A chain of holiday resorts wanted to know whether its resorts were correctly applying the HACCP model. We supplied shoppers qualified in health and food safety, drawn from our ISO 9001 auditor panel. The shoppers visited each resort, first verifying as ordinary customers the compliance with international food-safety regulations; then they went into the kitchens, identified themselves, and verified compliance with the regulations together with management — both on the part of the staff and in terms of the adequacy of the facilities. For each resort a list of actions and training interventions was drawn up, with a commitment to re-examine the most deficient facilities within six months. The non-conformities detected fell by 30% in the next cycle of checks, and ownership was able to draw up a list of priority interventions to carry out on facilities that, before the project, had never been checked by experienced specialists.
