Editorial: Conquer Complacency
Food-safety vigilance must start at the top and permeate the entire system.
By Mary Boltz Chapman, Editor-in-Chief -- Chain Leader, 11/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
As part of Chain Leader Live, a conference we presented in September in New Orleans, I moderated a breakout discussion on food safety with some of the leaders in the field. Attendees picked the brains of Chuck Catlin, senior total quality manager at Darden Restaurants; Laurel Cudden, director of food safety and risk assessment at BR Guest Inc.; and Jeff Portwood, senior director of training and people development at Cosi Inc., who formerly lead training at Piccadilly Cafeteria. We had a lively conversation about how operators overcome the challenges of sourcing, training and working with inspectors.
Not-So-Hot Topic
However, we were underwhelmed with the number of participants. Yes, there were a number of other breakout discussions at the same time, all on compelling topics important to industry leaders. But I expected that a subject that many chain executives lose sleep over would be a bigger draw.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Often when you bring up food safety, you watch eyes roll or glaze over completely. It’s a subject many operators are frankly tired of hearing about. They’ve already hired the best quality-assurance staff, trainers and purchasing managers. Perhaps they have had HACCP systems in place for years. The food-safety problem has been solved in their organizations. Or has it?
The FDA Report on the Occurrence of Foodborne Illness Risk Factors reports that the risk factors it highlighted as the worst problems are the same in 2004 as when it completed its 2000 study: improper holding/time and temperature, poor personal hygiene (particularly handwashing) and contaminated equipment/prevention of contamination. For example, it found 63.8 percent of full-service restaurant units and 41.7 percent of fast-food units were not in compliance for time and temperature, and 41.7 percent of full-service restaurants and 31.2 percent of fast-food outlets for hygiene. The report calls for greater control of these areas on the part of both management and inspectors.
Getting Air Time
A recent Dateline NBC investigation gathered inspection reports for popular full-service chains, looking for critical violations. Fully 82 percent of the 1,000 restaurants it studied had at least one. Half of those were repeat offenses. (Interestingly, this is more than Dateline found when it did a similar story on fast-food chains; it said 60 percent of QSR units had critical violations.) Reporters found more than 100 claims of foodborne illness in the full-service restaurants. I’m no whiz at math, but that’s better than 10 percent.
Dateline offered the chains featured in the exposé the opportunity to respond in advance of the program, and it posted the statements on its Web site. Most of them describe their comprehensive programs, and all are apparently sincere.
I have no doubt that at headquarters these companies and many others are not lax in their food-safety efforts. But the problems don’t occur at the corporate office, they happen in the restaurant. It’s your job to make sure the high standards you set make their way down through the many layers of management, through each franchisee, to the people closest to the food and the guest. As with company culture, food-safety vigilance needs to start at the top of the organization and permeate at all levels.
