What is food safety compliance & why is it so important?
Efficiently catering to the needs of modern-day consumer demand for transparency, maintaining food safety, and meeting ever-changing regulations are major challenges for virtually all food and beverage manufacturers regardless of size. At stake are the health of consumers, damage to the brand, and exorbitantly costly recalls. Having a transparent supply chain and the ability to track and trace ingredients can provide confidence, while detailed documentation of all ingredients and processes can provide the foundation of public trust.
Customers, consumers, and regulators all expect food and beverage manufacturers to take both a proactive and responsive approach to food safety. When something goes wrong, it’s imperative to have the processes, documentation, and tools to quickly find the root cause, identify which customers were impacted, notify regulators, and contain the issue.
What is food safety and compliance?
The primary goal of food safety is—perhaps not surprisingly—to protect consumers from foodborne illnesses and health risks related to allergens. Because food products are for human consumption, few industries deal with regulations as complex as those of the food and beverage industry. Requirements are rigorous and the risks associated with failure are high.
As government agencies (and major retailers) implement increasingly stringent rules and require more detailed information, complying with these food safety regulations is becoming more complex. Maintaining food safety compliance is made even more complicated by growing risks from the globalization of food sourcing and distribution, as well as the increased likelihood of contamination and disease that rapidly spreads across borders. This reinforces that food safety and traceability are more important now than ever before—and likely to become even more important over time. Taking steps to ensure the safety of food products from raw materials to consumers’ tables must be a top priority for food and beverage manufacturers.
Why is food safety important for food and beverage businesses?
The US’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that roughly 48 million Americans get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases—every year. Foodborne illness breakouts are obviously an important public health issue, but they also represent one of the greatest financial risks that food and beverage companies face.
While the direct impact and cost of a food safety breach can be calculated, the indirect damage to a brand is much harder to quantify. Business partners, both on the supply and demand side, may start to move their business elsewhere because being associated with the issue is a potential risk for their brand. This could force a company into having to focus on survival efforts, instead of proactively developing the business.