Industry Thought-Leader Insights on: The Global Food Chain’s Greatest Challenges

Features - Supply Management

What are the greatest challenges the industry faces in global supply sourcing? What do leading companies do to surmount them? To find out, QA asked industry thought-leaders. Following are their responses:

• October 13, 2015
 
• Lisa Lupo

Hershey

Hugo Gutierrez, Quality, Food Safety and Regulatory VP

For global companies, continuing to be flexible and efficient in the presence of continuous change—industry, government and global consumer trends—is one of the key challenges we have. In order to excel in this circumstance, we need to adapt quickly and continuously, therefore our mindset as leaders requires us to lean on risk when necessary, be bold, and embrace disruptive innovation as a way of doing business.

Chapul Cricket Bars

Pat Crowley, CEO

Our greatest challenge in global supply sourcing is the reliability of organic statements and quality assurance. We make every effort to purchase domestic ingredients; when this is not possible, we do as much investigation as possible into the supplier. 

Tyson Foods

Rick Roop, SVP Food Safety & Quality Assurance

The greatest challenge in global sourcing is developing trust and maintaining a strong relationship with suppliers who understand and respect our food safety and quality culture.

Building and maintaining a food safety and quality culture at any one company is an arduous undertaking that must never be overlooked or taken for granted. Conveying our culture and verifying compliance to our requirements to thousands of supplier locations, both domestic and foreign, further magnifies this responsibility. 

Tyson Foods uses a multi-pronged approach to global sourcing. We use our own dedicated, U.S.-based Tyson food safety and quality account managers when possible to assess compatibility and develop and maintain the relationship with global suppliers.

Due to the large number of locations, we rely upon risk assessment to focus our resources. This risk assessment considers geographic location of the supplier, the propensity for food fraud related to the ingredient or country of origin, usage of the ingredient in our products (e.g., pre- or post-lethality application), and the ingredient manufacturing process itself.

Further, we require that all of our suppliers achieve and maintain certification against a GFSI-benchmarked audit standard. The GFSI-benchmarking process assures us that the audits are based on internationally recognized food safety standards, which are updated at least every four years to assure relevance to current events and regulations.

Beyond the obvious food safety intent, many GFSI-benchmarked audits also include a strong focus on the quality system. This information can also be used to gauge a current or prospective supplier’s ability to adhere to specifications and deliver to established quality standards.

Grandin Livestock Handling Systems

Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Science, Author, and Noted Autistic

A good supply management system has three parts. When there are supply chain disasters, one of the pieces is missing:

1. Third party audits.
2. Second-party corporate audits to make sure third-party auditors do their jobs.
3. Internal audits.

McCormick & Company

Roger Lawrence, Corporate Vice President, Quality Assurance and Regulatory

The greatest contemporary challenge to the spice industry at present is incidental and intentional adulteration as manifested in the peanut cross contamination of cumin in the U.S. and almond in paprika in Europe earlier this year.

This does not impact McCormick & Company because we have a preventive, back-to-source system of control which eliminates any possibility of such an occurrence.

Nevertheless, this is the greatest challenge for the food industry as a whole.

McCormick’s preventive framework, through which it has built a 125-year record in delivering safe, high-quality products, includes:

• Chain of Custody. McCormick has a series of process controls in place that mitigate the opportunity for product adulteration and ensure our customers receive products of high quality, integrity, and wholesomeness.
  • In general, we purchase only whole, unground spices, herbs, and capsicums. This helps us mitigate the chance for economic adulteration we could encounter by purchasing ground product.
  • We buy spices from select strategic vendors who have strong control measures in place, including stringent allergen controls. Neither peanut pieces or shell fragments, nor almond pieces or shell fragments, have been found in shipment inspection of spices.
  • We do not handle any peanut or almond materials in our plants where spices are handled, thereby eliminating the possibility of cross contact.
• A Quality Focus. Quality is a core competency at McCormick. Our goal is to be proactive, anticipating and mitigating any possible quality risk.
  • We have the largest quality investment in the spice and seasoning industry.
  • We are among an elite group of companies to achieve the Safe Quality Food Level 3 Certified Supplier Rating.
  • We conduct several million ingredient and product analyses each year.
  • We don’t just test at the end of the process; we take a proactive, continuous-improvement approach, building quality into each product from the start and across the supply chain.
  • Our sourcing organization has a combined total of more than 100 years of procurement experience in the spice trade. Through this team, we have developed key strategic alliances creating a network of suppliers operating under strict McCormick specified standards.

Quality Management Partners (QMP)

Bradd Eldridge, Principal

I would see assuring and/or maintaining the integrity of the material sourced as the industry’s greatest challenge in global supply sourcing. 

You must first have full confidence in the manufacturer and its manufacturing process—that it is fully compliant to regulations with proper quality and testing checks. 

Next is assuring that the modes of transportation are effective toward preventing contamination, tampering, theft or diversion, so when the material arrives at its final destination, it remains a quality material and safe for use.

The Acheson Group

David Acheson, President

Industry faces several big challenges in global supply sourcing:

• Finding out who is in your supply chain that has a role in controlling risk.
• Having the resources to check that suppliers are indeed controlling risks.
• Having confidence in a third-party audit process that is a snap shot in time.
• Understanding what a COA really means in terms of risk reduction.