Food Protection Trends - November/December 2023 - 557

Food Safety Culture PDG
Members Present: Karla Acosta, Christina
Allingham, Angela Anandappa, Samir Assar, Brita
Ball, Dr. Al Baroudi, Mark Beaumont, Jared Bock,
John Boyce, Renee Boyer, Chris Boyles, Jeff Chilton,
Andrew Clarke, Vanessa Coffman, Kim Cook, Alison
Cousins, Dale Dexter, Kelli Dionne, Minh Duong,
Ellen Evans, Melanie Firestone, Makenzie Flach, Tom
Ford, Liane Ford, Elise Forward, Megan Francies,
Donna Garren, Ariel Garsow, Binita Goshali, Stephen
Grove, Sam Hadden, Roger Hancock, Maria Hansell,
Eelco Heintz, Manki Ho, Brian Izdepski, Liesbeth
Jacxsens, Lone Jespersen, Divya Joseph, Ahmed Al
Kaabi, Andrew Karasick, Carl Katz, Amanda Kinchla,
Stacey Klinzing, Amalia Ghaisani Komarudin, Bobby
Krishna, Vijay Krishna, Maureen Kuboka, Kajam
Kunarajasingam, Cornelie Aalders-Lankhorst, QuynhNhi
Le, Girvin Liggans, Marisa Lown, Ryk Lues,
Anne-Marie Masella, Anibal Concha-Meyer, Ben Miller,
Sharon Nieves-Miranda, Sara Mortimore, Caroline
Motzer, Arenis Piñón Muñiz, Laura Dunn Nelson,
Ashley Nelson, Rocio Nunez, George-John Nychas,
Rocio Ortega, Pranita Patil, Catalina Pelaez, Brian
Perry, Rodrigo Portillo, Simone Potkamp, Carolina
Prates, Robert Salter, Dina Scott, Natalie Seymour,
Niraj Shrestha, Ellen Shumaker, malavika Sinha, Kris
De Smet, Ana Souza, Pauline Spagnoli, Jill Stuber,
Iryna Syb, Kentaro Takenaka, Chrysoula Tassou,
Camilo Toro, Kelsey Trimble, Brian Turner, Carol
Wallace, Austin Welch, Sally Wickramaratne, Jacqueline
Wilhelmsen, Andrew Wilson, Sophie Tongyu Wu,
Lily Yang, Pam Young, Laís Zanin, Bin Zhong.
Number of Attendees: 97.
Meeting Called to Order: Sunday, 1:00 p.m, July
16, 2023, Metro Toronto Convention Center.
Minutes Recording Secretary: Divya Joseph,
Student Liaison.
Old Business: The food safety culture PDG
activities for 2022-2023 were briefly discussed
including highlights of accepted symposia for the
conference and an overview of webinar series.
New Business: Talk by Lily Yang: Integrating
DEI & Accessibility for Food Safety Culture, TAG,
The Acheson Group. Lily Yang provided a talk on
integrating DEI and accessibility for food safety culture.
She started by putting forward questions like how we
got there and where we are. The risk factors involved
in our development were related to turnover, resources,
commitment issues and buy-in, incorporation, costsaving
and bean-counting, optimism bias, and
production focus where the tools for measurement
are a continuum, maturity models, and assessment
tools. Basic definitions of culture, diversity, equity
and inclusion, and accessibility provided a strong
base for further discussions. The major takeaways
she proposed were based on understanding cultural
contents and evolve, addressing biases, and having
empathy.
Alison: PAS 320 Update by BSI. Neil gave an update
on the progress of the PAS 320 guidance document
for developing and sustaining a mature food safety
culture. PAS 320 was published for free download
on April 30, 2023, and it is the highest downloaded
standard in May 2023. PAS 320 is considered as the
reference guide by GFSI benchmarked standards
owners and received highly positive industry feedback.
Some sections discussed include sections 4, 5, 7, 8,
9, and 11 on understanding the fundamentals of food
safety culture and the context of the organization,
establishing the governance for a food safety culture,
designing a strategic change plan to achieve the
desired food culture, preparing the key functions
towards a food safety culture, embedding the change
plan of the organization's food safety culture into
the existing FSMS and sustaining the continual
improvement of the organization's food safety culture
respectively.
Dr. Carol Wallace: Salus - The Food Safety Culture
Science Group
She started with the mission of the Salus group
and elaborated on various activities done from 20092022.
Different research publications with their aim,
methodologies, and conclusions were discussed,
which included 1) The evolvement of food safety
culture assessment: a mixed-methods systematic
review, 2) Towards the food safety culture improvement
roadmap: diagnosis and gap analysis through a
conceptual framework as the first steps and 3) A
roadmap for developing educational actions using food
safety culture assessment - a case of institutional food
service. She ended her speech by looking into future
research literature being build at various institutions in
food culture.
Breakout sessions
There were breakout sessions consisting of 5
different groups that discussed critical Food Safety
Culture questions.
Group 1: Discussed various aspects to bring out
different soft skills in corporate, academic, or government
organizations by considering the differences that
are not visible outside. For example, differences in
languages can be reduced by using graphical representations
like pictograms. Also, people sitting in top
positions should maintain frequent conversations with
all employees by taking care of the humane side of
personal interactions rather than a serious tough conversation
concentrated on the job. Distributing the job
among fellow employees is important instead of taking
the load by one person itself.
Group 2: Talked about making informal leaders
apart from the formal leaders who might not have the
soft skills to handle the people on floors due to lack of
experience. Asking people to attend different pieces of
training, not only the leaders but also the people from
floors helps in maintaining a connection of cultures.
November/December Food Protection Trends 557
Food Protection Trends - November/December 2023

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