Food Safety Culture Training
Make Food Safety Everyone's Job

Food safety culture is the values, beliefs, and behaviors that a company and its employees show about the importance of food safety. GFSI describes it as the shared values, beliefs, and norms that shape how people think and act about food safety throughout an organization. In a strong culture, food safety is built into every part of the business, not just the food safety department.

Systems and procedures only work if people follow them. A strong food safety culture helps prevent foodborne illness, supports compliance with regulatory standards, reduces the risk of product recalls, and protects your brand's reputation.

GFSI's position paper A Culture of Food Safety describes five dimensions: vision and mission, people, consistency, adaptability, and hazard and risk awareness. Version 2.0, released in March 2026, keeps all five and groups them into two tiers: organizational foundations (values, vision, and mission; people) and the cultural essentials that show up in daily work (hazard and risk awareness; consistency; adaptability and continuous improvement).

Yes. GFSI added food safety culture elements to its Benchmarking Requirements in 2020, so the recognized schemes now address it. BRCGS requires a documented food safety and quality culture plan, SQF requires senior site management to lead and support a food safety culture, and FSSC 22000 includes food safety and quality culture in its management commitment requirements.

BRCGS clause 1.1.2 requires the site's senior management to define and maintain a clear plan for developing and continually improving the site's food safety and quality culture. The plan should include activities that involve all parts of the site that affect product safety, an action plan showing how those activities will be carried out and measured with timescales, and a review of how effective completed activities have been.

The 2020 revision of the Codex General Principles of Food Hygiene (CXC 1-1969) made food safety culture a foundation of food hygiene. It highlights management and staff commitment, leadership, awareness of the importance of food hygiene, open communication (including about deviations), and enough resources for the food hygiene system to work.

Most sites combine several sources: employee surveys, interviews and focus groups, observation on the floor, and indicators such as near-miss and concern reporting, training completion, and repeat audit findings. The course covers tools for assessing where your culture is today and tracking whether it's improving.

Everyone has a part, but it starts at the top. The schemes put responsibility on senior management to lead, set the direction, provide resources, and model the behaviors they expect. Supervisors and front-line employees make the culture real in daily work, and they need to feel able to raise concerns.

The course is ideal for food safety managers, quality assurance professionals, production supervisors, team leaders, and anyone involved in food safety practices in their organization. Senior managers responsible for the culture plan will get a lot out of it too.

Topics include the principles of food safety culture, how to assess and improve food safety behaviors, the role of leadership in building a strong culture, regulatory and scheme expectations, and practical tools for building food safety into daily operations.

You'll learn how to evaluate and strengthen your company's food safety culture, improve employee engagement with food safety practices, and understand what regulators and GFSI schemes expect, so your culture holds up in audits and on the floor.

The next public session hasn't been scheduled yet. Registration is $300 per seat. Email US.Info@kiwa-asi.com or call 1 (800) 477-0778 and we'll let you know when registration opens.

Yes. For groups of six or more, we offer private food safety culture training on site or virtually, tailored to your site, your culture plan, and your people. Email US.Info@kiwa-asi.com for a quote.