New Survey of Food and Beverage Industry Highlights Risk Factors in Safety and Quality

Houston, TX (PRWEB) May 15, 2013

DNV Business Assurance has published a new survey of nearly 500 companies in the global food and beverage industry.

Results indicate differences in how supply chains and safety risks are handled in the US, Europe and Asia. The study also probes the confidence large and mid-sized food producers have in different strategies for effective supply chain management.

Across all geographies, the primary driver of proactive risk management in food production is demand from within the supply chain itself to tighten security and avoid creating risk for customers downstream. In the survey, needs/requests from customers outranked all other drivers, including consumer and public opinion sensitivity, which ranked fourth.

We see food manufacturers responding organically, if you will, to the needs of peers and partners in the global supply chain, Kathy Wybourn, US Director of Food Safety Safety for DNV Business Assurance. This reflects strong in-system incentives for mitigating risk and making those efforts transparent. In food safety, in addition to tracking incident rates, what we look for is trust and accountability. Those are macro indicators of a healthy supply chain.

Among the key findings of the survey: