Empowering the regulators in the development of national performance measurements in food safety

Abstract

Purpose – This study proposes a straightforward set of performance measurements for industrialized nations. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, the paper explores the notion of ranking nations based on food safety performances, beyond benchmarking. The paper appraises how a global comparative analysis could contribute to best practices and continuance improvement in food safety. Second, this paper presents an experiment in which a group of regulators took part in a workshop held in Helsinki, Finland in the Fall 2011. Design/methodology/approach – A session was held in October 2011 in Helsinki, and many countries were invited. A total of 17 countries were represented. The following countries were represented: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the USA. The session was designed to be informative, interactive and flexibly tailored to the delegates' needs and experience. It was also designed to raise awareness and understanding of benchmarking and supra-national ranking systems, what it is and how it can be applied using practical examples from healthcare and across other sectors. Findings – The session also introduced the principles of process thinking and illustrated how process benchmarking can be a useful tool for continuance improvement. The session then built upon the theory presented in the introductory portion by focusing specifically on the essence of ranking indicators. In this session, delegates spent time familiarizing themselves with indicators provided by the University of Guelph, discussing how they might implement it within their individual nations and across the trust as a whole. Practical implications – The collection of primary data was also debated at the session. Public trust, for example, could easily be an indicator which could be included. Measurement of public trust in food safety might be important for governments. It could provide them with information on the performance of the food safety systems from a consumers' perspective. To be an effective indicator of performance the measurement of public trust in food safety should be liable to change. Therefore, changes in performance of the food safety systems have to be reflected through the measurement of public trust in food safety. Originality/value – The Helsinki session is believed to be the first international meeting in which benchmarking metrics were discussed in order to rank countries based on food safety risk practices. Ranking programs in food safety remain controversial. Most particularly, risk assessors and the public service remain skeptical about their effectiveness. The Helsinki meeting was not met to alleviate the skepticism around ranking systems, but it did allow many to better appreciate several perspectives from around the world.