What Are the Key Elements Required to Establish a Food Safety Culture?

PART 2: GFSR Interviews Walmart’s Vice President of Food Safety Frank Yiannas

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GFSR is pleased to have had a recent opportunity to interview renowned food safety expert Frank Yiannas, who, as many of us know, is currently serving as Vice President of Food Safety at Walmart. Walmart serves more than 200 million customers around the world every week, making it the world’s largest food retailer.

This is the second part of our interview with Frank.

Frank has earned many awards during his career and he has served the cause of food safety as a Past President of the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) and a Past Vice-Chair of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Frank is an adjunct Professor in the Food Safety Program at Michigan State University and he is the author of the books, Food Safety Culture, Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, and Food Safety = Behavior, 30 Proven Techniques to Enhance Employee Compliance.

GFSR: Frank, thank you for joining us again today.

Yiannas:  My pleasure, thank you.

You either choose to have a strong food safety culture, or you choose not to have one.

GFSR:  The theme of today’s interview is: What Are the Key Elements Required to Establish a Food Safety Culture? I would like to start out by asking you, first of all, Frank, what steps senior managers need to take in order to implement a culture of food safety?

Yiannas: The first step I think senior managers need to take is to first of all decide that they want to have a food safety culture. I often say that having a strong food safety culture is a choice—plain and simple. You either choose to have a strong food safety culture, or you choose not to have one.