Seeing the Growth of Food Safety Culture Through “Growth”:
FSC Lab at the NZIFST Conference 2026
The 2026 NZIFST Conference, held in Auckland, centred on the theme of “Growth”. Several members of the Food Safety Culture Lab attended the conference and shared our ongoing research through poster presentations, short talks, and conversations with colleagues across the food science and food industry communities.
For FSC Lab, the conference was not only an opportunity to present our work. It was also a valuable space where research could meet practice. We brought our thinking on food safety culture beyond the lab and into a wider field of dialogue, continuing to ask one central question: how can food safety culture be understood, enacted, and sustained within real organisations and everyday practice?
Across discussions on food safety culture, organisational practice, industry support, and food safety improvement, FSC Lab members shared research and reflections that speak to the work currently developing within the Lab. These exchanges also reflected a core focus of FSC Lab: food safety culture is not a static concept that sits only within policies, procedures, or checklists. It is a dynamic process shaped in workplaces, team relationships, organisational systems, and industry networks.
Within the conference theme of “Growth”, we were also invited to think more deeply about what growth means for food safety culture. Growth can, of course, refer to the expansion of the food sector, technological innovation, and market development. But for food safety culture, growth also means the maturing of cultural capability. It happens through daily judgement, communication, reminders, collaboration, and support. It happens when frontline workers make sense of food safety requirements under real-world pressures. It also happens when leaders, teams, organisational systems, and industry networks work together to support safe practice.
In this sense, the growth of food safety culture is not simply about adding more rules. It is about helping rules become part of people’s actions, organisational routines, and shared industry learning. A more resilient food safety system needs clear standards and procedures, but it also needs people who can understand, communicate, reflect, and support one another.
The poster presentations, short talks, and conference discussions created valuable opportunities to connect academic evidence with industry practice. Through these exchanges, research did not remain only within papers, models, or figures. It entered the real food system, becoming part of conversations about practical challenges, pathways for improvement, and future possibilities.
From this perspective, “Growth” can also be understood as a direction: moving from compliance towards learning, from individual responsibility towards shared support, and from short-term correction towards long-term improvement. This is the direction that continues to shape FSC Lab’s work. We focus on the human side of food safety and explore how research, education, and industry collaboration can help safe practice become more sustainable in real working environments.
We are grateful to NZIFST Conference 2026 for providing this platform for exchange, and to everyone who engaged with FSC Lab members through questions, discussion, and shared perspectives. We look forward to continuing to work with the food safety community across Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond to support a food safety culture with stronger capacity for learning, collaboration, and practical resilience.
The growth of food safety culture is often quiet. It happens through a reminder, a moment of listening, an improvement, or an action that is supported. It is within these everyday practices that safety gradually becomes more than a requirement. It becomes a shared habit of care.
2026 | 07 | 03
Food Safety Culture · Growth · Industry Engagement · Research Translation · Everyday Practice · Learning Culture · Shared Support · Practical Resilience