants and preventing their spread. This is done through implementing good manufacturing practices (GMPs), conducting inspections regularly, and consistently ensuring proper hygiene practices are followed.
Handling food safely protects consumer health. The safe handling of food includes how it is stored, cooked, transported, and handled, which is why it’s important to implement a food safety management system to outline strategies for each of these food manufacturing stages.
Enhances Brand Reputation
Food safety incidents can be devastating to a brand’s reputation. Outbreaks, contamination, and recalls can cause negative publicity, loss of trust, and even financial losses. An FSMS helps build trust with consumers by showing your company is committed to food safety and employs rigorous quality control measures to ensure compliance and transparency in your food safety practices.
Several recognizable food brands have earned their reputation thanks to strong food safety records. Nestlé, for example, has strong food safety systems and policies in place that include GMPs, a Quality Management System, and other risk assessment tools to ensure its food manufacturing is as safe as possible. The food brand’s end-to-end approach to food safety applies to all aspects of its supply chain, including how food products are designed and stored.
Improves Operational Efficiency
One of the key benefits of implementing an FSMS is how it helps streamline processes to lead to smoother handling of operations. In turn, better control over potential food hazards makes production more efficient.
With an FSMS in place, organizations can better standardize procedures by establishing clear guidelines and protocols to follow for food safety. This reduces the likelihood of errors and inconsistencies in quality, leading to fewer wasted resources, better budget management, and strong quality assurance. By minimizing the chance of producing unsafe or non-compliant products, a food safety management system can help businesses improve operational efficiency.
Builds a Culture of Food Safety
An established food safety management system that employees are regularly trained on, aware of, and know how to use goes a long way in fostering a culture of food safety. By investing your company’s resources into creating an FSMS and ensuring it’s understood and followed, employees will be more empowered to take accountability and ensuring they’re responsibly following food safety standards.
By making food safety a core pillar of your organization, you can also ensure that it’s always prioritized when it comes time for important decision-making and building everyday operation procedures. This helps your organization create a culture where food safety isn’t only a requirement for compliance or legal reasons, but a fundamental part of your brand’s identity.
Implementing an Effective Food Safety Management System
There’s a lot that goes into implementing, and then maintaining, an effective FSMS. If your business doesn’t have one in place yet, there are several different factors to take into consideration and steps to be followed for successful implementation. Below, we’ll briefly cover what you need to know about implementing an FSMS.
Steps for Establishing an FSMS
- Identify potential food safety hazards in your operations with a thorough analysis
- Determine specific areas of your production process, critical control points (CCPs), where new safety measures can be used
- Implement new control measures to prevent or reduce hazards at your identified CCPs
- Continuously monitor CCPs to ensure your new strategies are effective
- Take corrective action if CCPs still aren’t under control and fully safe
- Keep records of all the procedures you’ve implemented for ongoing monitoring and analysis
Appropriate Standards Selection
Another core part of implementing an FSMS is selecting the right food safety standards to adhere to in your company. Some of the standards you might want to consider or may even be required to work with include:
- ISO 22000: An internationally recognized standard for FSMS that provides a framework for organizations to demonstrate their ability to control food safety hazards
- Hazards Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP): HACCP is a systematic and preventative approach to reducing food risk
- British Retail Consortium (BRC) Global Standard for Food Safety: The BRC Global Standard for Food Safety dictates specific requirements for the manufacturing of safe food products
- Safe Quality Food (SQF) Program: The SQF program offers a framework for suppliers to implement and demonstrate their commitment to food quality and safety
- FSSC 22000: A food safety certification that guides organizations on how to effectively manage food safety responsibilities
- Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) recognized standards: GFSI is a collaboration of food safety experts from around the world that measures supply chain safety standards
Role of Leadership in FSMSs
Role modeling proper food safety practices is essential to encourage employees to do the same and adopt FSMSs. According to a survey by Food Safety Magazine, about half of respondents claimed that management failed to model correct food safety behavior. However, for food safety management systems to be fully embraced by everyone in an organization, leaders must show employees that food safety is part of the culture by demonstrating their knowledge of implemented systems.
Integrate aiOla into Your Food Safety Management System
The role of technology in FSMS implementation cannot be overlooked. New technologies have a significant effect on food safety practices and procedures, enabling companies to ensure food products are of higher quality and safety standards compared to relying on human verification alone.
The rise in popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in various industries, including food safety, has opened the door to new opportunities for enhanced FSMSs. aiOla, speech technology that turns spoken language into action, is one such technology.
With the ability to understand over 100 languages including accents, dialects, and industry jargon in any acoustic environment, aiOla is using AI to help food manufacturers put many processes on autopilot, which is drastically improving food safety practices. For example, with aiOla, companies can:
- Cut down on inspection time by eliminating the need for manual or paper reporting and relying on aiOla to capture all critical data through speech alone
- Ensure inspections are done more accurately by significantly reducing the possibility of human error
- Instantly collect data in real-time on ongoing procedures to gather important information for decision-making
- Ensure hands-free operation during various workflows to reduce manual tasks and empower employees to be more focused on food safety practices
With aiOla, food companies have experienced a 90% reduction in manual operations alongside a 30% increase in production uptime. The efficiency improvements that aiOla provides allow companies to improve quality control and food safety procedures without any significant impact on the amount of resources needed.
Food Safety Management Systems: Wrapping Up
FSMSs play a key role in ensuring the safety and quality of food products. By creating an FSMS tailored to your business’s needs, you’ll be able to promote a culture of food safety while ensuring your reputation is protected.
Choosing the right technologies to enhance your FSMS is critical to successful implementation. With aiOla, there’s little to no learning curve, allowing you to implement essential AI and automation tools without any delay or impact on existing workflows. This way, employees can focus on safety standards while still making sure important processes like reporting and inspections are completed quickly and efficiently.
Book a call with one of our experts to see how aiOla fits into your food safety management system.
