Beyond Food Safety Management - How to Create a Food Safety Culture

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Presented by Frank Yiannas, Vice President Food Safety, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc

24th March, 2009

Frank Yiannas is the author of the recently published book, Food Safety Culture, Creating a Behavior-
based Food Safety Management System. In addition to working for well known global brands, Frank is the Past President of the International Association for Food Protection and recipient of the 2007 NSF Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership in Food Safety.

Workshop Context

Food safety awareness is at an all time high!

• New and emerging threats to the food supply are being recognised, and consumers are eating
  more and more meals prepared outside of the home. Retail and foodservice establishments, as well
  as food producers at all levels of the food production chain, have a growing responsibility to ensure that proper food safety and sanitation practices are followed, thereby, safeguarding the health of their guests and customers.
• Achieving food safety success in this changing environment requires going beyond traditional
  training, testing, and inspectional approaches to managing risks.
• Success requires a better understanding of organsational culture and the human dimensions of
  food safety.
• To improve the food safety performance of retail or foodservice establishments, an organisation
  with thousands of employees, or a local community, you must change the way people do things.
• You must change their behaviour - in fact, simply put, food safety equals behavior.

Workshop Objective

This workshop will be the first of its kind designed to guide participants on how to create a food safety culture – not just a food safety program. Designed as a series of talks and participatory sessions, workshop participants will be divided into teams to work through different case studies such as:

• you have just been hired to oversee food safety for a large foodservice chain; what do you do next?
• you are hired as a consultant by the CEO of a large international company to strengthen their food safety performance; what advice will you give?
• restaurant inspection scores are getting worse; as public health director, what can you do to
  improve this?

Participants will leave with specific, real world tips and strategies ranging from how to make food safety part of the organisation’s value or belief system to improving the effectiveness of training and education efforts to influence behavior, to how to better use existing food safety measurements to enhance performance.By the end of the workshop, participants will have gained a real working knowledge of different behavioural change theories, key elements of an effective food safety culture, and a
thorough understanding of the differences between a traditional food safety management system versus
a behaviour-based food safety approach. In addition, participants will have received practical, real-world advice and be better equipped for their next promotion or challenge. As a take away resource, participants will also receive an autographed copy of Frank Yiannas’ new book, Food Safety Culture, Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System.

NATA Workshop - Current issues in food microbiology laboratory accreditation

This workshop, under the auspices of the Biological Testing section of the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA), will explore a range of current issues relevant to the food microbiology laboratory, in particular those important to laboratory quality assurance and the laboratory accreditation process.

This is a ‘must’ for management, signatories and staff of all current NATA accredited biological testing laboratories or those contemplating this process, and also for other laboratories who wish to assure the quality and accuracy of their output. It will also be a valuable update for assessors.

The Workshop presenters are Dr Stuart Andrews FAIFST Chair, NATA’s Biological Accreditation Advisory Committee, Neil Shepherd, NATA’s Manager Biological Testing and Senior Scientific Officer, Biological Testing, Phillip Hill. Topics to be covered include:

• Media Quality Control Guidelines – Following a presentation on selectivity factors, there will be an open forum on the issues that microbiologists are facing in the area of media making and media QC and what they would like to see considered in Media QC Guidelines.
• Training and Competency of Staff – The presentation here will outline what is expected at assessment with regard to demonstrating competency, using data from proficiency testing and in-house assurance programs.
• Delegated Signatory Process – This will include an overview of NATA requirements followed by an interactive discussion session
• Validation and Verification of Test Methods – This will include a review of the updated validation and verification requirements for test methods.
• Reporting Measurement Uncertainty – A particularly difficult area in microbiology, this will provide an overview of the requirements for ascertaining what a client requires in regards to measurement uncertainty (MU) and when MU must be reported

Attendance at this Workshop is included in the Full Registration or can be separately booked
(Tuesday Day Rate which also includes the Welcome Barbeque).