PRACTICAL VS. PRUDENT IN FOOD SAFETY: A NUANCE THAT MATTERS. By Joelle Mosso, Associate Vice President, Science Programs
Practical: focused on actual use or practice rather than theory or ideas; concerned with what is effective, useful or realistic in a given situation. Prudent: acting with or showing care and thought for the future; being cautious and wise to avoid unnecessary risks while also imparting feasibility.
There’s a complicated relationship with the word practical. Practical is an important term, generally used to emphasize whether an activity/process/change will be efficacious in real-world scenarios. While this is a real factor to consider, practical is also often used as a surrogate for “it’s too expensive,” “it’s too hard,” or “it’s just not necessary.” Practical, when used in this way, can be an excuse for why we cannot implement or pursue something, and it tends to be a conversation-ender. This abrupt closure to a consideration of an idea or option may prevent finding innovative solutions that drive change and improvement. Henry Ford summed up this concept well when he once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Practical as a term is used frequently in food safety, especially when identifying solutions to manage complex and difficult-to-control factors. One of the unique things about food safety is that our understanding of science is rapidly evolving on microbiological risks, chemical risks, etc. This new understanding has the potential to quickly transform what is acceptable to unacceptable for managing risk in existing processes and practices, even when the pre-existing processes had just been thought of as appropriate. When new food safety learnings and/or technologies are developed, we must evaluate that new understanding against how the pre-existing system performs. In some cases, the science may tell us that a new control measure (e.g., practices, levels, modifications) to improve food safety may need to be defined and that new level may require modifications from the pre-existing system. Herein lies a challenge for adoption since if we believe today that what we are doing is 100 percent acceptable, it is not easy to accept or agree that the process needs to change tomorrow. This prior statement highlights a challenge in food safety since sometimes best practices or requirements suddenly change based on evolving science or investigation. Those changes may not feel needed or appropriate (perhaps not even practical) to an
"When new food safety learnings and/or
technologies are developed, we must evaluate that new
understanding against how the pre-existing system performs."
operation or business. The fact that the new information or approaches are considered impractical originates from the belief that the current status quo is sufficient. This is a rational conclusion to come to prior to the new science-based learnings, especially for those further removed from the science of the subject (e.g., CEOs, COOs, Operations). An alternative approach when determining if the adoption of new measures or techniques is needed is to replace the term practical with the term prudent. While this may seem like a slight semantic difference, there is a key distinction between the two terms. Prudent, as opposed to practical, incorporates whether something is feasible and whether the adoption should be taken to lessen future risk. Since food safety goals are to reduce residual risk in the system (i.e., lower the cases of illness per year), comparing potential changes to reduce risk in the status quo system may always seem impractical since it may change overall processes, costs and overall business operations. However, what may be deemed impractical in the current system may be determined to be extremely prudent to adopt to lower risk in the future (i.e., lowers food illness risk, lowers legal liabilities, lowers regulatory risk).
9 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com January | February 2025
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