Measuring microbial food safety output and comparing self-checking systems of food business operators in Belgium

Abstract

Ir. Jacques Ingelrham-dr. Herman Diricks Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FASFC) Food Safety Management 2012-Campden BRI Objective of research ? Belgian risk management decision in 2003 to : • introduce 'self-checking system' based on PRPs, HACCP, traceability, notification, legal quality aspects along the agri-food chain • each food business operator must implement a 'self-checking system' • certification is possible by commercial third parties or by governmental food safety authority • certificate minus on yearly taxes • Research question : does the introduction of a self-checking system improve the safety ?

Relevance of microbial finished product testing in food safety management

“…Examples of assurance activities are sampling, validation, verification, documentation (Luning et al, 2009). Therefore, the food businesses focus on the design and implementation of food safety management systems to guarantee food safety as demonstrated in a quantitative European study by Luning et al (2015) and a Belgian study by Jacxsens et al (2014). Since finished product sampling is valuable in some specific situations, for instance for traditional lot testing with hold/release or verification testing (see Buchanan and Schaffner (2015) for a good discussion on this subject), there is still much focus on finished product criteria and testing of finished products against set specifications.…”

The Evolution and Cultural Framing of Food Safety Management Systems—Where From and Where Next?

“…852/2004. For example, Safer Food Better Business (FSA, ) was first launched in the UK in 2005, Belgium developed self‐checking systems for multiple sectors (Jacxsens et al., ), and in the Netherlands, sector‐specific HACCP hygiene codes were developed to support food businesses in designing their FSMS (Luning, Marcelis, & Jongen, ; Van der Spiegel, Luning, De Boer, Ziggers, & Jongen, ).…”

“…As required by their stakeholders (for example, government, retailers, customers), and often as a prerequisite to either operating the business and/or as a means of accessing specific markets, companies use both public and private product and process standards to provide the basis upon which to design their food safety programs. In this context, the food safety program is considered to be the written document indicating how a food business will assure that food safety hazards associated with food handling activities of the business are effectively controlled (Jacxsens et al., ; Luning, Bango, Kussaga, Rovira, & Marcelis, , ). Private standards are commonly stricter in terms of requirements than the public standards established in local legal frameworks (Fulponi, ), that is, they go beyond legislative compliance or “safe to supply” and include the adoption of additional requirements and standard elements.…”

Influence of food safety culture on food handler behaviour and food safety performance of food processing organisations

“…meat and dairy) than for other products as high-risk products are potentially hazardous if processed under non-conforming circumstances (e.g. De Boeck et al, 2018a;Herath et al, 2007;Jacxsens et al, 2015;Karaman et al, 2012). Moreover, authors argued that companies with a more vulnerable context (i.e.…”

“…Small to medium companies employ more than 10 but less than 250 people with an annual turnover of EUR 50 million and balance sheet not exceeding EUR 43 million (European Union Commission, 2003). Dairy and meat companies were classified as high-risk, and vegetables and baked goods as low-risk (Dora et al, 2013;Jacxsens et al, 2015;Karaman et al, 2012).…”