Ramesh Patel, Food Safety Manager

“I have worked for the Company ever since Katie’s Kitchen was acquired by the Group in 1988. At that time I was Shift Production Manager, but with a BSc and MSc in Biochemistry was appointed as Technical Manager shortly after the acquisition.

At that time, the Group was going through a rapid expansion with further acquisitions and new builds. I became part of the Central Technical Team whose purpose is to establish a common standard for food safety across the Company. I developed the Group’s Quality Manual and the associated auditing system, which involved a year’s worth of consultation with the sites and external bodies - gaining feedback, rewriting and testing out the manual in practice. This work served us well in adopting the British Retail Consortium (BRC) standard when it was introduced in 1998 and also in obtaining United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) accreditation. This enabled us to evaluate against the BRC Standard.

I have three parts to my job. Firstly, I assume the responsibility of Food Safety Manager for Bakkavör Central Technical. In this position I ensure that Food Safety Standards are set and regularly reviewed against the industry standards and legislation.

Secondly, I am involved in the evaluation of our sites in the UK, Belgium, France, Spain and South Africa against the Food Safety Standards. During a two-day evaluation, I establish if a site has documented systems and procedures in place to ensure that food safety, legal, quality and other standards are being met. More importantly, I check to see how effectively these systems are implemented in practice. The sites have to prove that their systems are sustainable through historical records and not just demonstrate that the systems are working during the visit.

I look at the Standard clause by clause to assess how well the requirements of the Standard are being met. This involves spending a lot of time in the factory, evaluating how well documented systems hold up in practice. We spent nearly 100 days evaluating our sites last year. In addition, I am starting to be involved in approving our raw material suppliers. As this is an important area for Bakkavör continuing success I will be spending more time on this.

My third responsibility is trouble-shooting – I’m on call 24 hours a day for any emergency. Thankfully I’ve rarely needed to attend one! Also, people will phone or email me for advice. Since I visit all Bakkavör sites I can also share best practice across the Group.

There is never a dull day in this role and my “to do” list is never finished. One of the things I find most challenging is to get common standards agreed and implemented across all Bakkavör sites. With our growing number of facilities and products this sometimes takes longer than I’d like.

My biggest achievement has been my involvement in gaining UKAS accreditation against the EN45011 standard, which enables Bakkavör to carry out evaluations against the BRC Standards.

I think that the public is becoming more aware of food safety issues and wants to be reassured that the food they consume is safe and wholesome. My prediction is that the ability of suppliers to trace the provenance of raw materials quickly and accurately will become more important in minimising food safety risks. It will certainly keep me busy for the coming years.”