HACCP and HARA = A tool to address Health & Safety issues beyond your 'walls'

[Chisala Ng'andwe]

Delivering a 2-day HARA training at a BRCGS certificated site manufacturing packaging for consumer goods, I had an interesting conversation with the participants at the end of the course. Before the training none of the attendees had ever considered the possibility of their products harming their customers especially considering the nature of their products (e.g. bin liners, damp proofing membrane). The only safety they ever considered and which they took very seriously was the health and safety of people on the manufacturing site, for which there was no compromise. It got me thinking about the several sites that I've had the privilege of visiting through training or consultancy work where I have seen very clear evidence of the uncompromising approach to health and safety almost being universal. Unfortunately, there seems to be a little more 'wiggle room' or tolerance for compromised product safety. Whilst it's so common to see boards on site which clearly communicate the number of consecutive days a site has run without any reported health and safety accidents, this is not something routinely done with product safety.

Back to my interesting conversation... which gave me a chance to rapidly reflect and ended with me blurting out, "HARA gives you a tool to address health and Safety issues related to the product manufactured within your facility once it moves beyond the your four walls and it sits with your customer and/or consumer." Product safety is indeed and has always been a health and safety issue for which there should never be any compromises.

 

[Cathy Gladwin]

@Chisala Ng'andwe you've shown us the bigger picture, all respect to you! I think we've all heard of or seen horrible accidents where either the product failed or was used incorrectly and some of those stories I wish I'd never heard. Well I'm in complete agreement that this is in fact the purpose of HACCP / HARA. When we talk through the risk rating system the site uses, it is for the site to determine and explain what "worst case" means to them. So this is where we revisit the scope of the risk assessment. Since we're already focused on the safety and legality of the product, it becomes the "severity" or "impact" to the user or consumer that gets scored. And were back to your insightful post Chisala, we've now brought a product safety possibility forward for consideration by the team, while they realise the potential disastrous health and safety impact on real people using the product. Just reminds us how valuable the risk assessment is doesn't it. So much more than a tick box exercise.