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Visualisation tool for food safety risk management

15 August 2021

Campden BRI has introduced a tool, known as Bowtie, which has been adapted to help the food and drink industry manage risk. The tool allows risks to be visualised and communicated in a simple diagram that resembles a bow tie. 

Andrew Collins, a food safety management systems lead at Campden BRI who demonstrates Bowtie to the food industry, said: “The current focus on allergen management and food safety culture has put great emphasis on communicating risks. Having begun to introduce Bowtie to the food and drink industry, we have found that it can improve risk communication by allowing organisations to visualise and easily adapt their processes instead of relying on potentially unclear and less dynamic charts and tables. 

Put simply, food businesses can use Bowtie to improve food safety systems by proactively identifying risks and easily adapting their system to incidences and occurrences. Since identifying the use of this tool in other industries that need to manage risk, we were keen to help the food sector understand and use this method to enhance their HACCP plans.”

Bowtie makes it easier to identify factors that could compromise barriers, helping companies put in place additional barriers to prevent a hazard, such as allergens, from occurring and escalating.

Collins continued: “The level of detail in the Bowtie can be filtered to ensure the right information is communicated to the intended user. It can be presented at a business level which may be generic or at an operational level that contains more detail. For example, senior managers can see their food safety management system without all the detail an auditor or the technical manager would need. More importantly, factory operators can easily see the whole process so they understand not just what they need to do but why they need to do it.”

Bowties created for each stage of the supply chain can link up to provide a timeline perspective from farm to fork.


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