Establishing an incident management team
If you already have a designated incident management (IM) team, alert its members as soon as an incident, as defined in the IM plan, has taken place (subject to potential conflicts of interest). If there is no IM team, establish an initial working group immediately.
To ensure a consistent approach to any food safety incident, the IM team should include personnel from all relevant business areas (including senior management, legal, communications/public relations, IT, compliance, technical/regulatory affairs, human resources and relevant operational unit(s). Where possible, the team should include individuals who have been involved in developing and rehearsing the organisation’s IM plan.
Keep the following points in mind:
- nobody who is personally involved in the production process or sale operations should be given unilateral responsibility for key decision-making
- include at least one senior employee or board director in the IM team, to enable decisions to be taken and acted upon quickly and to secure necessary resources and co-operation
- appoint an IM team leader – responsibility and reporting lines must be absolutely clear
- remind the IM team of the importance of confidentiality, legal privilege and document retention/management, even within the business (see Controlling document creation and securing privilege)
- all actions related to investigating, mitigating or otherwise responding to the incident, should be coordinated and approved by the IM team (or a majority of the team where they are not all available)
