RECENT food safety breaches have hammered home the importance of food safety and provenance to both domestic and export consumers.
While there are many certification and best management programs across the food production sector, MFC, founder and chief executive officer Morag Meikl said the majority of these systems are still paper based, costing both the industry and through flow on effects, the consumer.
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Speaking at the GFIA In Focus Australia conference, Mr Meikl said as a food technologist he saw a need to digitise the food safety space.
“We developed a platform five years ago called the Food Safety Hub,” he said.
“As a business grows it has to deal with compliance requirements, such as quality assurance programs with the major retailers.
“When I was working as an auditor some time ago we were auditing paper based systems and that is still the case today.
“The vast majority of businesses still manage their food safety in a paper based way.”
Mr Meikl said as a business grows, inefficiencies, particularly when using paper based systems creep in, this in turn costs the consumer.
“We’ve been able to digitise that entire process and enable further cost savings,” he said.
“The Food Safety Hub is a web based system that allows the data to be collected by a mobile pone or a smart device.”
Mr Meikl said he viewed his business as a service with a handy tool, rather then a handy tool providing a service.
“When it comes to food safety what applies to one farm does not apply to the next,” he said.
“We are the opposite to an ‘out of the box’ model, in the long term we are a partner in food safety.”