In the restaurant and foodservice sector, reputation means everything. Few restaurateurs can afford to ignore increasing food safety and hygiene issues. In light of this, many business owners are bolstering their investment in prevention and training to ensure that they keep their customers, employees and businesses safe.
Paul Valder, Vice President of National Accounts for the Food Safety Division with The Steritech Group, a provider of food safety and environmental hygiene services in North America, notes there has been a huge spike in demand for their services in the last couple of years. "Customers want to frequent those restaurants where they have the most confidence and trust in the food," he notes. "That is one reason why it is so important for foodservice establishments to protect their brand and validate that they are delivering a safe product to the consumer."
Steritech provides training-based audits to over 30,000 establishments each year in 21 countries. They work with clients to design, develop and implement systems for managing food safety, quality assurance and brand protection. Their team of food safety specialists provide an educational and consultative third party audit process supported with a range of both certified and non-certified training services.
According to Valder, Strict Liability is a serious threat to restaurant and foodservice establishments in the U.S. Increasingly, it is becoming a reality for business owners in Canada. Food service operators have a moral and legal obligation to deliver safe food. If a court can demonstrate that a restaurant caused a foodborne illness, the owner may be held responsible. The challenge for owners is not only to manage food safety when the product comes in their back door, but to ensure that their suppliers are also following strict food safety standards. For this reason, many business owners are heightening their diligence by carefully examining and auditing their suppliers’ practices to confirm that their suppliers share a similar approach and diligence towards food safety.
There has also been greater attention focused on HACCP-based (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) food management systems for food service and hospitality. HACCP is a systematic and preventive approach towards achieving food safety standards. Originally developed by the Pillsbury Company in the United States to guarantee the safety of astronauts’ food in space, HACCP is increasingly being adopted by food retailers and food establishments as a scientific, straightforward and effective approach to enhance food safety.
The HACCP approach is based on seven principles aimed at identifying hazards in food production, controlling hazards at critical control points in the process, and verifying that the system is working properly. The key element of the HACCP system is its preventive nature, meaning that potential food safety hazards are controlled throughout the process.
Like all business systems, HACCP is only effective if it is supported by management commitment to food safety. This is certainly the case at Sodexho Canada, a division of the Sodexho Alliance, an organization that provides food and management services in 76 countries worldwide. With over 10,000 employees serving over 60 million meals each year in Canada, Sodexho takes the issue of food safety very seriously. They consider the HACCP/Food Safety system the cornerstone of their food safety program, citing its systematic and proactive approach that enables Sodexho to manage food safety from the time food is shipped to them until it is served to their customers.
Key components of Sodexho’s HACCP program include:
Yvon Langlois, Director of Training at Sodexho, and long-standing member of OSSA’s Restaurant and Foodservice Advisory Committee, explains. "Food safety is as important to Sodexho as is airline safety to an organization like Air Canada." It is also integral to their hiring process. Sodexho foodservice managers and supervisors must be food safety certified within 90 days of of hire and they are required to re-certify every three years. The industry standard is five years. Their food safety system is also supported by extensive training within the organization.
"Sodexho has 30 certified food safety trainers on staff across Canada who provide training to employees in both French and English," says Langlois. Everyone in the organization who handles food is required to complete Food Safety Certification training, including hourly staff.
Managers can provide our frontline employees with just-in-time training utilizing the TOPS Box (Training Our People = Success). "These tools will ensure that all food handlers are trained to protect both our customers and clients as well as employees to ensure that SODEXHO has the highest quality and safest food in our industry," says Langlois. Being able to identify the various types of potential food hazards that exist in the foodservice work environment and what can be done to prevent them from becoming a danger is the first step in food safety awareness. Owner commitment to keeping the workplace safe will ensure that customers and co-workers alike always have a safe and healthy environment in which to visit and work.
Excerpted from The Safety Mosaic, Vol 7, No 3, Fall 2004
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