The True Cost Of Food Safety Certification

"Food Safety is a direct cost to your bottom line."

Sound familiar?

Under no circumstances would I try and convince anyone that committing to Food Safety is an inexpensive operation. It's fraught with cost, including time. How much time, and how much money does it cost?

Well that's going to depend on your organization. You generally want to allow up to 6 months to prepare if you intend to do everything in-house, and someone will need to be spending at least half their time on food safety.

But what about the cost of not doing food safety?

As retailers look to minimize their exposure by ensuring that their suppliers meet a benchmarked standard, we've seen companies that have adopted food safety certification move to the forefront of the marketplace, gaining market share as they've found more markets to sell into. Put simply, food safety certification is not necessarily just all a cost - but can add real value to your business.

That point aside - what if a food safety issue does occur? Food Safety hones your organizations recall procedures, and ensures that any food safety issue is recalled off the market in a timely manner - minimizing company financial exposure and physical exposure from consumers.

Food Safety has a number of preventative measures as well, inherent in Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP's). After all, if your organization is involved in a recall, no doubt that will cost money - but how much more will it cost the entire industry as consumers change their shopping habits away from the affected products?

In competitive markets, can organizations afford not to embrace food safety, and an top of that, the means to verify the food safety system is in effect through certification? The cost of not adopting food safety is one that is far too great a cost for the industry to bare.

Now that I've successfully scared people reading this, let's look on the bright side. By adopting Food Safety, organizations are embracing a pro-active approach to reduce costs in the long run, by minimizing food safety related recalls and guaranteeing markets to sell to.