Listeria strikes again: Did we learn our food safety lessons?
Article By Dr. Amy Proulx Published December 19, 2024
Article Source: Listeria strikes again: Did we learn our food safety lessons? - Food In CanadaFood In Canada
The food safety world has been inundated with coverage of the Boar’s Head Listeria crisis. In the ready-to-eat meat world, Listeria is not an unknown or emerging pathogen. We know it kills people. So the sheer scale of the incident has created quite a stir when it comes to food safety systems management.
Lesson one
Food safety takes a systems-based approach. Large crises of this type typically do not occur due to a single mistake. Rather, a compounding of small and seemingly insignificant issues cause a major incident. Inspection services, third-party auditors, and, of course, the establishment’s management and ownership play unique roles in these incidents.
The United States Food Safety Inspection Service reports from Boar’s Head are explosive. There were 69 non-conformities in the inspection review of records from June 3, 2023, to July 27, 2024. Many of these inspection reports identify critical non-conformities that should have alerted several stakeholders, across inspection, establishment management and ownership, and even retailers and distributors who should be carrying out third-party audits on a company of this size. Many of these non-conformities, in my opinion, should have increased directed microbial testing requirements, and possibly temporary facility closures.
Lesson two
What happened to the multiple layers of inspection and audit that facilities of this type typically have? Blog postings are mentioning how GFSI benchmarked audits were performed during the period when these non-conformities were being reported on Food Safety Inspection Service reports, including one on June 6, 2023, with an Excellent rating, and one on May 1, 2024, also with an Excellent rating. We’ve tried searching the supplier verification databases and it appears records have been revoked from previous audits. This still begs the question, how did third-party auditors not see the non-conformity reporting from government inspections, and ask about corrective action plans and preventive actions?
Inevitably all food safety incidents become the responsibility of plant management and ownership. This is why one of the first requirements is management commitment to the oversight and implementation of food safety plans. Given the enormity of non-conformities, it again begs the question, was there a sense of clutter blindness to the issues at hand? I’ve worked with a wide range of companies in my career where small issues and broken systems become a habit. They get to the point where people start ignoring them and create workarounds. When those small issues start compounding, then crises of this sort start to occur. Boar’s Head had approximately 600 employees at the time.
A strong food safety culture across the entire workforce should have alerted these non-conformities to supervisors or managers who should have put in place corrective and preventive measures.
Employees get blinded and exhausted by small non-conformities, and the constant requests to fix things. Managers get overwhelmed on how to prioritize infrastructure improvements and program changes within fixed budgets. Inspectors have only limited time at different establishments and may be focused on performing specific requested tasks and unable to look holistically at the entire establishment. Third-party auditors equally get a very limited time to perform their enormous and exhaustive tasks. We already know there are skilled worker shortages in the food and beverage manufacturing sector, making experienced food safety and food manufacturing professionals hard to find. And customers want food at low prices, meaning profits are always razor thin for manufacturers. This leads to a constant shrinking of budgets for infrastructure improvements, training and quality management systems. A little bit of each of these contributes to the whole.
When working in food safety we must have an insatiable and tireless curiosity to make things better. It’s easy to point fingers, and try to create blame, instead of focusing on the root cause and problem solving. We must work diligently to correct hazards and non-compliances every single day.
Dr. Amy Proulx is academic program co-ordinator for the Culinary Innovation and Food Technology programs at Niagara College, Ont. Email her at aproulx@niagaracollege.ca.
This column was originally published in the Nov./Dec. 2024 issue of Food in Canada.