Baking&Snack - July 2012 - 101

FOOD SAFETY TRAINING Betsy Blair

Q &A

Maureen Olewnik
Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) inspections and, to a greater extent, Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) certification audits do a good job of reviewing programs and making sure they are up to date and properly implemented. However, contamination issues do not happen on paper; they happen on the production floor, in the warehouse or the packaging room. FS 360 focuses there. AIB International, Manhattan, KS, developed FS 360 to fill the void left when a facility chooses to go strictly with program-

focused audits and cursory on-the-floor inspections. With the FS 360 program, the auditor is meant to get dirty. The audit cannot be rushed. It is truly meant to be a deep dive into the facility GMPs. The program is intended to be educational in nature. AIB’s history and arguably its strongest skill set is its ability to carry out a deep physical inspection of a processing area: open the equipment; climb the silos; go on the roof; and dig, dig, dig to identify areas where contamination could occur. Maureen Olewnik, AIB’s senior vice-president, food safety and technical services, along with Betsy Blair, head of GMP audit services, explain how FS 360 works and how it’s designed to improve food safety in the long run. For more information on AIB’s various programs, visit www.aibonline.org.

Building a Clean Slate
Dan Malovany: What are the guiding principles behind a FS 360 audit?
Betsy Blair: FS 360 is an educational evaluation that is designed to train facility personnel how and where to look at the equipment to identify potential or eminent food safety risks, including areas that may have been overlooked in the past. In some companies, there is a high turnover rate for personnel in charge of sanitation. This makes it difficult for those employees to build the expertise and get a deep understanding of the systems needed for an excellent sanitation and hygiene program. It can take six months to a year to train personnel, and when there is a high rate of turnover, the experience that has been gained can be lost. FS 360 helps build that expertise more quickly. FS 360 can be set up as a scheduled format where it is used as a continuous training activity and used to help the facility identify root cause with follow-up on how to manage the food safety situation. Maureen Olewnik: As many facilities move to GFSI benchmarked audits, the documentation is thoroughly reviewed, but the physical audit doesn’t allow for much time to be spent really looking at equipment. FS 360 does that. It is complementary to GFSI audits in that it allows the inspector and the facility personnel to spend time opening equipment looking for areas that may have been missed, and encourage open discussion on root cause and methods of correcting the situation. It is our belief that the proverbial sweet spot in the development and implementation of a robust food safety program is at the intersection of training, program audits and deep inspection. This 3-circle approach provides the necessary educational approach and review processes that will help design and implement programs as well as provide continuous oversight both in the office and on the floor. FS 360 assessment is a critical component of a fully balanced food safety system.

AIB’s new FS 360 program takes a hands-on approach to identifying sanitation issues and training employees on how to solve those problems in the future.
AIB Consolidated Standards for Inspection scoring system?
Ms. Blair: The AIB Consolidated Standards for Inspection is the document developed as the basis for the current AIB inspection. This is a scored inspection, where both a physical evaluation of processing areas and a document review are carried out in order to satisfy requirements outlined by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Codex Alimentarius and industry best practices. This scored inspection remains a very important part of the AIB offerings. It, too, is training-based while providing a manufacturer with a way of monitoring its activities within and between facilities. FS 360 is different in that there is no score, and the need to review the entire facility is not a requirement. The AIB inspector can set up the inspection for a time when equipment is down, during the third shift, or at another time that will allow them to look at things that would not be available during regular processing times. The inspection is 100% on the floor and with no worry of being scored. The staff is encouraged to show their “dirty laundry” and allow the inspector to help to identify July 2012 / Baking & Snack / 101

What prompted the development of the new FS 360 inspection?
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How does AIB FS 360 differ from the inspections that AIB did in the past? Does it replace the current

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Baking&Snack - July 2012

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