Food Safety Culture Does Not Exist Without Strong Leadership

For food safety, leadership has been, at times, both the solution and the problem.

We can look to many outbreaks or recalls and find the Herculean efforts of companies, their employees and their leaders.

Over the past 30 years, I have had the great privilege to present before industry executives, state and federal leadership and even before organizations such as the National Restaurant Association. Their willingness to include the consumer perspective is critical in assessing the effectiveness of their leadership. We can also look at food industry leaders who sit on committees and even collaborate with those who would be considered their competitors to prioritize a discussion of food safety or a lesson on best practices.

Unfortunately, we can look to some landmark incidents and find that the key element recorded for history to examine was the failure of leadership.

Some leaders’ failures have resulted in consumers experiencing harm and even families dealing with preventable deaths. For some companies, these lapses in responsibilities gained fines and penalties. For few leaders, these failures came with prison time.

On Sept. 21, 2015, at the federal courthouse in Albany, Ga., U.S. District Judge W. Louis Sands presided over the sentencing of three Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) executives convicted for their roles of knowingly selling Salmonella typhimurium-tainted peanuts to food processing manufacturers, which then made their way to consumers. In late 2008 and early 2009, nine people died and at least 714 people in 46 states, half of them children, fell ill due to food poisoning from eating products containing contaminated peanuts, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A true definition of responsibility for food industry leadership must include not only economic value, but also the company’s impact on consumers and the environment.

Immediately prior to sentencing, Sands stated, “We place faith that no one would intentionally ship products to market that are contaminated. … Consumers are at the mercy of food producers for the safety of the products. These acts [of the convicted PCA executives] were driven by profit and the protection of profit … thus greed.”

Sands concluded that PCA owner Stewart Parnell had clear “knowledge that there was Salmonella in the peanuts and that it was being shipped out of [his] plant.” He noted that Parnell had “taken risks for years,” that they were “eventually discovered and traced back” to his corporation, and that, unfortunately, “thousands of people suffered and nine died” from Parnell’s knowing disregard for public health and safety.

Parnell and his brother were convicted on 71 criminal counts, including conspiracy, fraud and other federal charges. Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison, the longest punishment ever handed out to a producer in a U.S. foodborne illness case. His brother (and food broker) Michael Parnell was sentenced to 20 years, and the plant’s former quality assurance manager received a sentence of five years. The court later sentenced two plant managers who served as cooperating witnesses to three and six years in prison respectively for their roles.

A true definition of responsibility for food industry leadership must include not only economic value, but also the company’s impact on consumers and even the environment. Though leaders can share responsibility with others, it cannot be simply assigned or even outsourced to third-party entities. For a company to succeed in terms of food safety, leadership must always prioritize and even leverage a will to understand that the pure profit motive will never guarantee an enablement of corporate social responsibility.

This understanding of the term also helps us to understand the role of strong leadership in a company’s food safety culture. While one can assume that the actions of PCA’s owner put forth a lower set of standards for those other executives who were sent to prison for their roles, one can also see the reverse in that a strong leader who sets a good example for prioritizing food safety will influence others in their roles.

How does this appear? Beyond a corporate response to the media, strong leadership with a priority on food safety is apparent in likelihood and severity assessments, in investments into additional testing and auditing beyond the minimum, and in training — not only for the workforce, but also for the leaders themselves.

Leaders take risks every day, but strong leaders do not make decisions that undermine the faith that consumers place in their company and in their brand.