Go back to basics to build trust: food safety boss

Speaking at this year’s Food Safety Conference, Jeff Wilson, vice president of food safety services Europe, Asia and Africa at AIB International, said getting the basics right would mean businesses would be ready for whatever was thrown at them.

In this exclusive video interview, Wilson said this included the education of plant personnel and understanding what prerequisite programmes can do, and how to use them.

This, in turn, would mean staff could feel proud and understand what it was they had to do.

‘Food safety readiness’​

He added: “We talk about 24/7 food safety readiness and, if an organisation truly embraces that, then they should feel at ease for anybody to come into the facility to perform an audit or an inspection.”​

Wilson said that food firms could build trust by protecting their brand and demonstrating a lot of time and effort was put into the safety of its products.

“A way they can do that is by sharing that knowledge,”​ he concluded. “Sometimes it’s not shared in the right way out in social media, and I think there is some mileage there to share some of the good activities and the proactivity that the food industry is always involved in. What we quite often hear is when something goes wrong.”​

Food Safety Conference 2018​

Entitled ‘A focus on future law and threats’, Food Manufacture’s​ Food Safety Conference 2018 was held at etc.venues Maple House, Birmingham. It was sponsored by AIB International, Pal International, and Westgate Factory Dividers.

Please click this link​​ to register your interest for next year’s conference.

Meanwhile, EU regulations on food and drink should be transposed into UK law before the end of the Brexit transitional period​​ to avoid a regulatory vacuum, according to an expert in food law.

Nils Bings, head of food law and regulatory compliance at law firm DWF’s German branch, urged policy-makers to leave politics at the door when deciding what regulations should be transposed from EU law.