Sun-Maid Growers of California

In an interview, Ted Beyer, senior manager, quality assurance at Sun-Maid Growers of California discusses his observations on dealing with food safety legislations nationally and internationally.

What would you say about the current state and development of food legislation and initiatives in the food and beverages industry?

Individual state legislatures have started to take on the role of governing the food supply with a much further reach than ever before. The Supreme Court upheld California Prop 12, Farm Animal Confinement, governing animal products coming into California.  Because of supply chains within our country, this may change most of the livestock welfare infrastructure in North America. Further examples of state legislatures likely to affect the entire country are bans on other materials in food or packaging that contain chemicals like PFAS, titanium dioxide, bromated vegetable oil, and potassium bromate, among others.  These compounds have started to be banned in many parts of the world, with the US is only just catching up, driven by states and not the federal government.

In this competitive marketplace, can you elaborate on the expertise and guidance required to synchronize a business with food safety regulations?

We all can strive to learn every federal and state law or agency guidance that is passed or authored. Keeping up with all this literature could easily become burdensome. An approach is to understand and focus on your little piece of the all-encompassing sphere of food legislation. Help could come in the form of having a regulatory consultant check in with you at a pre-defined frequency. On the other hand, setting up subscriptions to literature and websites that give digests of the biggest changes in guidance and regulations can help. Some digests are specific to certain segments of the food industry, while others take a broader approach.  I have found it best to have a mixture of information channels, and not depend on any one method.

We need to broaden our knowledge base beyond what we do in our day to day

Are there any defined methodologies or processes that can guarantee a robust food safety posture?

Warren Buffett once said, “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” Never stop learning. Education must not stop when you leave the learning mechanisms of traditional schooling. Never give up on studying to absorb new topics from a broad range of information channels. Explore the nuance of different cultures and bodies of understanding. Look at food regulation and safety trends around the world.  It is likely someone, somewhere, ran into the same type of issue you are currently facing.

Could you share some of your own experiences that you think empowered you to deploy and establish innovative and impactful food safety processes?

Given the space to learn, research, and review. Not every moment of the working day needs to be filled with ‘productive work’.  We need to broaden our knowledge base beyond what we do in our day to day. Our days commonly are filled with meetings and problem solving; but you must be able to set aside time and space to review, search, learn, and question, easier said than done. Though it is paramount to try.

On an ending note, what is your advice for other senior leaders and CXOs working in the food safety space?

Increase the diversity, equity, and inclusion of your teams. Personnel with differing understanding, education, and experience will only help a company be more successful. DEI programs are essential to build teams of happy and engaged employees that are open to higher levels of trust, learning, and communication. Teams have been proven to be more innovative and make better-informed decisions with a more diverse workforce than without.