Food Safety Culture Category: 2018 Winner Pic’s Peanut Butter
Pic’s Peanut Butter was awarded the Food Safety Culture award in 2018 for successfully demonstrating food safety culture in all practices within the organisation.
Pic’s Peanut Butter started out as a small-scale factory producing only 1,000 jars of peanut butter a day. Pic Picot, owner/operator had a vision to be known as the best peanut butter company in the world and within a few years the company was producing more than 23,000 jars of peanut butter a day and exporting globally!
Food safety culture is paramount at Pic’s Peanut Butter and something that is instilled in every operation and endorsed by everyone.
“The New Zealand Food Awards recognised our commitment in 2018 when we were awarded the Food Safety Culture Award sponsored by New Zealand Food Safety. For us, entering this award was a chance to measure ourselves against a verified standard. It's all very well patting ourselves on the back, but it doesn't mean a whole lot. This award was a recognition for our team for the hard work they put in every day when they come to work and bring our values to life."
Entry
1. Brand Name
Pic’s Peanut Butter
Food Safety Culture Award Questions:
2. Describe the food safety culture of your organisation.
The strong food safety culture at Pic’s Peanut Butter has always been driven from the top. Pic Picot is the business owner and chief brand ambassador. From the beginning when Pic was making peanut butter on a small scale, he had a vision to be the “Best Loved Peanut Butter Company in the World”. The development of the Food Safety Program 10 years ago was a result of his uncompromising commitment to food safety and quality. The food safety ethos has been instilled in the whole team right from initial induction.
When Pic started making peanut butter with a concrete mixer out of a small factory in 2008, there were three staff and a mere 1000 jars of peanut butter per day. As the business expanded, so did the need to build a new facility, then four years later in 2014 demand outgrew capacity again resulting in another factory. Phenomenally, the growth continued with exceptional demand for Pic’s Peanut Butter from all around the world. So now, in 2018 a new fully integrated factory complex "Pic's World of Peanut Butter" build is underway. The theme that did not change through this growth was the commitment to food safety and our non-negotiable commitment to quality is and continues to be one of the brand’s core values.
At Pics, Food Safety is an integral part of the processing and manufacturing programme and is therefore a team effort. This is driven from the top and depends on:
Strong Leadership
Committed Managers
Everyone Contributes
Strong Relationships with Key Suppliers.
In Market Support.
Pics values its food safety culture, and this is assisted by getting the buy-in and support from staff.
As food safety is everyone’s responsibility, communication is key to ensuring this occurs. Food safety is a discussion topic at all meetings throughout the organisation from the weekly production meeting, engineering meeting, management meetings through to board meeting. Staff communication is directed across many platforms, there is a staff specific FB page which provides social team news along with information updates across the company suggestion boxes can also be found in all staff rooms and senior staff and team leaders are accessible for direct communication.
All staff (including temp workers) and contractors are taken through an induction (Appendix 1) on joining which has a focus on food safety aspects of the organisation. Staff are trained against the personal hygiene programme & relevant food safety SOP’s (Standard Operating Practices).
Specific staff such as Team Leaders & Engineers are provided with more specialised company specific food safety training around HACCP, food allergens and corrective action procedures (Appendix 2). External Food Safety training is updated annually for all food production and engineering staff. This training is provided by the company’s external Food Consultant.
3. Was there a trigger event or issue that promoted you to make changes in your food safety procedures? If so, what was this?
There was no one particular event that instigated a change to the Food Safety Procedure. The progression was necessary to keep up with the organisational growth which has expanded at an extraordinary rate over the 10 years since inception.
Pic's Peanut Butter now makes approx. 23,000 jars of peanut butter each and every day - which is around 5.5 million jars each year. About 40 per cent of what's produced goes overseas, mainly to Australia from where the peanuts are sourced, but also selling in Japan, China, UK and US and other European countries. Today, Pic's has 40+ employees in his hometown of Nelson.
The organisation was no longer a small New Zealand producer, it was a global leader in peanut butter sales. The procedures now had to encompass different market food regulatory requirements, in particular different product labelling. The procedures now incorporate market access regulatory reviews of ingredients, nutrition information panel data and food allergens. The food allergen review also includes cross contact risk assessment analysis where the raw material specifications and processing cross contact risk are reviewed for each product to establish if additional cross contact allergen labelling is necessary.
4. Explain how the food safety procedures and culture you have described were established.
The initial Food Safety Program and risk-based HACCP plan was developed 10 years ago with the assistance of an external food consultant. 10 years on, the base food safety procedures are still in place however they have been developed to meet the growing demands of a market leading organisation.
There were several key points to this transition;
To ensure the FSP program met regulatory requirements it was audited on an annual basis by an external verification company (Assure Quality Ltd). There have never been any major or critical non-compliances from these audits which is a testament to the robustness of the food safety systems. The recommendations were always implemented as a means of improvement. See attached Verification Report of Deemed Food Control Plan Assure Quality 24 October 2017 (Appendix 3).
In 2014 the storage and filing of the Food Safety procedures, records and information was moved to a cloud-based system (Dropbox). Controlled access through Dropbox allowed more team members to access the required food safety information, records and procedures. This gave the team more ownership of the system.
In 2015 an Inventory Management System (Fishbowl) was installed. This greatly assisted in product traceability of raw goods and finished product. A mock recall tracking scenario can be completed within 1 hour.
Mid 2016, a formal bi-monthly Food Safety Meeting was implemented to strengthen the team knowledge. These are a cross functional team approach with Production, Marketing, Technical and General Manager attending. Minutes and actions are taken and followed up.
While this cloud-based system has worked satisfactorily for many years it was time to implement an integrated quality management system to provide a more efficient method of system management, incident reporting and data analysis. The company is currently in the process of implementing “Mango” as their integrated quality management system program. This will be fully integrated into the operation by the end of 2018.
5. What do you, your suppliers or distributors do to ensure a food safety culture is maintained?
In our commitment to maintaining our food safety culture we hold bimonthly food safety meetings where progress can be tracked, issues raised, and improvements suggested. Alongside this, having good across company communication is key. Staff notice boards ensure every team member has access to production and quality data as and when they need/want it. Ongoing training is offered for all staff within the company to preserve their interaction and awareness of current regulations and Pic’s best practice.
Supplier reviews allow us to ensure that our raw materials & packaging sources are also upholding their food safety company culture (Appendix 4).
6. How do you know you and your suppliers or distributors are maintaining your food safety procedures and culture?
There are limited ingredient suppliers and a range of packaging suppliers for our products. Good relations and communication with the suppliers is key to ensure they understand Pic’s company expectations.
7. Are you doing anything to broaden the influence or impact of your food safety culture and achievements?
As part of the continual improvements process at the new factory complex, Pic will feature in a company specific training video for staff and contractors. He will explain the importance of the product brand and the impact of food safety. There will be a strong focus on food safety risks, so everyone is aware of what the risks are and what is required of them. Some examples would be personal hygiene, protective clothing change procedures, food allergens and what to do if something is out of spec.
To establish and grow, there is a plan to do a formal food safety culture questionnaire through the organisation (appendix 5). This will provide another opportunity for staff feedback and to develop ideas.
Create a vision statement encompassing food safety for the reception area of the new complex. As part of this greater mission statement the production team will be involved in the writing of their departmental statement and they will be able to portray the importance of their role and the food safety culture of our business for the success of the brand and company.
