The importance of having CCTV surveillance in your food factories
Investigations have been conducted after the Food Standards Agency (FSA) found that food factories across Britain aren’t complying with their hygiene expectations. Because of these revelations, large food chains and supermarkets in the UK are currently thinking about who they are working with and are already prepared to draw a line in their contract to ensure they retain the trust of their customers.
Not only is this having a profound impact on consumers who purchase from supermarkets, but those who have no choice than to eat in schools and hospitals. For food production companies and food factories in general, this can either make or break your business — just look back to the horse meat scandal that took place in 2013.
Food factories need to think about their brand image, with a business mind. 2020 Vision, specialists in cloud CCTV storage, look at the issue of security in food factories in greater detail.
The systems your food factory should be putting in place
Food factories need to begin to present themselves as organisations that aren’t afraid to publicly comply with the rules and show that they’ve got nothing to hide — this can be achieved by:
• Access control systems — to protect all areas of your business, you must start with access control systems to ensure a barrier between the production and any potential threats from unauthorised characters. If access is gained through a staff card, management within the factory will be able to determine who can and can’t access specific areas on the operation site.
• CCTV — if cameras have been put in place around your business premises, it will present a message that your factory is not afraid of recording footage and presenting it to the appropriate authorities if certain reports do arise about your production.
By the end of 2018, all slaughterhouses in England will be required to have CCTV systems running through their building. The purpose of this is that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) will gain unprecedented access to footage within a 90-day period after reports of the inhumane treatment of animals.
If CCTV is becoming a key requirement for slaughterhouses — should we have the same expectations for food factories? This would mean they would be able to gain access at any point and could reduce the number of investigations.
Why your security systems can amplify your business’ performance:
• Customer reassurance — as food factories don’t operate openly and everything is hidden away, this instantly creates 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 watch over 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.
The rise of crime in food factories
It is known that CCTV can help prevent criminal activity from occurring. If you’re operating as a food factory in the UK, you’ll know that your industry discovers criminal activity of all kind. 2020 Vision, to back up the reasoning for security systems in food factories, has looked at the crime rates in this sector.
Overall Crime:
• 89% of manufacturers around the world were impacted by fraud in 2016. This went up to 96% in 2017 showing that criminal activity is ever increasing in this industry.
Most present type of crime:
• Information theft and compliance breaches accounted for 30%.
• Theft of intellectual property stood at 26%.
Those committing crime:
• Junior employees were the most likely staff members to commit a crime — 39%.
• Temporary manufacturing workers covered 37%.
• Those in senior/middle management positions were at 33%.
To uphold our values and to protect the British consumer, we must begin implementing greater strategies that can ensure the safety of whatever is produced in food factories.
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/
