Let me start with something that shouldn’t be controversial: all food should be safe.
But expecting safe food and assuming the absence of risk are two very different things.
Food production is full of hazards. In fresh produce, we operate in open agricultural environments where water, weather, wildlife, workers, soil, equipment and adjacent land uses can all influence microbial conditions and ultimately food safety risk.
The presence of those hazards doesn’t mean food should be unsafe. It means that the opportunity for a food safety event is an expected part of producing food.
And that’s exactly why we need risk management.
Think about almost every other sophisticated industry. Airlines don’t build safety systems around the assumption that engines will never malfunction. Cybersecurity teams don’t operate under the assumption that nobody will attempt to penetrate their networks or lock down their systems in ransomware. Manufacturers don’t assume equipment will never fail.
They design systems expecting threats, failures and unexpected conditions – and build layers of protection to prevent those hazards from becoming catastrophic outcomes. If advanced in risk management, they may have already designed more complicated systems to give early indicators of those failures before they occur.
Food safety should work the same way.
Yet we sometimes fall into a different mindset: if everyone complies with the “rules”, a food safety event shouldn’t happen. And if one does happen, someone must have failed to comply. That’s a far too simplistic expectation for the biological system that is food production. And it is most certainly too simplistic a way to look at fresh produce production.
Compliance remains essential – it is the foundation upon which we build risk management. Compliance establishes expectations, consistency, common language, and creates an important foundation for safe food production.
But compliance cannot eliminate uncertainty. It’s risk management that helps us operate within it.
Risk management is where the business opportunity exists.
Companies that become better at detecting changing conditions, identifying emerging hazards, interpreting data and intervening earlier aren’t accepting more risk. They’re getting better at controlling it.
That capability of controlling risk can protect product, prevent disruptions, improve decision-making, preserve market access and protect customers. And like quality, yield or operational efficiency, companies can become better at it over time. That’s a smart strategy for long-term success.
Perhaps that’s the mindset shift food safety needs:
Don’t normalize unsafe food. Normalize robust systems for managing the conditions that could make food unsafe.
Safe food should always be the expectation. But risk isn’t evidence that the system has failed.
Risk is the reason we build the system in the first place.