ComplianceMate Blog

When it comes to food safety, local is global.

As global and local supply chains face the challenges of scaling food safety protocols, there are many ways to promote a food safety culture for your business.

It’s more important than ever that food safety protocols be able to scale with your food business. Around 15 million foodservice facilities worldwide face the same issues with food contamination and foodborne illness. Just as food is a universal need, food safety is a global concern.

How Local Food Issues Become Global Problems

There are two significant ways that a local food safety problem can have global impact. The first of these is accidentally sending contaminated food into the supply chain, and the other is creating waste and spoilage, which reduces the availability of safe food products.

Food issues that arise an ocean away can still impact food sources close to home. The United States imports billions of dollars’ worth of food from other countries through the international supply chain. If it’s not stored, handled, and prepared properly every step of the way, it can result in serious consequences. Current estimates suggest that 30-40% of our food supply is wasted, with 31% of food loss happening at the retail and consumer level.1

Beyond the economic cost of failing food safety processes is the risk of infectious disease or foodborne illness. When contaminated food products reach consumers, there is the potential for hundreds of thousands of consumers to become ill. There is also a tremendous risk of serious illness as well as sometimes irreparable damage to the businesses that receive and distribute the unsafe food products. At that point, the brand standards have been compromised and may not recover.

Improving Business Processes for Supply Chain & Food Safety

Implementing a food safety management system helps manage and streamline standard operating procedures and provides overall visibility into potential issues before they occur. Food safety is dependent on the effective use of scalable food safety technology.

When running or scaling a food business, it’s key to maintain safe temperatures throughout the supply chain process. This means implementing strong restaurant safety procedures, training programs, and an overall food safety culture throughout the organization.

With only a narrow range of safe food temperatures, it’s easy for microscopic bacteria and pathogens to grow and spread in food products when temperatures fall outside of the acceptable specifications. From product storage, employee hygiene, and safe holding temperatures, every part of your restaurant safety program must generate accurate data that ensures your standard operating procedures are being followed.

Creating a Company Focus on Food Safety

Evaluating your company’s standard operating procedures (SOP) and fostering a complete food safety culture starts with creating solid, flexible workflows that ensure safe food handling at every step along the process.

Your SOP documentation must:

  • Outline roles and responsibilities
  • Spell out proactive safety tips
  • Define potential issues and the appropriate corrective actions
  • State the proper use of food thermometers to monitor and report on perishable foods

The temperature monitoring system you choose must be able to handle all appropriate equipment, data, and as many food safety scenarios as possible. If local is global, food safety solutions must be completely scalable.

To meet the needs of operations that cross borders, the foodservice technology must also be:

  • A completely integrated system
  • Adaptable and fully customizable to every scenario
  • Able to assist with real-time decisions for all aspects of the operation
  • Easy to access from anywhere on any web-enabled device and easy to use
  • Enable streamlined workflows through the use of automation

Meeting the Needs of a Global Food Network

As important as knowing the status and safe handling history of every food product you sell or meal you serve is the ability to identify problems in real time and prevent potentially dangerous food from reaching consumers. The fully integrated temperature monitoring and checklist compliance system from ComplianceMate provides valuable business intelligence for constant process improvement, reporting, and compliance.

The ComplianceMate food safety system addresses the critical needs for proactive food safety initiatives for all types of foodservice establishments. The combination of wireless temperature sensors and real-time alerts along with customized automated workflow checklists provide you with total control over food safety and HACCP compliance for every location.

Using mobile technology with easy-to-use workflow tools over LoRaWan cloud-based technology you have complete local and global visibility into your organizations food safety.

For more information, contact us today.

Sources:

  1. https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs