V.RDA.2002-Global Scan – Risk Compliance Frameworks

Summary

The Australian red meat industry has long enjoyed a global trading reputation as a world leader in food safety and product integrity. ISC is seeking to provide a more focused and effective approach to improving compliance within red meat integrity systems, with a particular focus on the LPA program standards. The purpose of this project is to get a better understanding of existing global systems, frameworks or models, which underpin risk compliance among other industries, which may be applicable to integrity systems.

Objectives

The project objectives were to:
• Complete a global scan of other countries and industry sectors that have similar product integrity requirements as the Australian red meat industry.
• Assess how these countries/industries identify and assess key risks, how controls are determined and how performance is measured at both a business/individual and industry level in managing key risks.
• Compare and contrast the models assessed, their key strengths and weaknesses and how they could add value across the red meat industry’s integrity programs.
• Identify any technologies that are being used to underpin these risk models and assess the opportunities for integration into the red meat industry integrity programs.

Key findings

The key insights in relation to contemporary risk compliance programmes and integrity systems include:
a) Increasing adoption of risk-based approaches to determine the nature, extent and timing of compliance activities, including decisions related to where within the supply chain should compliance activities be carried out.
b) Realigning programme rules, standards and requirements to remain relevant and meet the changing needs of interest parties, including changes in societal values.
c) Identification of standardised metrics and technologies that can be used to report compliance performance of individual organisations and of the programme as a whole.
d) Structuring compliance activities to be less extensive and intrusive for those organisations that maintain a good history of compliance performance and to apply more extensive compliance activities for those organisations that have a poor history of compliance performance.
e) Explicit articulation of the compliance culture expected within the programme, including shifts along the compliance continuum as the programme matures.
f) Increasing focus on the competence and training of personnel within participating organisations as well as personnel responsible for assessing compliance to ensure greater consistency in understanding, applying and assessing the compliance requirements.
g) Undertaking compliance activities to achieve a greater balance between a focus on policies, procedures and documented records, and a focus on observed production activities as they take place and on the condition of livestock and physical environment.
h) Ensuring there are adequately strong rules in relation to nonconformity and corrective action management, including subsequent sanctions and other penalties, within the risk compliance programme to ensure they are understood and agreed to in order to encourage compliance.
i) Allocation of dedicated resources to monitor and act in relation to programme integrity.

Benefits to industry

Assist the Australian red meat industry in improving conformity with integrity systems, thus preserving Australia’s reputation as a leading red meat producer in an increasingly competitive international market.

A risk-based and control-focused approach to LPA program compliance will provide ISC with the discretion to focus resources on specific risks and the controls that are critical to managing risk in the sector. ISC will then be able to communicate to industry how well these major risks are being managed across the country and where improvements are required.

MLA action

Integrity Systems Company is taking on the list of matters raised in the report to be taken into consideration in future reviews of the Livestock Production Assurance Program (LPA).

Future research

The two main outcomes of this project are recommendations on:
a) a Comprehensive Risk Compliance Framework that can be used to develop and review risk compliance programmes within the Australian red meat industry in the future; and
b) a list of matters that should be included in any future review of the Livestock Production Assurance Program (LPA). These matters have been derived from applying the recommended Comprehensive Risk Compliance Framework to the current operation of LPA.