Meaningful Metrics for Regulators: How to Create Meaningful Metrics for Food Safety Programs  

Food inspection is a vital activity to ensure the safety of food products. However, how do you know if your food inspection program is working well? How do you measure its impact and efficiency? How do you turn your program goals into meaningful metrics for staff performance? And how do you effectively communicate what you measure? In this session, you will learn how to create meaningful metrics that can answer these questions and more. You will discover the principles of good metric design, the relevant metrics for food inspection, and the best practices for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data. You will also see examples of successful food inspection metrics from different jurisdictions. Finally, you will get valuable practice applying metric concepts through a hands-on activity. By the end of the session, you will have the tools to design and use effective food inspection metrics that can help you improve your program performance and demonstrate your value. Includes exercises and attendee engagement activities.

Time
Noon-1:15 p.m. ET

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the key principles of good metrics and why they matter for food safety.
2. Recognize common pitfalls and challenges of measuring food inspection performance and how to avoid them.
3. Understand how to create effective metrics for your food inspection programs and how to use them to drive continuous improvement and public health impact.
4. Adapt your program’s goals and objectives to create meaningful metrics for inspection staff performance.
5. Apply best practices and tools for designing metrics, collecting & analyzing data, and reporting measurements that align with your goals and stakeholders’ needs.
6. Evaluate: Critique your agency’s existing food safety culture initiatives and propose enhancements to align with best practices.