Food safety risks are becoming harder to control, not because the hazards are new but the systems around them are changing at a faster pace than before – and our controls need to adapt.
This was the key message outlined by the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) head of prevention, Tina Potter, in Food Manufacture’s recent Food Safety Briefing webinar, Key Lessons Before and New Threats on the Horizon.
Watch the Food Safety Briefing 2026 on-demand
To hear Potter’s presentation alongside the views of her fellow expert panellists, you can tune into the Food Manufacture Briefing, on-demand, here.
During the session which included a series of expert presentations and live panel discussion, delegates learned about the way in which risk is changing and how businesses need to adapt.
In her presentation, Potter was clear: “Risk doesn’t arrive as a single event”, it’s a result of multiple events and pressures coming together.
Mapping this out in a flow diagram comprising structural drivers, system signals, operational risks, and outcomes, she explained that there are multiple points in which risk indicators are visible.
‘System signals’ is a particularly important point because it gives manufacturers the “opportunity to alter that potential risk and prevent it becoming an issue”. By the time it reaches operational risk, the system has already started bend. Although it is still possible to prevent that incident from having an impact and becoming an ‘outcome’.
“We start to see ingredient substitution, outright fraud and non-compliances, training failures where staff turnover is high,” Potter explained. “This is the point of the chain we still have leverage, and in many cases, the last point we can take action to truly prevent incidents from ever materialising.”
She continued: “If there are not positive interventions, we see material outcomes that pose harm to consumers and to the food system itself. This is where we see things like food safety incidents arise, authentic failures, food crime, consumer impact, misleading claims that erode out trust, [and] loss of confidence.”
That last issue holds particular weight, Potter noted, “because confidence is the slowest of the outcomes we can rebuild”.
As she outlined, the job is not only hazard management. It’s also about using that early signal identification, integrating intelligence, assessing preparedness, and responding to those system-wide rather than incident-by-incident impacts.
Potter’s presentation brings together these messages, providing delegates with an insightful overview of what not just what we need to look out for, but what these events can tell the UK food system and how it can address them appropriately.
To hear Potter’s presentation alongside the views of her fellow expert panellists, Roy Kirby, partner at FoodSafERM, Paul Bradley, senior product marketing director, and Darren Carvell, national account manager at HVDS, you can tune into the Food Manufacture Briefing, on-demand, here.
The session was kindly sponsored by TraceGains, HVDS, Domino, Engie and Schnider Electric.
