Is transparency part of food safety? A response to a Food Safety Tech article
I read this article yesterday as it popped up on my twitter feed (I suggest that everyone reads it before reading the rest of this) with great interest as this is a topic I have struggled with in the past myself.
Food safety tech TL;DR — By saying that Food Safety is not a competitive advantage big food producers are being disingenuous to consumers and limiting transparency of food information.
I was asked this exact question during the global food safety conference by a journalist and my immediate and unequivocal response was of course food safety is none competitive.
Now, I would like to clarify why I think this. In terms of quality I use the Kano model, this separates implementation of features or business aspects into 3 distinct areas of satisfaction for customers. Food safety is clearly a basic need in this model. I think we can all agree on that. The thing the Kano model teaches us about basic needs is 2 fold.
- Being better at delivering a basic need than someone does not give you a competitive advantage
- Negative consequences of delivering poorly on a basic need are dire from a business perspective
This is contrary to a performance need or a delighter where delivering more of something (in the case of food perhaps nutritional value, organic, more locally produced ingredients) will cause an increase in customer satisfaction and therefore trigger competitive advantage.
On this basis, I do not actively market our services as better than the competition at delivering food safety. If I were to do so, this would provide no competitive advantage to me and would in fact cause more damage than good to the brand and the brands of others in the market. Avoiding this is therefore best. Does this mean there shouldn’t be a conversation about Food Safety in a proactive sense? Of course not.
The implication that transparency is essential to food safety is just plain wrong. In a properly designed and functioning quality system transparency is not required to deliver safe food. If food producers and their supply chain operated correctly the product delivered would already be safe as assured by the processes. Where recalls etc happen this is not a function of transparency but more a function of a lack of or ineffectiveness of manufacturing and supply chain management processes.
Referring back to the Kano model above I would much prefer that we talk about increasing transparency of, for example:
- Nutritional information
- Allergen warnings
- Food origin/manufacturing methods
Now if we increase transparency of this information, which I would argue outside of legal package requirements for health risks, is not food safety relevant we must be operating on the performance needs or even the delighters lines in the kano model. These are relevant for competition and should also as is pointed out in desired by consumers. We should also consider that over time, and that time is coming very close, better labeling but also better acting (read manufacturing practices) will become basic needs in food businesses, however, in most markets today this is simply not the case.
To conclude, I write this not as a stout defense of the discussion at the conference or as an attack on the author of the original post but mostly to put across a point of view on the topic. All discussions about food safety are critically important, the more transparent those discussions are the better, but creating transparency can potentially remove from getting the basics right and that is often what needs addressing.
Please reach out to me on twitter to discuss this further, share and recommend this post if you found it useful!
