Supermarkets lead in food safety

By TOM CLARKE

New Zealand supermarkets are to the fore in developing food safety programmes, says Shane Hopgood, who has just become national health and food safety manager with Woolworths (NZ) Ltd.

While many countries around the world have legislation and regulations on food safety and hygiene, he believes New Zealand has systems that work and which are internationally credible.

The supermarket industry in this country is committed to food safety, he says, and Woolworths - which runs the Woolworths, Big Fresh and Price Chopper chains - is the first to have a self-governing food safety programme accredited by the Ministry of Health.

"Woolworths has seen this as a strategic focus for the whole company and has really put the effort into getting itself to the forefront of the industry.

"Supermarket chains around the world will be adopting this sort of food safety concept, and certainly our parent organisation, Dairy Farms of Hong Kong - which has more than 2000 supermarkets around the Asia-Pacific region - is looking to New Zealand and the model we've developed as being best practice.

"It's extremely likely that a lot of the learning that has come out of the work that we've done here will be translated to their other operations around the world," Mr Hopgood says.

The Woolworths food safety system is based on the internationally-recognised "hazard analysis critical control point" programme which identifies potential problems in a food processing chain and enables a company to take steps to manage those.

He says people want to know food is safe: "Our customers are becoming more discerning and more aware of the issues that are out there. They're increasingly looking at food businesses and want to be confident that they're doing all that they possibly can.

"There's going to be more demand from customers for informed choice, and some of that is met by labelling revealing whether products contain genetically-modified ingredients and the country of origin. Knowing where the food has come from and where the ingredients of prepared food originated is becoming important, given the BSE [bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease] issue."

As well as managing its own food safety programmes, Woolworths is also part of the Accident Rehabilitation and Compensation Corporation's accredited employer programme, which means it takes ownership and management of its own injuries and accidents.

Mr Hopgood has a background in food safety training, auditing and consulting after 10 years with AgriQuality (formerly Ministry of Agriculture quality management). He is an approved food safety programme auditor and was business manager (food quality) for AgriQuality for the Auckland and Northland regions.