More in the November 2016 print issue of Professional Security, from a new event by the British Retail Consortium trade association; their conference ‘Brand Protection 2016′, on managing risks in the food sector’. Mark Rowe visited The Vox Conference Centre, outside Birmingham on Wednesday, October 5.
Among the exhibitors that Professional Security spoke to were Fortress Technology, makers of metal detection machines – not for the security market, but food for safety. Their machines may be used in food production, or pharmaceuticals, or even carpets and textiles; as the manufacturer of those goods does not want a buyer to for example bite into pieces of metal (whether inserted maliciously into the product, or dropping in by accident from other machinery); nor does the carpet manufacturer want bits of metal in their carpet, if an owner steps into it when walking barefoot in their living room.
There is a cross-over into security-risk if for instance a supermarket receives a complaint from a shopper who bought baby food and claims to have found a razor blade inside it. The food manufacturer by using a metal detection machine can show proof that there was no such metal in the food when it went through the detector. The manufacturer can therefore show that the product contamination did not happen at the stage of the production, and must have come further down the supply chain, whether in the supermarket warehouse or even introduced by the customer in an effort to get money from the retailer?!
Professional Security spoke also to Willis Towers Watson, one of the day’s sponsors. They spoke of risk in terms of ‘risky behaviours’, rather than policies and procedures that a business may well have well buttoned-down; except that people do not, for whatever reason, abide by those procedures. Hence the aim is to look at the trends in the business, for ‘deep insight’ into what the risks are, so as to mitigate them, whether manage them, or remove them from the business – which might mean in human terms training or no longer retaining staff that show those risky behaviours.
Among the topics covered at the event were managing digital channels such as Twitter and Facebook in a crisis – the audience went through a fictional scenario involving pieces of rubber found in a new brand of muesli, that required a product recall; food crime, by Gavan Wafer, Head of Crime Operations – National Food Crime Unit at the Food Standards Agency; on cyber risk, Dave Clemente, manager cyber risk – research at Deloitte Consulting; corporate manslaughter, by Helen Devery, partner BLM Law; and on reputational risk, Harry Foster of the Reputation Institute. Event compere was the BBC business journalist Adam Shaw.
A one-day conference, Food Safety Europe 2017, runs at the Hilton Hotel, Tower Bridge, London, on Tuesday, February 7. Visit www.brcevents.com. Or email [email protected].
