In food the manufacturing industry, food safety is the number one concern (or should be) to mitigate the possibility of sickening or killing customers via food poisoning. For any US manufacturer of ice cream or food it is required to apply for a license to operate. For restaurants, the license issued and enforced by the local health department, for manufacturers, it’s monitored by state and local arms of the US Department of Agriculture. For the large national and international manufacturers, there is a secondary layer of food safety inspections. They’re termed as third party audits or safety audits and audit companies are not affiliated with the required USDA. Here are the globally recognized organizations as listed in Food Safety Magazine.
- British Retail Consortium Global Standard for Food Safety (BRC Food)
- Food Safety Systems Certification (FSSC) 22000 (This is the ISO 22000-based FSMS.)
- International Featured Standard for Food Safety (IFS Food)
- Safe, Quality Food (SQF)
Manufacturers hire firms such as these as a secondary layer of food inspection to USDA inspections. The USDA and Dept. of Agriculture inspections are required by federal, state and local, third party auditors are not. The public very seldom hears about the third party safety auditors, because it’s a internal service and implemented for liability protection and usually not used by manufacturers as a selling point. The question is how successful and effective are these third party audit arrangements. In the recent case of Blue Bell’s Ice Cream listeria outbreak, not very.
Food Safety News posted an article back in 2012 on the very subject of the reliability and the effectiveness of third party safety audit organizations and the question of safe food reliability and is the public really protected. In the case of Blue Bell ice cream, 3 people died, but more commonly safety audits are designed to find and stop bad food from entering the food chain and never leave the manufacturing facility. The FDA documented about 252 incidents of Recalls, Market Withdrawals and Safety Alerts in 2015 alone. When questionable product does slip by inspections and inspectors, it’s usually connected to human error and the consequence is people getting sickened.
At the end of the day, bad food enters into the US food chain produced by US manufacturers, because of lack of training, budget cutbacks, non-compliant ingredient suppliers that supply the manufacturers, laziness and what I call “process repetition” or doing the same thing for so long, details fall through the cracks. Retailers like Walmart have in place a food safety policy which basically states, if the product we purchase from you is not produced in a facility that conducts and has in place a third party safety audit program, by an organizations they recognize, the product will be immediately pulled from the shelf.
Great news for the multinational manufacturers that already conduct the service, bad for the small independent manufacturers. In the ice cream industry, the Ben & Jerry’s of the world will be ok, the small regional companies not so much. The cost to initiate a recognized food safety program plus the ongoing cost to manage, makes it cost prohibitive. And for the consumer, it means that the expense to operate the second line of inspection will be passed on. And reading the article in Food Safety News will suggest, the additional inspections are not reliable. Case in point, 3 people died this year alone from listeria in ice cream products, here is one of the Inspection Reports by the FDA, remember the facility had a third party audit service.
If you’re operating a small ice cream or nondairy freezing plant, contact Darryl. He can help you understand the Critical Control Points of your facility. You don’t need to employ a third party audit service in order to produce clean and safe consumable products. Your simply need common sense.
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