Food Safety is a major concern in the industry. It is the responsibility of every company to make sure that they are not risking their customers’ health. To build a food safety culture, you need to start with your employees. You need to educate them about the different types of food safety hazards and how they can be avoided. If you want them to follow your company’s values, you need to show them that it matters by using these values when making decisions in your company.
On the 9th of Feb, we conducted the Food Safety Conversation on Creating A Food Safety Culture. With our Safe for India, Safe for the World Initiative, we are aiming to create awareness around food safety and hygiene. The webinar was free and it was attended by HRs and Quality Heads from all over the country. Our panelists for the event were, Subramani A, Director Quality – Lactalis India, Smita Murthy, FSSC– Local representative of India & Pranav Madhusudan, CEO- India Operations-Vishaal Natural Food Products I Pvt. Ltd. Ltd. Ms. Sarika Agarwal, who is the Principal Consultant at NXG Food Safety Works moderated the webinar.
The conversation was very interactive and it helped the participants understand the importance of food safety culture in their organization. Mr. Pranav, CEO – Vishaal Naturals pointed out that the Food Processing companies including his company strongly believe in developing a food safety culture which in turn reduces the number of failures and complaints. He stated that training plays an important role in getting the employees aware of the importance of following the GMP’s and GHP’s. According to Mr. Subramani, employees are not always aware of the importance of food safety practices. Mr. Subramani proposes that the key to success is in understanding how to bring in a behavioral change in employees. He also shared the importance of having a Competency Assessment Tool that would help to measure the skills and knowledge of all the employees in the organizations about food safety and develop an action plan accordingly. Ms. Smita shared that making food safety a day-to-day habit is very important for building the culture across the organization. She claimed that it’s very important for companies to invest in regular training and awareness building of employees and also on the equipment and machinery used. To conclude, Mr. Subramani re-quoted that “Winners are those who have two things, one is the skill and second is will. It’s the leaders who need to give the skill part to the employees through various activities and help them evolve.”
We also conducted a free master class on Food Safety Competencies for HR’s and Quality Leaders in the Food Industry was followed by a Q&A session on the same day. We had a very good response from the industry as there were more than 150 professionals who registered in the session. The trainer for the session was Dr. Shashikanth Kunigal, who is an expert in this field and shared his insights with the participants. Participants got a chance to interact with the expert to clear their doubts and understand the improvements that they can bring to their industry.
Those who missed the session can recap it at their own pace on our academy portal.
