Manufacturing Food Safety Incidents and the Role of Food Safety Culture

Serious incidents in large food producers indicate that attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of people can undermine food safety technology, training, auditing, accreditation, and food safety management. Attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are a reection of a person’s, society’s, and/or an organization’s culture. They represent shared values, objectives, experiences, and expectations. In the context of safety within an organization, culture refers to “the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety” (Cox and Cox, 1991).