Food Safety Culture: A Practical Guide for Food Plants in Morocco

What is food safety culture?

It is the way a plant really behaves towards food safety when nobody is checking. The GFSI gave it a new definition in version 2.0 of its position paper “A Culture of Food Safety”, published in March 2026: a concept present in every food business, which refers to the deeply rooted beliefs, behaviours, values and assumptions learned and shared by all employees, and which together shape the organisation’s food safety performance.

The 2018 definition spoke of shared values, beliefs and norms. It is still the wording found in the glossary of IFS Food Version 8 and in Appendix 1 of FSSC 22000 Version 7, which attributes it to the GFSI’s 2024 requirements. The new version adds two ideas that matter to a plant director: culture is made of behaviours, not only of intentions, and it is learned. A new hire learns the real culture within a few days by watching colleagues, whatever the poster in the changing room says.

The five GFSI dimensions

The GFSI depicts culture as a wheel of five interacting dimensions, arranged in two tiers. The first two are the organisational foundations; the other three are what the GFSI calls the manifested cultural essentials, the practices you can see.

Two points matter. First, the GFSI defines the “what” and leaves the “how” to scheme owners, experts and companies: it provides neither a maturity model nor a diagnostic tool. Second, it recommends that the assessment spans every dimension, with techniques suited to pinpointing the site’s maturity, rather than relying on a single indicator. It also notes that national culture shapes company values: a model imported as it stands ignores the workshop where it will be applied.

Culture and HACCP: two sides of the same system

The HACCP plan says what to control. Culture decides whether that control is applied by everyone, at every hour. The GFSI explicitly calls on companies, regulators and scheme owners to take an integrated “systems and culture” view rather than assessing culture on its own. In practice, a repeated nonconformity on a CCP record is often a cultural symptom: the person knows what to do, but the environment does not push them to do it.

What do BRCGS, IFS Food and FSSC 22000 require?

All three ask senior management to steer culture through objectives or a plan built on the same four elements: communication, training, employee feedback and performance measurement. They differ in form, in review frequency and in what the auditor has to record.

This common base comes from the GFSI. According to the key changes document for its 2024 requirements, version 2024 adds two culture elements to the food safety management part: a demonstrable commitment from all personnel to the production and safe handling of food (FSM 2.1), and a food safety culture assessment plan that identifies areas for improvement, covering at a minimum communication, training, feedback from employees and performance measurement (FSM 2.2). It strengthens management commitment, which must provide sufficient resources to maintain a positive food safety culture (FSM 2), and the management review, which must include the culture plan (FSM 3).

Three details make the difference at audit. BRCGS adds the required behaviours to the four elements, and pairs the plan with a confidential reporting system whose mechanism must be clearly communicated to staff (1.1.6). IFS clarified its definition in IFS Food 8 Doctrine version 5 of April 2026: demonstrable commitment from management and all personnel, leadership, awareness of food hygiene among all staff, open communication including on deviations, sufficient resources. FSSC 22000 Version 7 takes over, word for word, the GFSI requirement for a demonstrable commitment from all personnel (2.5.8 c). For the detail of that requirement and of the FSSC audit report, see our article on FSSC 22000 food safety culture in Version 7.

The practical conclusion: one plan is enough for all three, as long as it covers all of their requirements combined. The dates that frame these texts in 2026 and 2027 are brought together in our update on food safety culture requirements for 2026-2027.

How does the auditor assess culture?

By cross-checking three sources (documents, management and the shop floor) and looking for consistency between them. Among the risks, the GFSI cites the dissonance between stated values and real practices: that is exactly what an experienced auditor tracks down.

Documents. The signed policy, the plan and its progress, the objectives and their results, the minutes of management reviews and meetings. BRCGS requires objectives to be monitored and their results reported at least quarterly to site senior management and all staff (1.1.3), and a meeting programme, at least monthly, that brings safety issues to the attention of senior management (1.1.5). A plan with no trace of execution between two audits does not convince.

Management. According to the BRCGS self-assessment checklist, a member of the senior management team on site must be available during the audit for a discussion on effective implementation of the culture plan (1.1.11). IFS provides for interviews with personnel from different levels of management. FSSC requires the report to confirm the interview with top management and to name the people interviewed. The director must be able to say, without notes, what has been measured, what has changed and what remains to be done.

The shop floor. The IFS Food on-site evaluation includes interviews with the working personnel. IFS KO requirement No. 1 (1.2.1) requires employees to be aware of their responsibilities and mechanisms to monitor the effectiveness of their operation. BRCGS requires staff to be aware of the need to report any risk or any out-of-specification product (1.2.3). The questions are simple, which is precisely what makes them hard:

• What do you do if a product falls on the floor or a check is out of limits?
• When did you last report a problem, and what was done about it?
• What is your department’s objective this quarter?
• How do you report a problem without going through your supervisor?

Unannounced audits sharpen this test. In its protocol on unannounced audits, BRCGS writes that their objective is to encourage sites to adopt an “audit ready” food safety culture, with the inspection of the production facilities starting within a maximum of 30 minutes of the auditor’s arrival. A site that gets ready for the auditor, rather than for its customers, gives itself away that day.

How do you build food safety culture in a Moroccan plant?

By working on six levers, chosen on the basis of a baseline measurement and written into the plan with an owner, a target and a piece of evidence. The GFSI dimensions tell you where to look; the levers below are the ones that matter most in the plants we support in Morocco.

Language

The GFSI asks for open, two-way communication that takes account of language and of the barriers to understanding. In many Moroccan workshops, written documents circulate in French, speech in Darija (Moroccan Arabic), and some operators read little. An instruction posted in French only has not been communicated. IFS Food lists languages among the mandatory content of training programmes (3.3.1). In some regions, Amazigh (Berber) is also the everyday language: check before you print.

Seasonal and agency workers

A sardine cannery in full season, a citrus packhouse at harvest or an industrial bakery during Ramadan all change headcount and working hours. The site’s culture is also the culture of these teams. IFS requires training to cover seasonal and temporary workers and employees of external companies before they start work (3.3.2); BRCGS requires agency-supplied staff, temporary staff and contractors to be trained before commencing work and supervised (7.1.1). The first day sets the habits: that is where to invest.

Work pressure

The GFSI cites work pressure as a barrier to culture: during seasonal peaks or busy times of day, it pushes people to cut corners. It recommends managing it through planning, production scheduling and adequate resources, and taking account of the workload created by audits themselves. In practice, write down what is never made up on line speed: cleaning, the verification of a CCP, the change of workwear between zones.

Reporting

The GFSI speaks of safe, confidential communication channels. BRCGS requires a confidential reporting system, a mechanism communicated to all, an assessment of the concerns raised, and records (1.1.6). In a strongly hierarchical organisation, an operator does not criticise a team leader to their face. A dedicated phone number, a box placed out of sight of supervisors and, above all, a visible response to every report often achieve more than a poster campaign. A channel that never receives anything is not a good sign: either nobody knows it exists, or nobody trusts it.

How do you measure culture without getting it wrong?

By combining at least four sources: an anonymous survey, interviews, observations and the indicators the site already tracks. No standard imposes a tool. According to its guide to certification, BRCGS gives certificated sites a taster of its culture measurement tool (FSCE Basic), without making it a requirement of the Standard; IFS and FSSC impose no tool either.

Three rules prevent misleading measurements. Measure during a peak in activity, not only in the low season. Cover every team, the night shift included, and non-permanent staff. Feed the results back to the teams: a survey with no feedback drains the next one of its honesty. The GFSI points out that indicators should combine leading measures (training completed, reports, walks) and lagging ones (complaints, deviations, incidents).

Survey design, interview guides, the observation grid and the step from results to the improvement plan are set out in our method on how to measure food safety culture. The time to allow for each step is described in our article on food safety culture programme cost.

Which mistakes make a culture plan fragile at audit?

The same ones come up from one site to the next: a plan written by the quality department alone, posters instead of actions, a survey run once and then filed away, senior management delegating the discussion with the auditor, seasonal workers forgotten. The case study of an industrial bakery shows how one site avoided them before its first IFS Food audit.

Before the audit, check that:

• The signed policy contains the commitment to improve the culture and has been communicated to all staff.
  
• The plan covers the four shared elements, plus the required behaviours (BRCGS), the resources and the commitment of all personnel (FSSC), and the elements of the IFS Doctrine.
  
• Each action has an owner, a target, a deadline and a piece of evidence.
  
• The latest measurement is less than a year old and covers a peak, the night shift and non-permanent staff.
  
• The results of the measurement have been presented to the teams.
  
• The confidential reporting channel is known and used, and its follow-up is recorded.
  
• Materials exist in Arabic and French, with a verbal briefing for those who read little.
  
• The latest management review covers the effectiveness of the culture plan.
  
• A member of senior management can present the plan without help from the quality department.
  
• Three operators picked at random know what they would do when facing a deviation at their workstation.
  

To place this programme among the other cross-cutting requirements (food defence, food fraud, allergens, traceability), see our page on food safety programmes. For the standard itself, see BRCGS certification, IFS Food certification or FSSC 22000.