Out of chaos comes a commitment to safety, consistency

Although it seems to be happening at a snail’s pace for me, we are wrapping up what seems to be the longest year experienced for many of us. When the calendar pages get this low in number, many people begin to reflect on the happenings and what it means for the future. Along those lines, I have been able to reflect upon the takeaways from 2020.

"coronavirus-covid-19" by Nursing Schools
Near Me is licensed under CC BY 2.0

As we have seen, along with the prevalence of COVID-19 comes chaos. Therefore, we (both myself and our clients) need to ensure we identify and keep strong and consistent our commitment to producing food that is both safe and of the highest quality.

The pandemic has brought long days and late nights for many processors, including our clients: trying to keep up with the increased demand of product; ensuring harvesting and processing schedules remain on time and fluid; keeping their eyes open with longer-than-normal work hours; ensuring the health of their employees and families remains a priority; among so many other important things.

All this increased client stress has trickled to our team at We R Food Safety: running deviation reports, bringing new clients on board more quickly than is typical, writing what seems to be an exponential amount of NR appeals, etc. We have also been busy behind the scenes to aid in ensuring safe meat products are able to be produced at our client facilities across the country.

This isn’t a negative reflection or a gripe about increased workload. In fact, in the end, I am incredibly grateful to be a part of such an outstanding team and to be able to help processors across the U.S. get through their roadblocks in these ultra-challenging times. I’m also very proud of our clients and our team here for navigating through these issues as we have. For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of working on this team is the capability to help reduce food waste in this country through pathogen modeling, sampling, regulatory knowledge, and identifying when a product or production date ultimately is related to a food safety hazard. Being able to state that our daily work contributes to fighting the food waste epidemic is extremely fulfilling.

Yet, the 2020 calendar year is near an end, and although we may be hopeful for what 2021 will bring, it is important that a commitment to produce a safe and high-quality product consistently remains the key focus. My team and I will be here to help that happen now and in the New Year!

·       -- Abbey Davidson, Food Safety Consultant, Abbey@wrfs.pro