Operational Risk Management: Ensuring Safety for Food Systems - Webinar By GlobalCompliancePanel 2011

Overview: With today`s movement into more and more serious controls over food safety and security, the liabilities associated with recalls and deaths are creating new approaches to determine and reduce the likelihood of risks associated with contaminated foods.

Risk assessment involves determining where and what types of risks are involved throughout any food process, assigning quantitative values to those risks, measuring the processes based on risk factors and ranking risk areas for purposes of preventive and corrective actions. Risk management requires no more or less management skill levels than any production, quality or purchasing operation - risk management simply requires attention. This session will establish a way of thinking about risks and their management that allows managers to simply define and incorporate risk reduction strategies into their own processes. Emphasis is on defining and managing risk levels prior to problems that may lead to significant setbacks. The procedures covered are mathematically sound, simple to implement and can be implemented as a result of attention from any level in the operation. Generally, personnel in any operation can be employed in the risk reduction planning and implementation efforts. The session will also provide information regarding how to reduce supplier risk levels.

Why you should attend: Management from any food handling company interested in learning a basic thought process that will help them to reduce the risk of being caught in a food recall should consider attending. Which food suppliers represent high risk? Which ones are likely to cause an outbreak associated with E. coli or salmonella? Should your company buy from high risk suppliers? How do you know which suppliers are high risk suppliers? These are the types of concerns wholesalers have about farm suppliers, retailers have about wholesalers and processors have about both. Where do buyers go to determine the food safety level of suppliers? The peanut outbreak in 2009 impacted over 300 processors and caused the recall of over 2100 different products. Hundreds of millions of dollars were lost to the entire industry. Insurance companies and the federal government are focusing on assessing food safety risks in efforts to protect the public from death defying illnesses, protect the industry from huge financial losses and protect the nation from dangerous imports. Risk assessment and control is not magic but represents a critical component of any operational plan. When executives press buyers for risk reduction, food safety becomes an integral part of the overall operational strategy and everyone wins.

Areas Covered In the Seminar:

• Risk management represents a move from a reactive after-the-outbreak mode of operation to a preventive, cost saving, reputation saving strategy.
  
• Risk of food safety outbreaks as they impact insurance costs
  
• Where to find software designed to help assess risk levels
  
• Summary of federal legislation: Are they really doing anything?
  
• Data resources: Online risk assessment resources and setting up your own tracking
  
• A mathematical model for risk assessment: What variables should you consider?
  
• What`s happening on some international fronts? America is falling further behind.
  
• A sample supplier qualification system based on food safety risk predictors.
  
• A model for retail driven risk reduction based on supplier typologies

Who will benefit:

• Food supply chain buyers (farms, wholesalers and distributors, retailers, packers, restaurants, and processors) and corporate executives need to be updated and on top of how they can take some relatively simple steps to reduce risks associated with a food safety outbreak or recall.
  
• The session is also a must for federal, state and local officials involved in the food safety arena. Risk assessment literally means there is a move into a more preventive strategy. Reacting quickly to recalls is not a preventive food safety strategy.