The newest employee in a food processing facility is often assumed to be the riskiest one. After all, new employees are often unfamiliar with procedures, equipment, and food safety expectations. They require training, supervision and reinforcement. Yet in my experience, both as a food safety attorney and in reviewing the facts surrounding recalls, outbreaks, and regulatory enforcement actions, the greater risk frequently comes from a very different source: the experienced employee who has performed the same task thousands of times before.

Experience is invaluable. It creates efficiency, confidence and consistency. But experience also carries a hidden hazard. Over time, repetitive success can create a false sense of security. When a task has been completed correctly for years without incident, employees may begin to view established procedures as suggestions rather than requirements. Small shortcuts may emerge. A step may be skipped because "nothing has ever happened before." A verification procedure may be rushed because the outcome seems predictable. A sanitation concern might even be dismissed because, as we here time and time again, it “has never caused a problem in the past.”

Safety experts have a term for this phenomenon: normalization of deviance. The concept was famously discussed following the Challenger space shuttle disaster, where deviations from established standards gradually became accepted because previous departures from the relevant procedures had not resulted in immediate failure. Notably, the same dynamic can occur in food manufacturing facilities. When shortcuts do not immediately produce product contamination, recalls, or illnesses, they can slowly become part of the normal routine.

The challenge is that food safety failures rarely announce themselves in advance. A process that worked perfectly yesterday may fail today because of a slight change in weather, raw materials, equipment condition, internal environmental factors or simple chance. The absence of previous problems does not prove the absence of ongoing risk.

The aviation industry has also long recognized this danger. Experienced pilots are trained to use checklists not because they lack knowledge, but because they possess it. Checklists exist to protect highly competent people from the very human tendency to rely on memory, assumptions, and routine. Food manufacturers should view their procedures the same way. The purpose of a verification, inspection, or sanitation procedure is not to confirm what everyone already believes to be true. It is to identify the rare occasion when assumptions are proven wrong.

Organizations can combat complacency by fostering a culture of professional curiosity. Employees should be encouraged to ask why procedures exist rather than simply memorizing them. Supervisors should periodically review long-established practices and challenge assumptions. Internal audits should focus not only on procedural compliance, but also on identifying areas where routine has replaced critical thinking.

Perhaps, most importantly, companies should recognize and reward employees who identify problems, even when doing so slows production or creates additional work. Catching a mistake before it becomes a recall is not evidence that the system failed. It is evidence that the system worked.

New employees deserve attention because they lack experience. Veteran employees deserve attention because experience can sometimes disguise risk. The goal is not to distrust expertise, but to recognize that food safety depends on vigilance at every level of the organization. In the end, the most dangerous employee in the plant is not necessarily the one who does not know the rules. It may be the one who has followed them for so long that they no longer remember why they matter.

www.provisoneronline.com   |  JUly 2026