the feed

The food processing and manufacturing world is currently in an especially precarious position in this pandemic, as workers often interact in close quarters, and social distancing isn’t always possible. And staying home to flatten the curve (which works!) isn’t always feasible since food, and its production, is essential.

At this point in time, we have enough data to support that the coronavirus is not transmitted via food. It’s an upper respiratory infection — in order to become infected, it has to get transmitted from either an infected individual through microdroplets, or from touching a dirty surface, then transferring the virus by touching your mouth, eyes, or nose.

During the second installment of our Covid Communications webinar series, Intertek Alchemy joined forces with Julie Keich and Lynn Costanza of Campbell’s Snacks to highlight how one company in the food manufacturing and processing industry is navigating the “new normal”.  

Last week during the second of our Covid Communictions webinar series, we asked attendees to share practical procedures and best practices they were carrying out in their facilities to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Not surprisingly, the tips that followed were thoughtful, helpful, and showcased the forward-thinking required of all industry leaders during this unprecedented pandemic crisis:

Intertek Alchemy’s number one priority is ensuring that employees are engaged and working in a safe environment. With that in mind, we are sharing best practices for manufacturers still operating. You can also view them in their entirety in our recent webinar:



You know your work environment better than we do, so please tailor these recommended best practices and to your specific circumstances.

Rick Gehrke, Senior Environmental Safety and Health Consultant here at Intertek Alchemy, recently hosted the webinar “Don’t Get Busted! OSHA 2019 Top Five Violations in General Industry”  that covered the specific standards, the hazards and types of associated incidents, penalties, as well as some of things that you can do to protect your people and your organization.

We’ve received many questions regarding OSHA regulations and the use of N95 masks in the workplace for protecting personnel from COVID-19, and whether the respiratory protection standard applies.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cities and states have shut down their restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Despite all of this, consumer demand for medical supplies and food continues to increase and truck drivers are crucial for maintaining the supply chain and keeping the economy going. 

To help in efforts to contain the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, Intertek Alchemy has created a new training course "COVID-19: Overview" to ensure frontline manufacturing, food processing, and service workers know how to:

There are a handful of common struggles manufacturers face, especially those companies still growing including the retiring workforce, recruiting millennials, employee engagement, and providing impactful training. However, within these challenges lie solutions to make things more manageable and productive as they look to the future.

Let’s take a closer look:

1. Managing the Skills Gap

Every day, 20 million US and Canadian frontline food workers grow, process, distribute, cook, and serve the food eaten by millions of people. These frontline workers can — and do —  make individual decisions that impact food and workplace safety, product quality, and operations.

Despite the importance of frontline workers, there’s limited research to help understand their motivations, attitudes, and perceptions about the workplace. To remedy this, the Center of Research and Public Policy (CRPP) conducted a survey to identify any perception gaps between frontline workers and those in corporate leadership roles. They found that new frontline workers start their jobs without the confidence that they really know the proper procedures.

This lack of confidence, coupled with workers making their own individual decisions, often results in unplanned downtime and injury. This has dangerous implications! It’s also expensive  —  each year, the cost of injuries runs companies $161 billion dollars.

Leading indicators are one way to provide line of sight into future performance, as well as indicate how you have performed so far. By balancing the use of leading indicators with lagging indicators, you will get an overall comprehensive understanding of exactly where you are and what you need to do, to get to where you want to be.

Joy Inouye, a research associate at Campbell Institute at the National Safety, recently shared key insights and information gleaned from her long history in this field. 

So how to get started?

Currently, 27% of manufacturing workers are over the age of 66, which means many of your frontline staff and supervisors will be retiring within the next few years.

There is a ton of research on millennials in the workforce just hovering by our fingertips, ready for us to hit “enter” and display almost innumerable stats, facts, and ideologies about this generation.

On-the-job training (OJT) is often hailed as best practice in manufacturing. After all, it just makes sense for workers to learn right where they’ll be applying the training, using the actual equipment.  Workers themselves love it, too, because they are learning by doing. And the frequent one-on-one dialogue provides opportunities to strengthen employee/supervisor relationships.

We’re excited to officially launch our newest application, Alchemy Playbook. This game-changing mobile solution helps you create and deliver task-specific training to your frontline workers. Playbook also instantly finds qualified workers for any job in your facility, helping you fill unexpected personnel gaps in seconds.