How to Create Food Safety Programs for Your Business

Did you know that 66% of people don’t use food thermometers correctly? If you own a restaurant, you know how frightening this statistic can be.

The last thing you want to do is serve your customers undercooked protein. For poultry, this can lead to illness and disease.

Cooking foods to a safe minimal temperature is only a small portion of food safety. If you don’t already, you need to implement a food safety program at your place of business.

Keep reading to learn how to create food safety programs.

Familiarize Yourself With FDA Hazards

To create food safety programs, you’ll need to understand the different FDA hazard types. The five hazard types from the FDA include:

1. Physical
2. Chemical
3. Biological
4. Intentional adulteration
5. Radiological

To review production and non-direct production processes, keep these five types in mind when creating a food safety program.

Understand the Supply Chain

Each business should have an understanding of its supply chain to control and minimize safety hazards. You’ll want to avoid any risks that come from raw materials to end consumers.

This part of the process is essential whether you have distribution centers, co-manufacturers, or foreign suppliers. Finished product safety shouldn’t be comprised by any party.

FSVP (Foreign Supplier Verification Program) must be implemented if you work with foreign suppliers.

Get the Entire Staff Involved

Food and safety are matters that every staff member should be involved in. Food safety reflects the entire company so every member, top management to line workers, should have a say.

Expertise and feedback from your staff can help you implement and successfully execute a food safety program. With inputs from all departments, the program will be more practical and solid.

Designate a Project Leader

Although the whole company should be involved during the steps of program planning, designating a project leader can help smoothen out the process.

The leader should have operational experience and food safety knowledge. This person will be responsible for the following:

• Coordinating the timeline
• Prioritizing work across departments
• Communication will all levels of employees

Overall, their goal will be leading the project and implementing ongoing food safety.

Utilize Third-Party Resources

There are a variety of third-party resources, some of them free, that you can use to help you create a food safety program. Training and webinars are available to help address challenges with food safety and other hot topics.

You can benefit from online recordkeeping tools or implement an all-digital food safety program.

What is digital food safety? It involves digitalizing food safety practices. This makes for easier document keeping.

It might not seem so, but recordkeeping and documentation are the core of a food safety program.

Creating Food Safety Programs That Work

To comply with FSMA and the FDA, it is important to create food safety programs that work. To achieve your goal, you’ll need to gain compliance one step at a time.

Map out your food safety production using this guide. Once you get your staff involved, designate a leader, and use the many tools available to you, you’ll be able to avoid food safety hazards that can put you out of business.

For more articles on foods and culinary, check out the other posts on our website.