Food Protection Trends - July/August 2019 - 294

coMMeNtarY
FROM yOuR PREsIDENt

Timothy C. Jackson

A few years ago I was on a project
team that spent several weeks at troubled
operations having recurring or persistent
issues. The objective was to help the
operation fix issues in a durable way but
also to do a "deep dive" examination of the
operation to understand why issues recurred
or couldn't get resolved to begin with. We
saw different root causes at each site; but one
thing that most of them had in common was
that there was a disconnect with leaders and
operational managers and a lack of awareness or focus of the front line.
I saw this again recently. The Food Safety and Compliance
manager for the operation was very knowledgeable and had attended
frequent trainings on these topics. There were nicely written policies
and SOPs that met regulatory and customer requirements. The
operation had received a near perfect score on their certification
audit. But nobody on the front line could explain what the food safety
procedures were. Neither could the operational or front-line managers.
This was demonstrated by significant gaps in the execution of programs
on the ground. Improvements to these programs were only made when
a third party identified gaps and required corrective actions. Beyond
this, there was no commitment or investment in the infrastructure of
these programs.
What were the problems here? The Food Safety and Compliance
manager spent most of the time in the office, in meetings, and in
training sessions. Not where the work was being conducted. The owner
focused on cost savings and spending as little money as possible and
it showed and didn't see the importance of food safety controls. The
management team was not empowered to make decisions without
getting approval from the owner that lived remotely.
These examples are from industry, but similar challenges are
sometimes faced by research and government scientists: Challenges
in getting leadership to prioritize research projects or policies;
challenges getting stakeholders to apply research findings or adopt
new technologies, policies or guidance.

FROM yOuR EXECutIVE DIRECtOR
As we are quickly approaching
IAFP 2019 in Louisville, of course our
team at the IAFP office is busy with
preparations and last minute details to
make this Annual Meeting the best one
ever! In addition to IAFP 2019, we
have a few large projects that have been
keeping our interest since the first of the
year.
One of those is the IAFP
Foundation and its new fundraising
efforts. The Foundation Committee met in February to help shape
its new direction. Discussion took place leading to new ideas of
where Foundation support could better supplement what IAFP
already does. In addition, future growth in raising awareness
of the Foundation and contributions to the Foundation was
deliberated. After conclusion of the meeting, it was decided to
enlist a professional consultant to assist our efforts. A Foundation
survey was taken to gather input from IAFP Members. Now with this
information and some peer-to-peer phone calls, we will enter Annual
Meeting with a base level of contributions to encourage IAFP 2019
participants to "step-up" their giving levels and make this year a
record for the IAFP Foundation! You are encouraged to visit with
a Foundation Committee Member to learn more about
the Foundation.
Another ongoing effort has been around the Journal of Food
Protection (JFP). In 2015, we began working with our consultant

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Food Protection Trends July/August

For industry, the root causes often fall into two areas.
1. A lack of "management commitment:" A failure to invest
time in training or execution of food safety related task and
a failure to prioritize food safety related capital or program
costs. This could be because senior leadership hadn't been
exposed to the true risks and consequences or that they had
been and don't see them as important. Sometimes the latter
case is because it "hasn't happened before" for the product or
operation; or because "everybody has the same problem"; or
because they see the risk as acceptable.
2. A poor food safety culture. This has been a trendy topic
recently, but there's a reason for it. It's not surprising that
operations that have quality issues or worker safety issues
also are more likely to have food safety gaps. In an organization with a strong food safety culture, managers and front
line workers understand their role in food safety and execute
them in their responsibilities, but also act as influencers of
those around them.
Of course, we need to dive a step further to understand what
factors are missing from operations without management commitment
or a strong food safety culture. This understanding is important to
repairing these gaps. There are almost as many useful solutions as
relevant root causes, but here are three ideas that generally apply:
1. Use the approaches successful salespeople use to communicate issues and solutions. The Corporate Executive Board
(CEB) Quality Leadership Council proposed the use of the
"challenger" sales approach in the communication of quality
initiatives. The challenger understands the challenges of
the business and business partner, reframes where needed
the notions of success, uses strong analytics to demonstrate
business case, communicates initiatives and solutions to
business partners in a relevant, personalized way, and helps
partners overcome challenges to implementation. Our sales
colleagues can help us with this.
(Continued on page 356)

David W. Tharp
to improve JFP's discoverability and influence across the food
safety world. Many changes have been made to strengthen JFP
including allowing access to articles more than five years old. This
has increased the article downloads dramatically and is expected to
grow article citations, thus improving the impact factor. A number
of additional efforts to enhance author services have also been added
over these past few years. While you are at IAFP 2019, stop by the
JFP booth to learn more about the journal and its new efforts.
One effort taking place "behind the scenes" is that of our office
space. We have been in the same office space for the past 26 years
and our lease expires at the end of this year. So, we felt the time was
right to take a look around to see what options are there for IAFP.
This is just in the beginning stages, but we will consider moving out
of our building; or we are even considering moving within the same
building in addition to just updating our current office space. We
hope to have a decision soon so we can set our sights on January of
2020.
To supplement these projects, we are working on completing
the IAFP 2023 contracts, continuing to build on the IAFP Connect
Community and looking forward to participation in four conferences
in the fourth quarter. Those include INOFOOD in Santiago, Chile;
China International Food Safety and Quality in Beijing, China; the
IAFP Asia Pacific Symposium on Food Safety in Hong Kong; and
the Dubai International Food Safety Conference in Dubai, U.A.E.
The first six months of this year have been busy, but the second
half looks to be even busier with the major projects and conferences
ahead. Let us know if you have any questions and we look forward to
seeing everyone at IAFP 2019 in Louisville!

Food Protection Trends - July/August 2019

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