Food Safety In The Spotlight

Written by Cliona M. Reeves
Bakers Journal
December 2008

Food safety stories are never absent in the news these days. From updates about the
Maple Leaf listeria crisis and resulting deaths, to overseas stories about melamine
in dairy products manufactured in China, to Cadbury's late September recall in Asia
and Australia, we are constantly reminded how interconnected our food supply is. 

But neither of these examples has anything to do with the baking industry, so
bakeries and their suppliers need not worry, right?

Nope. Not by a long shot.

"The challenges are real," says Paul Medeiros, manager of consulting services at the
Guelph Food Technology Centre, a training and consulting firm in Guelph, Ont., "and
it doesn't help that margins are tight, which can constrain resources and time to
deal proactively with food safety. But misconceptions are even more dangerous.
Commonly, people assume that any microbes will be killed in the heat of baking, but
microbes are not the only threat, and bread is not a bakery's only product. Products
with fillings or icings - custards, for example - may look fine when baked, but may
not have reached sufficient internal temperature to kill microbes, such as
salmonella, lurking in the egg. Likewise, there are additional threats from physical
hazards, such as glass fragments, or chemical hazards, such as contaminants in
ingredients. For example, do you know your supplier well enough to be sure that the
whey powder you just received does not contain melamine?"

Dealing effectively with suppliers is an art in itself. Simply assuming that
ingredients are safe is a dangerous gamble. "You may not be buying your ingredients
from the manufacturer, but rather from a broker, who may have minimal or even
non-existent knowledge of food safety," Medeiros says. "And even if you're buying
directly from a manufacturer, they may have combined raw ingredients from multiple
sources to prepare your order."

Beyond the headline-grabbers of listeria and salmonella lurks the equally deadly
realm of food allergens.

"Allergens are a major challenge for the baking industry because the ingredients we
use come from every category of 10 priority allergens the Canadian Food Inspection
Agency (CFIA) has identified," says Paul Hetherington, CEO of the Baking Association
of Canada. "Wheat, dairy and egg are regularly used, and often soy, nuts and other
serious allergens are major ingredients as well. As a result, it is vital that
bakery operations ensure that their products are properly labelled to declare
intentionally added allergens, such as nuts, that they alert consumers that a
product may contain other unintended allergens, and that they make every effort to
prevent cross-contamination."

More easily said than done. "We did a paper for CFIA on the ability of sesame seeds
to migrate through a plant, from pre-production, to baking, to cooling,"
Hetherington says. "The structure of allergens makes them very difficult to keep
out, but precautionary statements are no substitute for good manufacturing
practices."

Medeiros agrees, cautioning that "adding 'may contain' statements to a label is not
a get-out-of-jail-free card. CFIA evaluates all issues on a case-by-case basis and
may ask for a recall anyway."

Battle plan for food safety
So what is a bakery operator to do? There are many steps they can take, but there
are two overriding concerns.

"First," says Medeiros, "you must have the solid, unwavering commitment from
management to provide adequate staffing and resources to achieve food safety
objectives. And the system must be just that, a system which everyone follows, not
just a project dumped on the HACCP co-ordinator, and dependent on whether his boss
is around to breathe down his neck every day. The system must be shared across the
organization, and must be robust enough to survive staffing changes. In fact, it
should be a co-ordinated effort through the entire value chain, going beyond
employees and management to include suppliers and distributors."

What should this system consist of? "You need good manufacturing practices (GMPs) to
ensure a safe manufacturing environment, such as ensuring proper sanitiation and
ventilation," Medeiros says. "Then HACCP, or Hazard Analysis Critical Control
Points, identifies potential areas in the manufacturing process where hazards could
arise and builds safeguards in to prevent them, and to alert operators that
something has gone wrong. Allergen control programs are needed to prevent
cross-contamination during manufacturing. And finally, supplier quality assurance
programs are needed to ensure that the ingredients you receive are safe. After all,
if your product is compromised by contaminated ingredients, it is still your
customers who are at risk, and your brand which can be damaged."

A good traceability plan is another essential. No one wants a recall, but it is
vital to be able to track and backtrack ingredients, and to follow each batch of
product leaving your facility, enabling you to recall it voluntarily before it
reaches consumers and causes illness - or worse! 

Say what you do, do what you say - and prove it
Having a great plan is only the beginning. Now you have to implement it and document
it. Without clear documentation, you have no way of knowing whether you are actually
achieving what you laid out in your plan. Unless you record equipment maintenance
and cleaning, temperatures in storage areas, and other important measures, you will
not be able to demonstrate the safety of your product - or to backtrack a problem to
its source, and correct it. 

People power
The heart of a reliable food safety plan is the HACCP team, a group of people from
each department, including the plant floor, each of whom brings a unique awareness
of a different part of the environment and process. No one knows the manufacturing
line as intimately as the people who work with the equipment, day in and day out,
and they can point out problems that might never have occurred to others in the
company.

In addition, training for everyone is - or should be - a central pillar in a good
food safety plan. Everyone, not just the HACCP team, is responsible for the safety
and quality of the products they manufacture. This is a team effort, and if anyone
drops the ball, everyone can be hurt. The organization must train its people, and
the employees themselves must apply that training in their work, helping each other
to ensure that the rigorous procedures are carried out at all times. This can mean
something as seemingly minor as reminding each other to wash hands thoroughly, or as
large as spotting and reporting a problem with a piece of equipment.

The goal: consumers' safety
The goal of all this hard work is to ensure that consumers can enjoy safe, healthful
foods, and can rely on your brand as safe for their families. Food safety may not be
as "sexy" as quality, novelty and convenience, but it is a non-negotiable starting
point, as well as a legal and moral duty of everyone in the food industry.

"As food safety stories emerge in other sectors, consumers are becoming more aware
of the issue generally, and are demanding more information about the products they
buy," Hetherington says. 

The more this trend grows, the greater the opportunity for those who can make
unimpeachable food safety an important part of their brand.