Attitudes towards own-checking and HACCP plans among Finnish food industry employees

Ten copies each of a mail survey was designed and distributed to 87 Finnish food manufacturing companies in order to be distributed to 870 employees representing both workers and managers. Respondents were asked about their attitudes towards food hygiene management strategies in their companies. The final response rates for companies and individual employees were 34.9% and 21.2%, respectively. Answers were stratified according to four job categories and four industry sectors (meat, dairy, fish and bakery). The employees’ attitudes towards various surveyed risk management practices were exclusively positive, regardless of job category or industry sector. All 30 companies that responded to the survey had a functioning own-checking plan (OCP), while other quality management programs were less prevalent. When asked what had caused most difficulties in devising the OCP/HACCP plan the most common answers were choosing the critical control points, committing the firm’s entire workforce and organizing the documentation of monitoring results. According to the respondents, the biggest benefits of the OCP/HACCP plan were product safety and quality.