Imagine a scenario where a food manufacturer’s reputation is tarnished due to a product tampering incident that could have been prevented.

How can you safeguard your company from such threats? By implementing stringent threat mitigation strategies, you can proactively protect your brand, consumers, and bottom line.

In a world where food fraud has become increasingly prevalent, the integrity of our food supply chain hangs in the balance.

As a food manufacturer, you hold the power to combat this deception and restore trust in the products you produce.

But how can you ensure the authenticity of your food? How can you protect consumers from unknowingly consuming fraudulent goods?

In this post, we will explore the strategies and measures that food manufacturers can employ to fight against food fraud, safeguarding both their reputation and the well-being of those who rely on their products.

As a food manufacturer, you understand the importance of delivering high-quality products to your customers. However, no matter how meticulous your processes are, there will inevitably be instances where complaints arise.

But worry not, for in this guide, we will explore the process of constructively handling customer complaints for quality improvement.

Having full traceability over food manufacturing and production can be a complex process. Every stage needs special consideration to ensure accurate record-keeping, help manage incidents and understand where things come from. This post looks at traceability through every stage of food manufacturing, ranging from raw materials to dispatch records and mass balance reconciliation. Join us as we explore how traceability can be used to guarantee the safety and quality of your products throughout the supply chain.

The quality management system (QMS) is an extensive and intricate management structure of key importance to food manufacturing, but is often regarded as being highly technical and inaccessible.

In this explanatory guide, we will explore the key components of the QMS and how they are applied in the context of food manufacturing.

This post is intended to provide a brief introduction to the different facets of the quality management system in a way that’s accessible, without being overly technical.

All businesses are subject to risk, with categories of risk including competition, reputational risks, financial, economic, and political hazards. The scope of this blog is limited to food safety, quality, legality, and authenticity risks, and we’ll look at a range of hazards that all food manufacturers should be conscious of when evaluating the risk profile for operations. We’ll address food safety, quality, authenticity, and legality risks – and the way those risks can be introduced through product and process.

For food manufacturers, understanding and properly addressing non-conformance, process deviations, and quality incidents is fundamental to continuous improvement and risk mitigation. In this blog post, we will take a comprehensive look at these quality events, their causes and documentation processes – before delving deeper into how food businesses should assess the risk associated with non-conformities followed by corrective actions to be taken. We will discuss root cause analysis as a method for determining contributing factors before running through timescales for corrective and preventative actions in order to manage the allocation of responsibilities for measures taken towards consistent improvement and prevention of recurrence.

Policies, procedures, and work instructions are all important management documents that are used in food manufacturing to ensure that the production process is safe, efficient, and compliant with relevant regulations. In this post, we will define each type of document and provide advice on best practices for creating them.

Supplier assurance processes form an important area of diligence for food manufacturers. The quality and safety or raw materials received from suppliers has a direct impact on the products manufactured from them, so evaluation of suppliers has a marked influence on the risk exposure of the receiving company. In this post, we’ll explore some of the considerations food manufactures should keep front-of-mind when approaching supplier approval decisions.

Maintaining good records is one of the most important practices for food manufacturing businesses. It is essential to have accurate, legible, and properly formatted records that are in good condition and preserved from loss or damage. In this post, we will discuss the importance of record maintenance for food manufacturers, as well as some of the challenges associated with maintaining such records. We will provide insight on different system types such as paper copies versus digital storage and cloud-based backups. We’ll also talk about record retention policies, how to ensure compliance with legal and customer requirements, and ways to maintain a complete set of documents which should help any food manufacturer better manage their business operations.

Every food manufacturer intends to implement the best possible food safety and quality assurance systems and adopt a stance of continuous improvement. The particular ways you achieve that will depend on a massive range of variables – depending on your process and the nature of the materials you handle. There is no one size fits all approach, so professionals and management teams should optimise for problem-solving and ongoing improvement in order to adapt to technological, legal, supply-chain developments.

In this post, we’ll look at a few methodologies that you can apply to situations you encounter – so that you have a framework for proactive improvements and deviations-handling.

Every food manufacturer has an obligation to maintain an awareness of – and comply with – applicable regulations. To support, we’ve brought together a range of informational resources which either facilitate regulatory awareness or can be used in support of legal compliance. In this post, we’ll also provide a brief commentary on how some of these resources can be used to incorporate legal compliance into your operations.

Supplier assurance updates can fairly time-consuming, but maintaining proper oversight of your supply chain is a key mitigation process against raw material processing risks – so well worth the effort.

We’ve signposted to a collection of resources that will be helpful in quickly alternating between assurance platforms. In this post, we also make some observations about assurance schemes, and their role in supply chain risk mitigation.

Substitution, adulteration, and fraud present a uniquely difficult set of authenticity risks for food manufacturers to manage for. Intentional malicious action is inherently challenging to detect and mitigate, because the malicious actor(s) make deliberate efforts to conceal the crime.

Risk assessment, analytical testing, and horizon scanning are the best tools available for fraud risk control, and this post is intended to support horizon scanning and food fraud risk awareness. We’ve brought together a range of resources for supply chain risk visibility, as well as tangentially related information providers such as Mintec Global Food Commodity Prices and the RASFF Database (of whose reports, only a fraction are authenticity-related). In this post, we’ll offer a little bit of guidance around food fraud risk awareness and monitoring for emerging supply chain risks.

Supply chain risk monitoring is critical to awareness and control of raw material and supplier risks – which can directly affect the risk profile of your finished products.

The purpose of this post is to bring together a range of informational resources, so that you can proactively engage in horizon scanning across a comprehensive range of authoritative information providers.

This post will address the processes and considerations surrounding version control of documents, management systems, and tips for how to get the most out of your document control system. You’ll learn about what document control is, and how it can be best applied to food manufacturing businesses.

The supply of safe, reliable food is one of the most important tasks for food manufacturers. To ensure that all products meet agreed upon criteria, food manufacturers should have well-defined specifications that clearly describe the desired expectations for their products. Specifications provide a framework for agreement between buyers and sellers, defining acceptable standards and accuracy in order to maintain product quality. This article will discuss the importance of specifications in guiding food manufacturers to achieve the highest standards of safety and quality.

A robust food safety and quality manual is the foundation of any successful food management system. It provides an organised set of policies, procedures, work instructions and expectations that ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations. This manual serves as a guide for both management and operations staff to help them understand and adhere to the necessary standards for safe and high-quality food production. The manual also outlines the tools needed for proper implementation, training programs, record-keeping systems and review processes.

In the food manufacturing industry, record completion and maintenance is an essential part of compliance and diligence. Records provide a valuable defence of evidence for companies in the event of a legal dispute. Furthermore, records allow for accurate analysis and data retention. It is important to stay up to date with relevant regulations in order to remain compliant, as well as maintain comprehensive records for future reference.