Category: Food Safety

April 2, 2020

How to Impress a Buyer with your Food Safety Plan

After long months, you have carefully crafted a product you are certain customers will love; next is the ultimate goal: to see your product on store shelves or better yet featured on a menu. But how do you catch the eye of a buyer? A buyer’s concern beyond taste, appeal and marketability is the safety of your product – the last thing either of you want is to be associated with a food safety recall. Make it easy for a retailer or foodservice establishment to trust your product by demonstrating you have a solid food safety plan in place.

But what food safety programs will convince the buyer you’ve got this? From handwashing to food fraud, some programs you are likely to already have but will need to evolve them as you grow and expand, other programs you may never thought of.

February 26, 2020

Implementing the SQF Fundamentals Code for Manufacturing – A Great 4 Hour Investment

Its a known business practice for a food manufacturer management to be able to discuss food safety programs they have in place in the manufacturing and supply chain process before […]

February 10, 2020

The Food Industry’s 2020 Retail Food Safety Priorities

The food industry is entering a new, critical food marketplace that’s focused on advancing technology, digitalization and information sharing. All the while, retailers continue to prioritize the health and safety of their customers. FMI organized a meeting with the FMI Food Protection Committee to set this year’s top food safety initiatives to strengthen the industry’s leadership and commitment to protecting public health.

What is Key To a Safe Food Supply? Collaboration.

Selling safe and wholesome food is a top industry priority. To maintain consumer trust and protect public health, retailers can build stronger food safety coalitions that work toward preventing contamination throughout the supply chain.

The Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) invited FMI to a meeting to develop data-driven goals for the Healthy People 2030 initiative, a national effort that sets objectives to improve the health and well-being of all people in the United States. This meeting brought together food safety professionals to support these Healthy People objectives in order to reduce infections caused by major foodborne pathogens, reduce severe allergic reactions and increase the proportion of consumers who follow key food safety practices.

Stakeholders from public health and regulatory departments, consumer groups, academia and industry participated in numerous workshops to identify areas of shared food safety responsibility. It is through this shared responsibility that food safety professionals can coordinate strategies for reducing foodborne illness.

In a presentation titled, “Industry Led Intervention Strategies,” FMI highlighted the efforts food retailers are taking to protect public health. Participants learned how FMI resources:

Reduce food safety risk factors.
Strengthen cleaning and sanitation practices.
Improve food safety training and certification programs.
Reduce pathogenic E. coli and Salmonella contamination in leafy greens.
Mitigate Listeria, Norovirus, and Hepatitis A contamination.
Over the next decade, food retailers will play an important role in achieving the 2030 Healthy People objectives to reduce foodborne illness. While technological advancements are revolutionizing outbreak investigations and responses, sustaining strategic partnerships with regulators and consumers will be key to improving food safety behaviors and practices.

January 14, 2020

Connecting the Wellness Dots in The Grocery Store

We live in an age of personalization. A shopper looking for Keto meal options and a shopper seeking blood pressure medicine both have the same end goal—a personalized grocery shopping experience that gets them the products they need and want. For years, food retailers have satisfied both shoppers by offering different services—nutrition counseling and pharmacy. Nowadays, simply having both services in your store isn’t enough.

January 6, 2020

SQF Fundamentals Program

Has your company set food safety resolutions for the new year? 

Well, it all starts with building and nurturing a culture of food safety. Food safety doesn’t begin or end at your food industry site. Food safety is critical at every step in the supply chain. Therefore, in a perfect world, every food industry site should have a food safety management system in place. For SQF stakeholders, our solution is the SQF Fundamentals Program.