milesnmiles,
(..and of course all frineds here...),
i am a food technologist and i work as a QAM in a food chain service sector.
I have to make some clarifications at first.
- i assume you talk for a bussines in the food industry.
- the food is like a gun. In the hands of an irellevant it is a potential danger.
- there are some foods in which you cannot "play" with their shelf life. For example milk, chicken, meat, eggs...
- on the other hand there some other foods that you can "negotiate" their shelf life with a minimum risk like salt, dry pasta , herbs etc.
- from the beggining i have to clarify that i am not negotiating food safety.
- All are a matter of pure luck. For example : a) you graduated, you are a food technologist and in your first job your supervisor tells you to pass with the "OK" mark a batch of a product (e.g. baby food) knowing that the batch has not been checked for listeria and salmonella. What do you do? Do you valiantly say no and suffer the results of being fired or humbly accept your fate and pass the batch ? b) you graduated , you are a food technologist and in your first job your supervisor , knowing nothing from food safety , has put all his hopes to you! What do you do ? Do you shamellesly take advantage of his lack of specific knowledge or you honor your shelf helping the company provide safe food to people?
Dear friends i cannot play with food safety first of all because i am a food technologist. On the other hand my "second nature" as a Quality Assurance Manager tells me that apart from SAFE food the customer worths also a GOOD food and a NICE service.
In order to have safe food and the same time quality , IMO the following things have to exist :
- First of all , the GM of the company should be quality oriented.
- the GM also has to be sensible with food safety
- the company should have enough recources to support SAFETY and QUALITY together (this last one contains all that has to do with , hiring the right people for the right positions, appropriate tools, certified suppliers...and so on).
- QA department and / or food safety department
- Educated personel (both on food safet and quality)
You see? The above are good but have a common knowledge drawback : they COST.
So what do we do now ? If we have not all the above we start making some :negotiations" for example :
- we do not have a food safety specialist in our bussines so we check out the food law by reading and knowing some main topics and trying to make them practice but only some of them. Simultaneously we built an expensive and very very attractive dine in restaurant in order to enhance that experience of the customer during his visit, or
- we cannot afford to pay too much money for cheese from the best supplier, instead we buy cheaper cheese (infact much much cheaper) from a supplier who is not HACCP / BRC certified. In order to overcome this we give trhe customer a coce for free hoping we did something more for his expectations, or
- we buy the best pasta from a certified with HACCP supplier but lacking food safety education we leave the pasta in the fridge for 7 days after the defrosting and simultaneously yelling to all we give the best quality in our customer...
The scenarios are many. Unfortunatelly there are many factors affecting the outcome.
Please excuse me for writting too many things i just express my opinion and indeed it is a nice topic. I will close with the following :
Lets' see some numbers :
more or less each year in U.S. are reported 5.000 deaths from food poisoning. As a percentage in comparison to the population of U.S. maybe is considered small. But what if one of these 5.000 where your child, or wife, or husband or your neighbour? All i want to say is that i cannot negotiate food safety. Neither should.
See you!
"Quality is negotiable, food safety not" (?) - Comments on this statement
I heard somebody making this statement: "Quality is negotiable, food safety not."
Re: "Quality is negotiable, food safety not" (?)
Re: "Quality is negotiable, food safety not" (?)
, safety (All fields) not 
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