Why Food Safety Must Be Part of Your Crisis Management Plan

​Most businesses these days have a crisis management plan or business continuity plan, because it's good business or perhaps the insurance company said so! They are there to ensure your team understand what to do in an emergency, how it's going to affect the business, who to contact and what plans you have in place to minimise the impact.

But does yours include Food Safety? Be aware - Clause 6.1 of the ISO 22000 standard is looking for its inclusion to manage your risks should the worst happen.

Clause 6.1 covers actions to address risks and opportunities, in particular in regard to c) prevent, or reduce, undesirable effects, with this clause being introduced as part of the 2018 revision.

We've had fires, earthquakes, flooding and good old COVID-19 on a global scale, however, when you look into the detail of the plans in place to cover these crises, often they are focused purely around H & S and business continuity concerns.

What is often overlooked is the food safety aspects of those disasters and of course, if you are a food or related product manufacturer, safety for consumers should also be front of mind.

If you looked at some examples you may have seen in your own business, you'd see a lot of contingencies around staff safety, looking after equipment at the time of the emergency and so on

And in the same vein, generally when a drill, tabletop review or similar has been completed for the business and you look at your notes they will stop there. We've dealt with the immediate crisis, everything and everyone will be safe, end of review. 

Any good crisis plan, and subsequent review should definitely include managing the downtime following the crisis and then what needs to happen to get back up and running. And this is where food safety really comes into play.

Rarely will you see those all-important food safety related concerns, so here are some examples you may need to consider:

• What debris is left behind that might cause pathogen issues or bacterial problems
• What is the clearance procedure to start producing food again or food related products like packaging.
• Do you perhaps need to schedule a pathogen test after a month to ensure no sneaky hidden issues?
• What is in the dust that's filtered down from the ceiling during an earthquake?
• What rubbing or knocking of parts and machinery might have caused metal debris or other debris to fall into the machinery?
• What extra sanitisation requirements are there?

In any of these scenarios you may also need to:

• destroy the first x amount of production to be certain you've avoided anything that may contain a contaminant.
• do full visual inspection of the area or machinery to ensure that debris is not present internally.
• check existing stock for damage, contamination ingress etc.
• check the status of local suppliers – do you need to go to a back up supplier and if so, what checks are required prior to initiating supply?

First things first - all these things should be covered in your crisis management plan or BCP to ensure that nothing gets missed. Expand your considerations and consequent plans of action to include critical food safety aspects of your business.

If you want to have a truly food safety prepared business you need to consider and practise all aspects that may affect you. So, the next time you consider planning your biannual or annual crisis trial, keep in mind food safety and target something that has a direct impact to make sure that you have considered all the possibilities and can show your auditor that consumer safety is front of mind.