Following GMP is Necessary for Food Safety

Karine Fortin, Quality Director - St-Hyacinthe (Qc) Canada, Barry Callebaut Group

There are a lot of technical documents that contain food safety programs in order to learn how to establish controls in the food industry. 

But why do people who care about food safety need to get involved in the food industry? How can they make a true difference? 

Well - since the first days we are born, the first worries of our parents are about food safety risks. Although we take for granted that food available on our shelves is safe, food safety is not upheld or enforced the same way in all countries. 

We are very lucky to have Barry Callebaut enforcing the same high standards all around the world and throughout their 66 plants globally. These were definitely considerations for me to make a move from more than 25 years in pharmaceutical to chocolate manufacturing! 

Although Barry Callebaut is not necessarily a known company name for most Mrs. & Mr. consumers of chocolate, more than 25 percent of grocery aisles of cookies/snacks/nutribars contain chocolate products from Barry Callebaut. So imagine how important it is to protect the potential consumers, kids, teens, parents and grandparents you care for. This is what we put first when we are producing chocolate at Barry Callebaut St-Hyacinthe, where we can produce 6,00,000 kg of chocolate every day! 

How can you help improve Food Safety? 

The Industry needs people with integrity, willing to learn good manufacturing practices, and who truly care about the food that we produce that our families eat - just as importantly as we rely on the safety of the medication we expect from the pharmaceutical Industry. 

As Barry Callebaut invests in knowledge management, the compliance standards in place are evolving with the industry trends year after year and are sustained by self-audits to ensure the appropriate investments are made to remediate any gaps and build on improvements. 

Have QUALITY at heart.

• Control Your Incoming Materials

Understanding your supplier’s vulnerabilities is the prerequisite so that you can establish quality controls based on the supplier's audit findings. 

Although testing parameters to confirm your materials are compliant with your specifications is an important aspect, the evaluation of your supplier's risk allows you to complement your testing requirements in consideration of the safety risks given your vendor's inspection findings.

"What will make the company you work for reliable and sustainable for food safety is what will make it successful in keeping its right to operate"

• On-boarding and Training Programs 

Some of the manpower is experienced and knowledgeable (maybe coming from a food industry background), and some are inexperienced - both unfamiliar with particularities from your manufacturing plant. They all need specific guidance before they learn your process, your installations and your particular safety risks accordingly 

• Involve Your Team and Make Sure They Know Your Door Is Opened

Quality assurance is not only about having a quality team responsible for quality and compliance. 

It's about having short control intervals critical to quality steps of your process and open dialogue for appropriate escalation of issues - rather than relying solely on disciplinary measures for human errors. Without minimizing the importance of accountability of any employee involved in the food processing steps, having opened dialogue when issues arise allows us to identify the true root cause and put in place corrective actions long before the product is at risk, as well as preventive actions to avoid the recurrence of such issues. 

• Establish, Monitor and Verify Your Process Controls

Regularly challenge the appropriateness of the controls you have established for your critical process steps. As customers and products have life cycles that change with evolving markets, your process needs to evolve equally for the appropriate and improved controls. 

Don’t Expect Everything to Go as Planned

If you expect that all batches will be produced without any incident, then you are set up for failures. 

Your critical process controls are set for the purpose of detecting defects, but in addition, you need to take the necessary actions to retain problematic batches that have unplanned deviations (re-inspect, re-work or reject) to ensure you comply with your specification and with regulatory requirements. 

Corrective and preventive actions that correct and prevent the recurrence of such deviations are not necessarily of value on the sole factor of cost; they are about all the value of the safety of your kids, teens, parents and grandparents - priceless! 

What will make the company you work for reliable and sustainable for food safety is what will make it successful in keeping its right to operate.