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The assessment of food safety culture: An investigation of current challenges, barriers and future opportunities within the food industry

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posted on 2016-11-25, 11:21 authored by Rounaq Nayak, Patrick WatersonPatrick Waterson
Following the 2005 E.coli O157 outbreak in the UK and the recommendations in the subsequent Public Enquiry Report in 2009, the topic of food safety culture became more prominent. In 2012, the United Kingdom’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) commissioned a tool that enforcement officers could use to assess ‘softer aspects’ of risk such as safety culture, attitudes and behaviours. In the present study, we assessed the awareness of and views on safety culture in the food industry among a group of industry stakeholders (Environmental Health Officers, Food and Beverage Managers, Academics). The study also examines their attitudes towards the toolkit and ways in which it could be improved (e.g., its usability). The conclusions of the paper are that whilst there is broad support for implementing safety culture in the food industry, there are also some outstanding challenges (e.g., defining food safety culture, senior management commitment and the role played by ‘micro-cultures’ within food organisations). Assessing safety culture in the food industry is a realistic possibility, but needs to take account of some of the lessons which could be learnt from other industries (e.g., healthcare, rail, oil and gas) and their experiences with safety culture.

History

School

  • Design and Creative Arts

Department

  • Design

Published in

Food Control

Volume

73

Issue

B

Pages

1114-1123

Citation

NAYAK, R. and WATERSON, P., 2016. The assessment of food safety culture: An investigation of current challenges, barriers and future opportunities within the food industry. Food Control, 73 (part B), pp. 1114-1123.

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-10-12

Publication date

2016-11-09

Copyright date

2017

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Food Control and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2016.10.061.

ISSN

0956-7135

Language

  • en

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