Year to date in 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s “Recalls, Market Withdrawals & Safety Alerts” portal has listed 11 pet food recalls. Of all the pet food on the U.S. market, that’s a pretty low incidence; and in a majority of the cases, the recall seems to have been triggered by FDA’s zero tolerance for Salmonella when it comes to pet food, because no illnesses were reported.
In other words, we can’t necessarily assume the involved companies had inadequate safety and quality programs or were lax in administering and adhering to them. Yet one food safety expert posits that with recalls still happening regularly — and illnesses from human foods still occurring at the same rate as 30 years ago — no company, whether pet food or human food, can be complacent when it comes to food safety. And, given the complexity of trade, food supply chains and technology today, what worked in past years to assure food safety will not work for the future.
Food safety equals behavior
During a webinar on December 9, 2024, Frank Yiannis, founder of Smarter FY Solutions and former FDA deputy commissioner for food policy and response and top safety executive for Walmart and the Walt Disney Co., stressed the importance of establishing a food safety culture throughout an organization. For that to happen, company leadership has to drive the culture, and food safety professionals need to add another set of skills to their arsenal of standards and tools like HACCP, risk analysis, hygiene protocols, safety processes, training and similar areas of expertise: human behavior.
“Food safety = behavior,” Yiannis said. Why? Because investigations into major safety incidents and recall situations have uncovered organizational culture among the top four root causes (along with faulty design, operator error and improper training). And, culture revolves around behavior.
Specifically, as Yiannis presented: “Culture is shared patterns of thought and behavior that characterize a social group, which are learned through socialization processes and persist through time,” according to Social & Behavioral Foundations of Public Health.
Thus, while traditional food safety management focuses on process, is primarily based on food science, holds a simplistic view of behavior change, involves linear cause-and-effect-thinking and culminates in a food safety program, behavior-based food safety management focuses on people (in addition to processes), is based on behavior science and organizational culture (in addition to food science), is complex, employs systems thinking and creates a food safety culture.
5 features of a pet food safety culture
A food safety culture has some of the same attributes that a traditional food safety management program does, but Yiannis highlighted five requirements for a successful culture:
- Create food safety expectations, not just goals (see number four).
- Educate and train all associates; education is about the why, training is about the how, Yiannis explained.
- Communicate food safety frequently through a variety of means.
- Establish food safety goals and measurements.
- Establish consequences for food safety behaviors — and ideally, for positive behaviors more than negative ones, which tend to get emphasized.
For more about food safety cultures, consider listening to the recording of the webinar. (Registration is free.)
