Food Safety Culture NZ: What the 2026 GFSI Update Means

Food safety culture is the shared values, behaviours and everyday habits that determine whether food safety actually happens on the floor, not just on paper. The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) released an updated Food Safety Culture Position Paper in March 2026, and food safety culture is now an explicit, auditable requirement in SQF Edition 10 and BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9.

"Food safety culture" is not a term defined in New Zealand's Food Act 2014, and MPI does not audit it directly. But if your business holds or is pursuing SQF, BRCGS, ISO 22000 or FSSC 22000 certification, culture is now something an auditor will actively probe, not assume. This guide explains what GFSI's 2026 update says, how SQF and BRCGS assess culture in practice, what New Zealand's own MPI guidance says about food safety leadership, and how to build a programme that holds up under real scrutiny.

On this page: What it means · The 2026 GFSI update · Legal status in NZ · How audits assess it · What auditors look for · Building a programme · Measuring it · Common mistakes · How AFVA can help · FAQs

What Is Food Safety Culture?

Food safety culture describes how people in a business actually think and behave around food safety, day to day, including when nobody senior is watching. A business can have a complete, well-written food safety plan and still have weak culture if staff routinely skip checks under time pressure, avoid reporting problems, or see food safety documentation as separate from "real work".

GFSI's two-layer framework

GFSI's updated position paper describes food safety culture as two connected layers rather than a single trait:

The five dimensions GFSI highlights

Within that framework, the position paper points to five dimensions that together determine culture maturity:

• Shared values: whether staff at every level genuinely believe food safety matters, not just management.
• Behaviours and practices: the daily habits that show a value is actually being lived.
• Risk awareness: whether staff recognise a developing problem before it becomes a non-conformance or an incident.
• Organisational learning: whether the business actually changes practice after a near-miss, complaint or audit finding.
• Consistency and adaptability: flagged by GFSI as an under-explored area — whether food safety behaviour holds up under pressure, short-staffing or change, not only in normal conditions.

Why GFSI Updated Its Position Paper in 2026

GFSI first published a Food Safety Culture Position Paper in 2018, establishing common language for the concept across the industry. On 26 March 2026, GFSI released Version 2.0 of the position paper, incorporating insights from more than 180 academic and industry sources into the refined two-layer framework described above.

Announcing the update, GFSI interim director Elizabeth Andoh-Kesson described food safety culture as "a critical determinant of food safety outcomes", built through consistent behaviour and genuine risk awareness rather than policy statements alone.

What's different from the 2018 edition

Version 2.0 moves beyond a simple checklist of culture "elements" toward an integrated view: food safety culture is treated as the product of shared values, everyday behaviour, risk awareness and organisational learning working together, and it explicitly calls out consistency and adaptability — how culture holds up under pressure — as an area most businesses under-assess. GFSI's position paper is guidance rather than a certifiable standard in itself; it shapes how GFSI-recognised schemes such as SQF and BRCGS write and audit their own culture requirements.

Is Food Safety Culture a Legal Requirement in New Zealand?

Not directly. New Zealand's Food Act 2014 framework does not use the term "food safety culture" or require a documented culture assessment. Your legal obligations continue to run through your Food Control Plan, National Programme, My Food Plan or Risk Management Programme (RMP) registration and verification, regardless of how mature your food safety culture is.

That said, MPI has long encouraged the underlying idea. Its food safety governance guide for directors, executives and business owners encourages leaders to set specific food safety goals and KPIs and to build a genuinely shared sense of responsibility across the whole organisation, not just within the technical team — the same underlying idea GFSI now formalises as food safety culture.

How Food Safety Culture Now Shows Up in Certification Audits

GFSI-recognised schemes have moved from mentioning culture as an aspiration to auditing it as a specific, evidenced clause.

SQF Edition 10: a measurable, auditable requirement

SQF Edition 10, launched by the Safe Quality Food Institute (SQFI) in early March 2026, requires sites to maintain a documented food safety culture assessment plan that looks beyond documentation into day-to-day reality. SQFI describes the underlying principle simply: "culture shows itself when no one is watching". Our SQF Certification NZ guide covers Edition 10's other changes in full.

BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9: Food Safety Culture Excellence

Food safety culture has been embedded in BRCGS Global Standard Food Safety Issue 9 and the BRCGS Agents & Brokers standard, with entry-level BRCGS START following the same approach. BRCGS also runs a dedicated Food Safety Culture Excellence assessment programme and best-practice guidance for sites that want to benchmark their culture maturity rather than simply pass an audit clause.

ISO 22000 and FSSC 22000: leadership commitment clauses

ISO 22000's leadership clause already requires top management to demonstrate visible commitment to the food safety management system, and FSSC 22000 builds additional requirements on top of that foundation. The direction across every GFSI-recognised scheme is the same: leadership commitment has to be demonstrable, not simply asserted in a policy document. See our ISO 22000 Certification NZ guide for the full Stage 1 and Stage 2 process.

What Auditors Actually Look For

Auditors assessing food safety culture under SQF Edition 10 or BRCGS Issue 9 typically work across three angles:

A written policy alone will not satisfy this. Auditors are trained to look for the gap between what your procedures say and what genuinely happens when the site is under normal operating pressure, not during a scheduled visit.

Building a Practical Food Safety Culture Programme

1. Get visible leadership commitment

Leaders need to be seen acting on food safety, not just signing the policy — attending toolbox talks, following the same PPE and hygiene rules as everyone else, and asking about food safety in ordinary conversations, not only during audits.

2. Set specific, measurable food safety goals

MPI's own governance guidance encourages specific food safety KPIs and formal recognition for staff who identify problems, rather than treating food safety as an abstract value. A measurable target gives your culture programme something to actually track.

3. Create a real channel for staff to raise concerns

If reporting a problem feels risky or pointless, staff will stop reporting it. A simple, confidential way to flag concerns — and evidence that reports lead to action — is one of the clearest culture signals an auditor can check.

4. Train for understanding, not just attendance

Explain why a control matters, not only what to record. Our HACCP consultant NZ guide covers building HACCP understanding across a team, which underpins genuine risk awareness.

5. Run a genuine self-assessment before your certification audit

Sample real records, interview a cross-section of staff, and walk the floor the way an auditor would, well before your scheduled audit date. AFVA's food safety audit preparation service can help structure this.

6. Close the loop

When a near-miss, complaint or audit finding leads to a visible change, tell staff about it. Nothing damages culture faster than reported problems that appear to go nowhere.

Measuring and Evidencing Food Safety Culture

GFSI's 2026 update stresses that culture should be measurable and continuously improved, not assessed once and left alone. Practical evidence a New Zealand food business can start collecting includes near-miss and hazard-report rates, staff survey results on comfort raising concerns, training completion paired with a competency check rather than just attendance, corrective-action close-out times, and management review minutes that specifically discuss culture, not only technical non-conformances.

Common Mistakes When Building Food Safety Culture

• Treating culture as a poster or slogan exercise. Values statements on a wall do not change floor behaviour on their own.
• Only assessing culture right before a scheduled audit. SQFI's own framing — that culture shows itself when no one is watching — means a pre-audit clean-up is exactly what auditors are trained to see through.
• No confidential way for staff to raise concerns. Without genuine psychological safety, risk awareness data simply will not surface.
• Leadership setting targets but not modelling behaviour. Staff notice quickly when rules apply to the floor but not to management.
• Building culture around one certification scheme only. A programme built purely to satisfy one SQF or BRCGS clause rarely survives contact with day-to-day operations; culture needs to be embedded across the business, not bolted on for an audit.

How AFVA Can Help

AFVA can review your current food safety culture against SQF Edition 10 or BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 expectations, help you design a documented culture assessment plan, prepare staff for interview-style audit questions, and connect culture work to your existing HACCP and audit preparation activities. See our SQF consulting, BRCGS consulting and HACCP consulting services, or read our MPI consultant NZ guide and food safety compliance checklist for wider compliance support.

AFVA is an independent consulting provider; we do not issue SQF, BRCGS, ISO 22000 or FSSC 22000 certificates and are not an accredited certification body. Consulting support and independent certification-body auditing are different functions and are kept separate to protect audit independence.

Frequently Asked Questions About Food Safety Culture in NZ

Official GFSI, SQFI, BRCGS and MPI Guidance

• GFSI: Version 2.0 Food Safety Culture Position Paper
• SQFI: Food Safety Culture Is Now a Measurable Risk
• BRCGS: Product Safety Culture
• MPI: Food safety governance guide for directors, executives and business owners
• MPI: Food safety toolkit

Published 11 September 2026. This article provides general food safety guidance. Confirm current requirements with GFSI, your chosen certification body and MPI before implementing changes.