U.S – The Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness has created an evolving food safety culture toolkit custom-made for small and medium-sized food businesses to help companies mature their food safety cultures.
The Alliance comprises of Stop Foodborne Illness (STOP) and industry-leading food safety practitioners from Fortune 500 companies.
Food safety culture is one of the biggest drivers of change across the food industry. By definition, a mature and positive food safety culture consists of shared values, norms and beliefs that affect mindsets and behaviors toward food safety in, across and throughout the company.
Leaders in mature and positive cultures demonstrate ownership and recognize food safety is integral to the consumer and the success of their company.
“Every company has a food safety culture — good, bad or okay — but how do you work to improve when you might not know how to start?” says the Alliance.
The Alliance is offering the toolkit at no cost since it believes that even one person impacted by foodborne illness is too many. It also aims to bolster food safety behaviors that help prevent our friends, loved ones, and neighbors from getting sick.
“This toolkit helps food companies shift from doing the bare minimum to avoid recalls, to making good, holistic choices to protect overall public health.”
The toolkit is the result of a whole year’s work which involved taking into account scientific facts, personal food safety culture experiences, and working with STOP constituent advocates negatively impacted by a foodborne illness.
It helps businesses create a strategy to improve their food safety culture, reports Quality Assurance & Food Safety.
“This toolkit helps food companies shift from doing the bare minimum to avoid recalls, to making good, holistic choices to protect overall public health.
“By sharing our Alliance members’ best practices, smaller companies can now build a path toward improving their own food safety culture. This toolkit is not a checklist. It is a process of continual learning, a helpful guide in choosing tools most effective for your workforce,” said Dr. Vanessa Coffman, Director of Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness.
Much like a food safety culture journey, the toolkit will evolve with additional resources, guides and how-to strategies.
“We will continue to enhance this toolkit for as long as organizations continue to want to keep products and families safe from foodborne illness,” said Coffman.
The Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness is a program of Stop Foodborne Illness (STOP), a national, non-profit public health organization dedicated to the prevention of illness and death from foodborne pathogens.
Founded in 1993 by those impacted by a deadly strain of E. coli, STOP continues to support and represent illness survivors, advance public understanding of foodborne illness and support public policies and industry practices that strengthen prevention.
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