A food safety crisis can be a nightmare for any food business; the probability of a food safety crisis occurring can be minimized by having a robust food safety management system, but the possibility that it could happen is not negligible. A food safety crisis incident could damage the entire reputation of your brand, shrink your market share value, result in an economic loss for your business, entangle your food business in an endless lawsuit, or even lead to a complete lockdown of your food business.
Even in a well-managed company, crises can occur suddenly and unexpectedly; internal business process issues and external unforeseeable difficulties could be responsible for this. A food safety crisis extends beyond instances of food-borne illnesses and can encompass various situations, including foreign objects discovered by customers in food products, incidents where a customer with food allergies experiences a severe reaction, and other related situations; in the food industry, we try to operate at the highest sigma level (sigma 6; 99.99966% defect-free) leaving very little room or no room at all for error because food safety is a matter of public health.
If there is no 100% guarantee that a food safety crisis will never occur in your food facility, what can you do if you have a food safety crisis incident? The answer to this question is to have a Food Safety Crisis Management Plan. A Food Safety Crisis Management Plan does not assume that a food safety crisis will not occur; it proposes that if it happens, how will the situation be managed, and who will be responsible for taking care of the crisis?
What is a Food Safety Crisis Management Plan?
A Food Safety Crisis Management Plan lays out the strategy for handling situations that could affect an organization’s profits, reputation, or operational viability due to issues related to food safety. While developing your Food Safety Crisis Management Plan, you should keep in mind that the goal of your Food Safety Crisis Management Plan is to minimize the damage and restore business operations as quickly as possible.
Developing a Food Safety Crisis Management Plan for Your Business
There are numerous ways to structure a Food Safety Crisis Management Plan, but a typical Food Safety Crisis Management Plan resembles a checklist. A Food Safety Crisis Management Plan is usually in phases: pre-crisis planning, crisis response, and post-crisis recovery. The following steps will guide you in developing your Food Safety Crisis Management Plan:
- Create your crisis leadership team: The crisis strategy planning process involves forming a team of leaders who will effectively manage the crisis, ensuring everyone understands the plan’s ins and outs.
- Risk Assessment: There’s no way you’d know what food safety crisis might occur. You would have to consider all the possible crises that could arise at this stage and use a risk register to determine the likelihood of occurrence and severity of the risk identified.
- Plan the response: Here, you take the individual risk you have identified and plan what action should taken if it occurs.
In planning your response, you will find the following checklist helpful:
- Risk analysis
- Response procedure
- Activation protocol
- Communication strategy
- Emergency Contact
- Post-crisis assessment
In the unpredictable world of the food business, a Food Safety Crisis Management Plan serves as your shield against unforeseen challenges, helping you stay prepared ahead of crises that might disrupt your food business operations; by implementing and regularly updating your crisis management plan, you help protect your brand and business and uphold the commitment to public health and safety.
Fresh Group is your trusted partner in food safety and quality assurance; we offer a Food Safety Plan development for food business operators. Our Food Safety Plan includes the development of a Food Safety Crisis Management Plan. Contact one of our Food Safety Experts today to discuss how we can partner with your food business to create a robust Food Safety Plan for you.
FSQ Writer: Oluwatobi Eniyandunmo
Reviewed by: Raphael Samson
Kindly reach out to Fresh Group Food Safety And Quality Consulting for any food quality and safety inquiries.
