Bio:
John has over 45 years of experience in various aspects of food production, food safety, quality assurance, sanitation, training, and auditing. He spent twenty-five years with Trident Seafoods, starting as a crab fisherman and then working in roles as plant manager, corporate HR, regulatory compliance, national account sales, FSQA, and then as the Director of Training and Development for the company. He worked as a technical sales rep for four years with Diversey, helping clients with their sanitation programs. John spent eight years with AIB International, providing GMP and HACCP audits all over the world. He is now an independent food safety consultant based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He’s currently serving as the Vice Chair of the Seafood Quality & Safety Professional Development Group (PDG) of the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) and is also on the DEI council for IAFP. He enjoys working with clients to help them ensure food-safe products and he’s a core team member at Cultivate SA, helping companies assess and change their food safety cultures.

Sanitation is critical to the success of your IPM program

Abstract:
One role of sanitation is often overlooked. Believe it or not, the folks that clean our plants or our vessels play a key role in the success of our IPM (Integrated Pest Management) program. In addition to the primary tasks of cleaning, employees should be working to deny pests ingress to our facility and to limit the food, water, and shelter that pests need to survive and breed. It is thus vital that each and every employee understands the signs of pest activity and the need to report what they see. Further, they need to understand the risks associated with their own behaviors, such as the common problem of doors being left wide open at night during the sanitation shifts or hatches left open onboard processing vessels.
Do engaged, informed, and empowered sanitation workers act as a predictor of success for an integrated pest management program? Indeed, imagine having a frontline sanitation team upon which you can rely to manage existing risks and to identify new ones through peer observations. And one that, because of its food safety risk management behaviors, dramatically reduces the potential of product contamination due to pest activity. We can achieve that engagement by looking at the shared values, norms, and beliefs prevailing in the company about food safety (and particularly looking at the culture of the sanitation crew) and actively working to improve that culture.