Imagine the following situation: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is inspecting your facility, and regulators ask to see documentation for your Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plan.

You spend 20 minutes trying to pick out the most recent documents, only to get hammered by regulators because only a few are actually dated. What’s more, most references to related documents are broken. After this impressive start, how well do you think the rest of the inspection will go?

Food manufacturers must keep track of numerous documents in order to ensure compliance and mitigate risks. This post looks at 7 of the most common document control gaps that companies should address to avoid regulatory citations and food safety issues.

Ask the average food manufacturer today about their Document Control system, and more often than not they’ll likely start dragging out paperwork from some dusty file cabinet. Other companies might pull up a server drive or file sharing app where they keep electronic copies of key documents like manuals, specifications and job instructions.

And while electronic tracking is undoubtedly a step ahead of paper-based methods still prevalent at many food manufacturing facilities today, neither are any guarantee of effectiveness. Today, we’re looking at what food and beverage manufacturers need to know about document control, including the most common mistakes and how companies can get a better handle on this important process.

To achieve operational excellence, you need a comprehensive, forward-thinking approach to managing safety and quality risks.

This infographic identifies 4 of the most common risk management gaps and shows you how solutions like quality management software can help mitigate these risks.

If you’ve seen The Secret Life of Pets, you probably remember the scene where dogs Max and Duke happen upon a sausage factory.

They ride a conveyor belt throughout the factory, gobbling up sausages as fast as they’re made. Soon, they’re in a dream sequence with thousands of singing and dancing sausages, until they’re swimming in a pool of them. By the time animal control discovers the dogs, fat and drunk on sausages, the dogs have presumably contaminated the entire production line.

Will food safety pros find out about the incident before products ship? What’s the plan if customers report dog hair (or worse) in their food? Obviously, this isn’t the movie’s focus, but if it were, traceability would certainly be an issue.

In today’s post, we examine how a cloud-based Quality Management System (QMS) improves traceability, helping protect both consumers and manufacturers.

Research by the Aberdeen Group shows that operational excellence leaders in food and beverage outperform their profit margin goals by a full 9%, also spending one-third less on quality costs than their competitors

What are market leaders getting right about operational excellence that laggards are missing? These leaders maximize productivity and minimize costs by focusing on areas like data integration, standardization and performance management, all while keeping quality and safety at the forefront.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is currently in the process of updating ISO 22000 for Food Safety Management. The revision is currently in the Draft International Standard (DIS) stage, with final publication expected in 2018.

One important change coming is that the new standard will follow the recently adopted Annex SL structure, a common high-level structure used to organize all new standards and revisions.  

Aligned with the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, this structure makes it easier to integrate ISO management with daily activities, also streamlining the process of earning multiple certificates.

Today’s post will help you map your Food Safety Management System (FSMS) to ISO 22000, so you can identify gaps and lay the foundation for a smooth transition.

Humans are a progressive species, always looking to innovate and move forward. But with progress comes change, and change brings new risks.

That’s where EtQ comes in. For over 25 years, we’ve been the constant support businesses need to move forward. We’re with you every step of the way, growing and scaling as your business adapts in a fast-paced environment.

Many of us grew up with the old-fashioned food pyramid: 6 servings of grains, 5 servings of fruits and veggies, 3 servings of dairy and so on. Today, we have MyPlate, where the basic concepts behind the old food pyramid still appear to hold sway.

That is, eat lots of fruits and veggies, moderate amounts of protein and dairy and limited amounts of salt and fat. Similarly, food safety in manufacturing can be viewed as a pyramid with 4 critical components: compliance, traceability and culture, all supported by a Food Safety Management System (FSMS).   

Travel around the world, and you’ll find a wide variety in what comprises a Food Safety Management System (FSMS) at different companies.

For some, it’s as basic as a set of spreadsheets, internal policies and training programs. For others, it’s an enterprise-wide system of integrated software modules that links together every step of the food safety process. In both cases, the main goals are to ensure food safety, produce high quality products, and of course, reduce compliance risk.

In today’s post, we’re looking at core elements every FSMS needs to do this. We’ll focus on the basics companies need to have in place, plus next-level capabilities that deliver even better results.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported 150 food recalls in 2015, exceeding the number of recalls for every year in the past decade. All told, the agency recalled over 21 million pounds of food over problems that include listeria and salmonella contamination, undeclared allergens and extraneous materials.

Experts say only part of that represents contaminated food, with poor traceability forcing companies to recall as much as 50% more product than is actually necessary out of an abundance of caution.

The lesson? Improving traceability not only helps protect consumers, it also helps companies execute recalls faster, at lower cost and with less damage to their reputation. Let’s look at some key areas where companies need to focus to get there.