Working together for safe food and good health

Working together for safe food and good health

Published on : 6/7/21
  • Food safety is a shared responsibility. As a service provider, we need to ensure that we work along the value-chain to ensure delivery of safe, healthy and hygienic meals to our consumers every day. Particularly in the recent times, where the virus has fast-tracked and made compulsive introduction of contactless and digital interventions in the food space.

    Over the past 12-15 months, we have intensified our efforts with Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to embrace and implement food safety standards and guidelines for the new normal. Our company has taken proactive steps to implement FSSAI’s “Eat Right Campaign” (ERC). Thanks to the menu management system ‘DRIVE’ and our team of expert nutritionists, Sodexo has been successful in quickly implementing a robust nutritional display guideline.

    On World Food Safety Day, we’re taking stock of the initiatives in line with the WHO Call-to-Action from each of the stakeholders and the role we play therein. 

    Grow it safe – With a rigorous food safety audit and assessment programme, our dedicated resources have established processes to ‘Buy it Safe’. Identified vendor partners have constant knowledge transfer and best practice sharing, including upskilling of the SME vendors who form a large part of Sodexo’s food ecosystem.

    Keep it safe - Sodexo has established & certified systems like ISO 22000 which are underpinned by a strong culture of food safety led by operational leadership, training, and simplified tools for frontliners like 10 food safety rules, digital checklists, etc. This, coupled with periodic food safety audits helps drive compliance, behavioural change and continuous improvement. 

    Eat it safe – Consumer awareness about healthy eating habits is key. We induce behavioural change with initiatives like food traffic light system. Herein, menu items are divided into 3 colour categories red, amber and green which guides the consumer on what to avoid eating, what to eat sparingly and what to eat in plenty. We have further introduced plant-based protein in our menu options. The information is particularly useful for our young consumers in the school/university environment. Further, we encourage students to get their own coffee mug and thus save a dollar, inducing an environmentally responsible behaviour. 

    Team up for safety – Food safety is from farm-to-fork, and as a world leader in quality of life services, we work with the entire food ecosystem - suppliers, clients, regulators and consumers to ensure food safety at every step. Be it in sourcing, storage, cooking, serving, or disposing the waste, we take full responsibility for our actions and its impact on people and environment. For instance, with our Design & Built team, we consult clients on smart kitchen design using combi-oven for energy-efficiency. Likewise, at key sites we are investing in Leanpath smart technology to reduce food waste. By means of measuring the waste, we aim to create awareness on food wastage in production and post-meal service and thus, work along with clients and consumers to implement corrective measures. With WasteWatch, we aim to prevent 50% of the food wasted.

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