Review article: Food safety culture from the perspective of the Australian horticulture industry

Highlights

• Good food safety culture could reduce fresh produce food safety incidents.

• Food safety culture should be considered in food safety management systems.

• A whole-of-supply chain approach to culture improvement would be more successful.

• Monitoring and measurement drive continual improvement of food handler behaviour.

• Development of horticulture-specific mixed-method measurements is necessary.

Abstract

Background

Foodborne illness outbreaks associated with fresh produce suggest a focus on food safety culture within food safety management systems throughout supply chains would benefit the horticulture industry. The recent inclusion of food safety culture in horticulture standards will drive the need for better understanding, integration into business activities, and monitoring, to help mitigate foodborne incidents in horticulture.

Scope and approach

The purpose of this review was to identify definitions of food safety culture and methods of measuring its performance in the context of the Australian horticulture industry. Investigation of how to better apply and integrate a positive food safety culture into existing food safety management systems was conducted. A roadmap for food safety culture improvement in Australian horticulture is presented, highlighting the challenges and opportunities.

Key findings and conclusions

To guide the development of a mature culture of food safety, mixed-method approaches to performance assessment were found to be the most comprehensive, valid, and offer the most potential for use by horticulture businesses. Food safety culture can be developed by using feedback from regular culture assessments that identify weaknesses and opportunities for improvement, leading to increased knowledge, alignment of attitudes, and better food safety and hygiene behaviour. To this end, the development of measurement tools specific to horticulture operations would be beneficial. Despite unforeseen challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian horticulture industry continues to investigate the efficacy of its food safety management.

Introduction

One in ten people suffers a foodborne illness annually (World HealthOrganisation WHO, 2015). This global burden of foodborne disease warrants improved efficacy of food safety management systems (FSMS) throughout the supply chain. While the main contributors to foodborne illness are contaminated raw materials, poor personal hygiene, contaminated equipment, and process failures (World HealthOrganisation WHO, 2006), they are influenced directly or indirectly by people behaviours. According to Yiannas (2009), attention to factors that result in changed behaviours in food safety management can lead to the continuous improvement of food safety. The emergence of foodborne illness outbreaks from Australian fresh produce (FSANZ, 2020) with repeated outbreaks in rockmelons (Munnoch et al., 2009; NSW DPI, 2018; OzFoodNet, 2015) and leafy vegetables (OzFoodNet, 2015, 2017) suggests the early stages of horticulture supply chains (growing and packing) could benefit from increased attention to food safety culture (FS-culture) throughout their management and operational systems.

Inadequate pre- and post-harvest water quality, faecal contamination from wildlife (FSANZ, 2020; Ilic et al., 2012), and poor hygienic practices throughout the supply chain (FSANZ, 2020), have been identified as the main risk factors for the primary production and processing of fresh horticultural produce. Controlling these risk factors evolved into FSMS that incorporated good agricultural practices, good hygienic practices, good manufacturing practices, and hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) plans as part of safety and quality management systems in Australian horticulture (Premier & Ledger, 2006). While these process control programs are in principle effective (Gilling et al., 2001), they have only recently considered the human factor in food safety management. The performance of FSMS is also dependent on an organisation's overall culture (Jespersen et al., 2018), thereby relying on how people apply company policies and implement procedures in practice (Luning, Marcelis, et al., 2011). The most recent Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) Benchmarking Requirements (2020) incorporated FS-culture, driving its development in horticulture standards internationally e.g., Global GAP, Canada GAP, Freshcare.

The study of FS-culture as a condition for effective FSMS is a relatively new area of research and is yet to be systematically applied to fresh fruit and vegetable operations in Australia and New Zealand. It requires scientifically based, quantitative measurement of process management and the qualitative measurement of human behaviour. Various tools have been developed to measure FS-culture, to identify strengths and weaknesses, and to guide its improvement (e.g., De Boeck et al., 2015; Fatimah et al., 2014; Jespersen et al., 2016; Wright et al., 2012; Nyarugwe et al., 2018). Various other tools have been successfully applied for analysing adherence to medical guidelines and HACCP (Azanza & Zamora-Luna, 2005; Gilling et al., 2001).

Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has fostered an increased interest in compliance with FSMS requirements because of initial concern that food might be a potential transmission route of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (Benkeblia, 2021; Duda-Chodak et al., 2020; Yetka et al., 2021). Although it is now known food is not a transmission route (ICMSF, 2020), in Australia increased attention to hygiene practices for worker safety (PMA Australia and New Zealand, 2020a) delivered broader food safety benefits to the horticulture industry, identifying how culture influences all safety aspects of food production. The purpose of this study is to (i) define food safety culture, (ii) determine monitoring and measurement tools of most relevance to horticulture, (iii) identify how food safety culture relates to Australian horticulture FSMS, and (iv) highlight the barriers to improvement of FS-culture. In so doing, this study presents a roadmap for the fresh produce industry to apply ‘good food safety culture’ and suggests opportunities for the industry to holistically embrace a culture that ensures safe food production.