This is part two of a two-part series on food safety and sustainability. You can read the first part of this series in the March/April edition of the Western Grower & Shipper.
Risk-based management requires that we design systems that consistently and efficiently identify risk so that appropriate measures can be implemented to reduce it. Preventing the first step of identification impedes much hope of executing risk-based management across the food industry.
To illustrate what risk-based management and risk permission in food production could look like, here’s a non-food example. We all accept that sharks are a risk to human health when swimming in the ocean. However, our means to manage that risk is not to set out to remove all sharks from the ocean.
Instead, we as a community, have designed education, alerts, monitoring and sometimes physical barriers like nets to protect humans in the ocean environment from a potentially hazardous encounter. Extending the metaphor, we not only authorize the risk to exist, but we design systems to know when the risk is elevated and when too much risk is seen. If sharks are too close, we take measures to get people out of the water and close beaches.
In agriculture, we grow our food where pathogens live and must accept and authorize that occasional encounters with foodborne pathogens are not unexpected. If we build our pathogen monitoring systems appropriately, we will allow for systems to alert food producers when risks are no longer acceptable (i.e., too many sharks) due to current measurements being above what baseline measurements would expect.
Due to the complexity and diversity in agricultural and in food-producing ecosystems, risk is expected to be variable and needs to be monitored per producer and system. Once established, these risk-based monitoring systems must also be recognized and trusted as functional (i.e., we cannot abandon fields/processes simply because a non-zero-risk baseline is established). With understanding and authorization that the status quo has some inherent risk, we permit the establishment of systems being built to be able to identify and manage risks when they elevate.
Once we can understand the increased risk, science can help design appropriate mitigations to reduce risks back to acceptable levels. True risk-based systems offer the ability to allocate resources where risks are elevated and minimize limited resources being applied inefficiently across supply chains.
Transitioning to risk-based management starts with culture.
As much as this risk-obsessed microbiologist loves the concept and science of microbial risk management, I have come to recognize that the first system to be built to achieve that goal is dependent on individual and societal psychology. As a collective food industry, we must focus efforts on shifting to a culture of risk acceptance if we want to truly usher in a more sustainable means to reduce foodborne illness. While it does sound somewhat counterintuitive to allow for risk when trying to reduce it, the lack of doing so regrettably leads to situations where far more risk remains unknown and unintentionally accepted. Permission to identify risk without fear of losing customers, ranch land and products is a critical first step to designing sustainable risk-based systems in the future.
Culture is discussed frequently both in business and the food safety community, but rarely do we intentionally collaborate to design systems to cultivate it. This is especially true when building culture requires connecting a diverse community representing different stakeholders and geographies. Any culture-building effort, including one for food safety, takes strategic design and constant support.
These efforts will often take more time and be more difficult than the food safety measures themselves. But, as with all great innovations and efforts, the first step is to truly identify the challenge at hand and to socialize the immediate need across all stakeholders.
The unlock for the food industry on real risk-based management starts with these two related and distinct questions:
1. What actions can we take to curate the culture of our broad food safety community to understand the need and adapt behavior to authorize risk identification and management throughout the supply chain?
2. What monitoring systems can we build to effectively evaluate risks within the industry so preventive and proactive actions are taken to remove pathogens from the food system, ultimately reducing risk to consumers?
With a collective commitment across all stakeholders to truly transition to risk-based management, we offer the opportunity to flip strategies, collaborations and mitigations. We can begin to design the monitoring systems we need to optimize both food safety and business outcomes within and across food segments.
A sustainable system of food production is within our grasp, but we must recognize it will not come to us without our collective efforts to build a bridge between two disparate food safety systems – one of hazard management to one of risk management.
The bridge between where we are at, and where we need to go, relies on the collaborative belief that we can change the food safety paradigm. A truly sustainable food safety system is attainable, but we need to choose to constantly cultivate it.