Transforming Food Safety Audits with Digital Tools and AI

Speaker A: I believe that food safety and social responsibility go hand in hand so that your employees truly feel that you're taking care of them, and then they can take care of you, and they'll take care of your products as well.

Speaker B: You're listening to Food Tech Talk Supply Chain Insights from Farm to Fork, a podcast discussing the latest trends and technologies in the food and supplements industries. Brought to you by TrustWell, featuring conversations with regulatory experts, quality and safety champions, and thought leaders across the industry. I'm your Host, Katie Jones, CEO at Ah, TrustWell. If you're loving the conversation, don't forget to subscribe. And stay tuned to the end of the episode where you'll hear our guests tell us their key food industry predictions for the next 12 months.

Speaker C: All right, let's jump right in. We're joined by Lilia Rivera Steven, senior product manager at Trusswell. With a background spanning food safety management, quality auditing, regulatory compliance, and product development, Lilia has experienced audits from both sides of the quote, unquote clipboard. Her work now focuses on helping food companies improve traceability, compliance, and operational efficiency through technology. She also is an incredible member of our team, and I want to make sure that was added officially to. Today. We'll explore the idea of the empathetic audit, how audits can move beyond fear and anxiety and shift into something that's more collaborative, effective, and human centered while still protecting food safety and quality standards, the purpose at its core of an audit. Welcome, Lilia, to the podcast.

Speaker A: Thank you, Katie. I'm happy to be here.

Speaker C: So let's talk about your background. What first drew you into food safety and quality management? And what's kept you passionate, very passionate about the field?

Speaker A: Well, I'd like to say that my life and my career in food safety actually started from when I was a baby. I learned to walk through tomato fields. We've always been an agricultural family in every single moment of my life. Once I finished college, I actually started helping in the family business with an audit. My father needed help. We had a mango processing facility, and my father needed help in, uh, preparing for a food safety audit. He mentioned how in the past he hadn't gotten the scores that he wanted, and he was hoping to get a better score this time around. As I went in to the food safety department, I realized that there was some work to be done as we were preparing for that audit. And I, uh, like to say that once you get into food safety, you're either in or you're out. So I was in, and I was captivated by compliance and just saving lives, preventing diseases.

Speaker C: I love that. And you were in from the beginning. And it's a harrowing career and something that I find, especially with the customers that we work with, there's so much drive and passion within the industry and a lot of just ownership about what we're doing every single day. So when you think about that audit, so you were brought in, your dad brought you in, because that audit was stressful and hey, I want to improve. And when you think about audits being typically associated with that kind of stress, and for you, what does an empathetic audit mean to you? When I say empathetic audit, what does that mean to you?

Speaker A: So as I continued my career at the mango processing facility, I started taking every single training that I could find on any, uh, GFSI scheme or any sort of scheme. I took an ISO 9001, I took SQF, Primus, BRC, some social responsibility trainings as well, for either a lead auditor or an auditor. Because I really wanted to understand what are my auditor is going to be looking for when they come to me. And as my career progressed, I went into auditing as well. And, uh, what I understood is that food safety people, we really, really care. We can see that in every single conference that we go to and every customer that we talk to. As you mentioned, we own it and we are passionate about it. Being an empathetic auditor or having an empathetic audit is about understanding that the person is very nervous. They want that score. They want to be able to show their leadership that they are doing the right job. And as an auditor, going into a facility where you are making sure that the person is doing everything they're supposed to the right way can be very, very stressful for that person. I remember having a, uh, one of the most difficult audits I've had in my life. And I later went on to actually work with the auditor, but she stopped when I told her, I'm sorry, I don't have the document that you're asking for. Keeping in mind, I was working in Mexico, so there was a language barrier. I'm fluent in English, but when my mind is in Spanish and all my documents are in Spanish and everything is in Spanish and the auditor is in, in English, things can just get lost in translation. So she stopped and she said, okay, I'm going to ask this again in a different way and I'm going to explain to you what the document actually is. And once she did, I was like, oh, yes, of course I have that. Another auditor could have Easily just checked it off as, nope, this document is not present. And then it was going to become a corrective action. Maybe it would have been an easy corrective action because the document did exist. But that is where I learned being an auditor is not just about going through the checklist. Do you have it? Do you not? It's really about giving the food safety person the chance to prove that they own their program and they know their program.

Speaker D: Looking to improve your supply chain? At uh Trustwell, we've been connecting the dots between food industry and data for over 40 years to give you more control and visibility. Our comprehensive food logic platform sets a new standard for compliance, transparency and quality in the food industry. Request a free demo. The link is in the show notes.

Speaker C: Just that tiny little bit of grace and what a difference that made in obviously the results of the audit in the near term, but also the impact that it had on you and your career. Having now worked on both sides. You explained, hey, you know, I was being audited and then I was completing audits later on in your career. What are the biggest misconceptions that both auditors and the company have about each other? So what is the biggest misconception that maybe auditors have about the company that they're auditing and then vice versa?

Speaker A: If we start from the operator side, there's this fear that the auditor is there, kind of like to police or to find something that's wrong, to continue searching and digging until I find something wrong and then the operator getting in that kind of defensive mode that something will go wrong. On the other hand, I did meet a few auditors that that was their goal is like, I will find something. And although it might help find that one corrective action, it might be a small one. And the true goal of the audit is to understand is this food safety program and is this business working with a food safety culture? So when things go wrong, how did they get fixed? When something was a deviation, how did the business go into that root cause analysis and the corrective actions and preventative actions? I believe that if both the operator and the auditor come to the table with we are here to make sure that the business, not just the food safety manager, but the business itself, is operating with a food safety first culture, those misconceptions would be gone. The auditor is there to make sure that we are preventing diseases and the food safety person is there to make sure that we are preventing diseases. It's the same goal for the industry.

Speaker C: So shared outcomes in the end between both parties can help align an understanding that, hey, we're here on the same team to do that. And how can food safety leaders create that culture? So you talked about the audit. Yes. We're looking for specific things that may lead to a corrective action. But really, how are we looking at this holistically across the business? How can food safety leaders create a culture where audits feel more like continuous improvement? Right. Okay. This is a check, and it's important rather than punishment, rather than, uh, some kind of disciplinary action. From a cultural perspective, how would you support that?

Speaker A: When we were in our Mango facility, we came in. My father was the one that started the business in Mexico, and he built the facility from scratch. And little by little, each sibling started joining the business. My brother joined as an operator, manager, or. I don't know, our titles were so fluid, but he wasn't operating.

Speaker C: Classic family business, Right? Just do everything.

Speaker A: My mother, brother joined for all the office management and HR and finance, and then I joined for food safety. We had the opportunity to stop and understand that our employees were not in it. Their heart wasn't in it like we wanted it to be. And if there was a food safety issue, nothing was being brought up. If things were getting hidden rather than brought to light. We then started thinking about seeing their way of life. And although the company was very proud to, uh, have a very high salary compared to others in Mexico, we took a moment to kind of look at what their life was like, and we studied their socioeconomic status, and we realized that even though we were paying twice as much as any other company in the area, it was just not enough. That's when we started working towards a social responsibility program. And we went for offering daycare for the children and offering lunches and, uh, offering free dinner for the families. Family offering multiple different things to make sure that our employees, when they were working, they were able to be fully present and dedicated to the company as well. I believe that food safety and social responsibility go hand in hand so that your employees truly feel that you're taking care of them, and then they can take care of you, and they'll take care of your products as well.

Speaker C: What role does leadership play in shaping that mindset for companies? So in that particular case, right, as leaders in the business, you took a step back and said, hey, like, how can we improve the lives of our employees? And in a way, kind of creating more of an ownership mentality of those employees, and then therefore, right. Seeing those results come through in terms of how they look at food safety. So from your perspective, how important and what role does leadership play in shaping

Speaker A: a, uh, food safety culture is extremely important. So leaders, as the siblings and my father, the leadership was the one that was food safety first. And when we did this switch to a more socially responsible business, we were able to also shift because we are showing you that we care. We can one, hold you accountable because it has to be a partnership, but also show you that you, uh, do not need to be afraid of us. And I think that is one thing that I learned that has helped me and shaped my career. It's leadership is not scary. A food safety manager or the CEO of the company, like what we care about is basically the same thing. It's our families. So one is a, ah, gluten allergy, another one can be a nut allergy. But the end of the day that

Speaker C: is who we are.

Speaker A: And seeing both the employee and showing the employee that leadership is just a person, we are just normal people that we can talk to was the way to lose the fear. Our employees did not need to fear us. We were just part of the same team and we were there to help them as well as they were there to help us.

Speaker C: I love that you've articulated just a core tenet of just culture building in general, which is listening, observing before you prescribe something, and then also just approaching it with such a degree of compassion and empathy for just for where people are at. As we're looking at about midway through the year and some amazing things happening in the industry, especially the intersection between food and technology, we're seeing a lot of change. Whether it's AI or just the pace of change in which we're seeing in technology. And it's changing how audits and compliance in general are being managed. So from your perspective, how can digital tools support more transparency and trust during that audit process?

Speaker A: So that is when FoodLogic came into my life. Although we're seeing this shift now, technology has been there for a while. And when I started managing more of the entire food safety program and the complete portfolio that we had, so, um, call it Mango, but it was all tropical fruits. I felt like I could not be everywhere and do everything and truly see the entire program with a stack of papers this big on my desk at the end of the day, where I was just having to make sure that all of the CCPs were done and then signed every single document. And if something was wrong, then let's try to figure out which lots of were the ones that were wrong. Pull that from either a truck or a cooling log, ah, or cooling room. Or wherever it was. So the corrective action took place so much later than when it should have because there's just no way of being able to see everything. And that's when I started looking for technology. It's like there has to be a way for me to get more immediate notifications when things are wrong. And there has to be a better way for me to search on a lot and find all of the documents that are related to it and find all of the things that are related to this supplier. Or even during an audit, whether it's an internal audit or it was a third party audit, getting an auditor to tell you, search, give me all of the trace back for this specific lot from this supplier. My mind immediately went to, there has to be a solution that is easier. And that's where I met Food Logic. So the ability to take everything that we're doing as food safety managers and make it digital so that we can search faster, identify the problems faster and stop. So again, going back to preventing diseases, stopping a lot of going out into the market that shouldn't have gone out. I think that's the role that technology has been doing for a while. But then at the same time, as we look forward now that AI is here, being able to incorporate that as

Speaker C: well on that, where do you see the balance of, let's just say AI and technology in general, but also the human being. So are there risks in relying too heavily on technology in an audit, whereas you still need that human in the loop?

Speaker A: Absolutely. It is a concern, and it was a concern in that time as well, of just like we could be blindly signing every single piece of paper, we can blindly touch a button as well and not truly analyze the information that we have or just rely on AI or the system will tell me when something's wrong so I can just sit back and relax. Continuous improvement requires the person to be always aware and always thinking and going, owning your program. So having a food safety first culture has to also include the person making sure that we are always thinking about continuous improvement as well as, uh, checking that things are actually as good or bad as the system is telling you that is happening.

Speaker C: As you look ahead. How do you see audits evolving as we're seeing more adoption of traceability already? We talked about AI, increasing regulatory expectations, continuing to grow. What role does the audit or how do you see audits in general evolving as we just see, I think more tech adoption, but also just more transparency and more visibility in the food industry.

Speaker A: The desk audit has become something that can now Be done completely remote, being able to just have those documents available for the auditor to review, and the auditor is actually reviewing them from the comfort of their home or on their way to the facility. But that is something that with technology, we're already kind of moving away from sitting in front of an auditor. I had a roundtable that was just to be able to sit down and do all of my desk audits where I can just show document by document, every single thing that the auditor was looking to see. A desk audit can be fully virtual now. It was interesting during COVID how some of the audits were actually being done with drones and the auditor was able to just see what was happening. I still believe being in person allows the auditor to actually see and witness the culture more. But then moving into a live program. So the food safety program being a living, breathing thing, when your food safety documents, records and everything that you are doing to ensure food safety is digital, you can pull everything out faster and more easily for the auditor to be able to review. So audits could actually get shorter because we can move faster through the document review portion of it. But also being able to prove that, hey, something went wrong, here's the corrective action that I did for it, here's the preventative action. We can see that this issue did not occur again, or maybe it did, but it was only a year after. And we can immediately find those root cause analysis. So I think that technology is going to allow the food safety programs to be a living, breathing thing and then also make the audits less stressful because we're owning the program more, we feel more confident that the records are there, the documents are there, and we can even use AI to build those documents, ensure that they're in compliance with whichever scheme it is that we're building. Just having more confidence is what technology can bring.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Speed to insight. Just. You talked about that stack of paper, right? Taking that. And even if the audit is in person, which I do agree, there's, I mean just general such a value with that face to face time. But then capturing that data digitally so that you can speed up the uh, corrective action if there does need to be one, and you can be alerted right away. So much value in that. As you think about the next year forward, what's your food industry prediction for the next 12 months?

Speaker A: I believe that we were going to start seeing more use of AI. Using AI to identify risks in my supply chain, understand when something is wrong, any point, if I, in my supply chain, what are the risks for a specific product, um, building that HACCP plan and identifying those risks as we did before with research and finding the research documents, being able to use them as reference during those risk analysis reports. That type of work can be a lot faster while still ensuring that it is current and correct. I also believe that anything that has to do with drafting is going to move to a, uh, faster and better way and it does not mean that AI is going to be building and writing all of our documents for us. We still still need to own our program, but being able to make sure that we're not forgetting something and kind of using AI as the wingman wing woman to make sure that we are getting it right.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Well, we happen to be recording this right after Father's Day and so I just want to express some gratitude to your father who got you involved in food safety years ago and that led you to your home now at trustwell and working with our customers and our internal teams to help continuously improve our product so that we can together support food safety and save lives. So Lilia, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was an awesome I loved hearing more about your story, about your background and just really appreciate the time.

Speaker A: Thank you. And you're absolutely right. So gracias Papa Thanks.

Speaker B: Thank you for joining us for another bite sized nugget of ah, food tech talk supply chain insights from farm to fork. Make sure to subscribe and if you love the podcasts, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Music, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about TrustWell and request your free demo of our technology platform that connects food formulation products, nutrition analysis and compliant labeling with traceability, recall, readiness and and supply chain transparency. Please Visit us at www.trustwell.com and click Get Started or click the link in the show Notes to learn more. Thanks for listening.