Food safety: What’s next to assure its future?

According to the World Health Organization, over 200 diseases are spread through food and one in 10 people fall ill every year from eating contaminated food. Much of the burden of unsafe food is preventable through sound food safety management. To help shed light on these issues and contribute to provide improvement, DNV GL – Business Assurance and The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) partnered to investigate trends in food safety.

Some key findings

  • Players in the food & beverage industry are well aware of the overall importance of food safety. Protecting consumers is the most important driver (88%), followed by compliance with laws and regulations (69%) and customer requirements (61%)
  • Operational risks are by far viewed as the main threat related to food safety (77%). Lack of food safety culture is number 2 on the list (31%), above compliance (28%) and food fraud vulnerability (18%).
  • Requirements from existing customers (79%) and from new customers (46%) are among the top drivers for certifying food safety systems. Certification is also a way to improve food safety programmes for 54%.
  • Less than 1 in 10 food & beverage companies consider that new digital technologies contribute to enhance food safety today. In 3 years almost 4 out of 10 see digitalization supporting food safety.
Infographic

Infographic

View the infographic with the main findings