Techno-managerial factors related to food safety management system in food businesses

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this study is to evaluate the food safety management system (HACCP – type system) implemented in Greek food businesses, examine the techno-managerial factors influencing its application according to enterprises' opinion and correlate these answers to the HACCP evaluation results.

Design/methodology/approach

The study involved 33 slaughterhouses located throughout Greece. Two types of questionnaires were used (IF questionnaire – for the influencing factors and HE questionnaire – for HACCP evaluation). Reliability or item analysis and principal component analysis were applied to the data obtained from the survey.

Findings

The results showed that the companies identifying the benefits of HACCP implementation as very important have fully understood possible problems and had the best results as regards HACCP evaluation. Companies not identifying the benefits as important had poor score in HACCP evaluation. Businesses with HACCP certification for longer periods and especially those that were certified according to more than one standard had better performance in HACCP evaluation. In addition, slaughterhouses involved in rearing of animals as well, especially those slaughtering only one animal species, and which do not provide services for others, seem to have better performance as regards HACCP evaluation.

Originality/value

The findings of this study correlate the results of the HACCP evaluation with the factors that affect the implementation of a food safety management system using the hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) statistical technique.

Citation

Milios, K., E. Zoiopoulos, P., Pantouvakis, A., Mataragas, M. and H. Drosinos, E. (2013), "Techno-managerial factors related to food safety management system in food businesses", British Food Journal, Vol. 115 No. 9, pp. 1381-1399. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-11-2011-0284