Safety and Food Hygiene Complaint and Issue Management

Each year worldwide, unsafe food causes 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420,000 deaths. 30% of foodborne deaths occur among children under 5 years of age. WHO estimated that 33 million years of healthy lives are lost due to eating unsafe food globally each year, and this number is likely an underestimation.¹

The financial and reputational cost of an outbreak linked to your food business can be crippling. If faced with a food-related complaint, would you know what to do?

Food-related complaints can vary widely. A customer might make a complaint to regulatory bodies, or they might complain directly to your business. Either way, it’s important to know how to respond.

A complaint might be relatively minor, for example, a customer simply looking to report bad food, or it might be a more serious issue such as food poisoning, the consequences of which can be devastating and far-reaching.

Common causes of food poisoning² include:

• Bacteria and viruses
• Parasites
• Molds, toxins and contaminants
• Allergens.

Safety and food hygiene issues or food poisoning complaints might occur either on your own premises or somewhere in your supply chain, so it’s important to be prepared so you know exactly how to respond when and if they do, and to put in place measures to minimise the risk of them occurring in the first place.

If you’re a new food business unsure of the best way to manage food complaints, it’s likely that you also don’t have the resources or expertise internally – or a complaint management process. That’s where the NSF comes in. Our experts can be your spare – and safe – pair of hands, leaving you to focus on your business while they provide the know-how.

Having an issue management process in place can ensure food-related complaints are handled appropriately and proportionately, helping to avoid unnecessary escalation.

However, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. Processes are required for solving or managing different types of complaint, which might include:

• Food poisoning complaints
• Food hygiene complaints
• Physical hazards in food
• Accidents and injuries
• Chemical or food allergen complaints.

But how do you know how to manage each type of issue, and how do you allocate the time when you’re also trying to manage day-to-day business, too? Even established food businesses rarely have the internal resources required to pull together appropriate responses. Fortunately, our services are available to ensure you respond to any complaints in the right way.

NSF’s consulting services can provide the food safety expertise your organisation needs, whatever its size, to improve food safety programs. Our technical experts can also help you to determine the root cause of an issue or complaint and put in place measures to correct it or a complaint management system to help prevent it from happening again.

Support services that help you to track, investigate and manage food issues and complaints.

In the face of a safety and food hygiene management issue, executing the right steps competently, and in good time, can be critical in minimising risk to public health and business reputation. Outsourcing to qualified experts can ensure you always respond appropriately and proportionately.

At NSF, our experts effectively become an extension of your team, taking the strain at what can be a difficult and pressurised time. We’ll enable you to:

• Respond quickly to a complaint or issue
• Follow verified issue management processes
• Manage documentation, data verification, and communication
• Liaise with regulatory bodies to provide confidence and assurance
• Improve complaint tracking
• Protect consumer health
• Uphold customer trust.

The key to a successful outcome is not waiting until a crisis occurs. We’ll work with you to identify and agree processes and methodology in advance. Our experts can support your business with:

• Biological and food poisoning complaints
• Chemical and allergen complaints
• Physical and foreign body complaints
• Accident and injury complaints
• Facility incidents
• Regulatory Enforcement actions support (i.e. regulatory and local authority agencies).

Seamlessly connecting compliance, expertise and risk management.

We provide the essential connectivity between your customers, suppliers, enforcement authorities, and operational teams, offering end-to-end support in food compliance, sampling, and highly valued technical expertise. From outsourced staffing to supplier management and product testing, our global network ensures flexibility, efficiency, and seamless integration, so you can focus on strategic priorities with confidence.

As a valued client, you will also have access to the full portfolio of NSF’s solution offering developed over the last 80 years as a leader in the industry. This includes training, auditing, and certification*.

Sources

¹Estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases, WHO

²Food Poisoning, FoodSafety.gov

* Use of NSF consulting services or attending NSF training sessions does not provide an advantage, nor is it linked in any way to the granting of certification.