Should security systems in food factories be compulsory?

After concerns for food hygiene propelled across the country in recent months, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) have begun their investigation. This investigation has impacted businesses such as Wetherspoons, as well as schools and care homes up and down the country.

The horse meat scandal of 2013, which seems like forever ago is still fresh in the mind of the British consumer — and customers are losing faith in supermarkets that are supplied by untrusting production companies.

In this article, we’ve teamed up with 2020 Vision who are retailers of access control systems to find out some of the benefits of security systems in a food factory and how businesses can retain their audience. We also explore the crime surrounding the industry and how the implementation of protective systems can boost satisfaction.

Picking the perfect security systems

Our technology is advancing at such a rapid rate and this is having a profound impact on the security systems that have become readily available for businesses — showing that there’s no excuse to not implement it into organisations.

Food factories in particular need to heighten their security from the outside by investing in access control systems. This will put an instant barrier between operations and any entry attempts by unauthorised personnel. Whether this a swiped identification card, biometrics or a passcode way of entry, only authorised personnel will be granted access.

To uphold the British consumers expectation, CCTV is another security system that should be installed in food factories. By spring 2018, all slaughterhouses within England are required to have CCTV systems in place that can be reviewed by the FSA who have unprecedented access to footage within a 90-day period — is this something we should be looking to do in food factories to ensure safety for the British people?

Not only that, CCTV systems make a great investment for managers who want to gain greater visibility on their factory’s operations whilst showing Brits that they aren’t afraid to record footage.

Key benefits:

• Customer reassurance — as not all food factories operate openly and everything is hidden away, this can create suspicion from a consumer’s perspective as they will be the ones buying the final product once distributed to stores around the country. CCTV will counter this issue as it shows that operation centres have nothing to hide — giving them the ability to publish any footage if accused of misconduct.
• Maintaining quality — using more advanced CCTV within food factories will enable production companies to monitor the production line and maintain the standards that they sell themselves on. Sometimes, a human error is unavoidable on a production line after several hours of non-stop work — being able to detect it instantly is essential.

Is crime present in British food factories?

CCTV has the ability to prevent crime from happening — and it has been proven. By installing these systems, food factories can protect themselves from threats that are external and internal as well as being able to support themselves in any claims of violation.

Questioning the contents of our food has been of conversation recently, but fraud is something else that has a common place within food factories. 89% of manufacturers on a global scale were impacted by fraud in 2015. In fact 2017 saw a 7% rise on this result.

Both information theft and compliance breach stood at 30% when looking at the common types of fraud to occur. This was shortly followed by intellectual property theft standing at 26% of the respondents who were asked — all of which could cause great impacts to production lines.

39% of those committing fraudulent acts were junior employees who had only recently started working for a company. Temporary manufacturing workers came in at second place with 37%, while those in senior or middle management positions were at 33% — the same as ex-staff members. However, vendors/suppliers who do not have as much access to your business accounted for 33% too. This clarifies that anyone has the potential to commit a crime within a factory!

Sources:

https://www.videosurveillance.com/factory.asp

https://www.ifacility.co.uk/food-production-security/

https://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Article/2017/01/18/Food-manufacturers-hit-by-increase-in-fraud

http://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/news/employee-theft-costs-british-businesses-190-million

Guest blog from https://www.mediaworks.co.uk/