For Adelaide Hills cheesemaker Udder Delights, completing Food Recall training this year is an important part of their focus on continuous improvement.
Udder Delights has a Recall Plan ready to roll out if an issue occurs and Quality Assurance Manager Rebecca Flavell says the company is always looking for ways to improve their food safety program and operations.
Rebecca completed Safe Food Queensland’s online Food Recall Training course in April and found it to be informative, easy to follow and up to date.
“I’ve been working in the industry for 15 years and I went into the training session thinking I would know it all, but there were new things for me to consider,” Rebecca said.
“For example, I hadn’t thought about the impact of employees’ personal social media accounts during a recall. That’s prompted me to review our social media policies. We’re now looking at employees’ use of social media and the rules around what can and can’t be said and shared, particularly during a recall.”
Udder Delights works with a PR agency who would assist with getting key messages out to customers during a recall, via traditional media and the company’s own social media channels.
“But personal social media pages are harder to control. A story can go around Facebook like wildfire and that’s a big, new challenge for businesses to manage.”
As well as updating policies at Udder Delights, Rebecca is also asking managers of the various departments in the business, including production, warehousing and sales, to sit the recall training program. “It’s important for every person in the business to understand our recall processes and why we do the things we do,” she said.
“I’m setting up a group training session for the managers, which I’m hoping will lead to good discussion about the impact of recalls on the different parts of the business.”
Any new and important information from the training program and company discussions will be fed into the company’s Recall Plan.
“Our Recall Plan really comes back to minimising the impact of a recall on the business and rolling out a consistent message that we want to convey to our customers,” Rebecca said.
“A key is traceability. When we do training with our team, we focus heavily on how important it is for staff to do all parts of the job properly and keep pristine records. If someone cuts a corner, it can impact on the business and everyone in it.
“The dairy industry is a large industry with lots of players in the game and lots of products on shelves. There is plenty of room for error, either human or machine, and it only takes one mistake going unnoticed for a recall to occur.”