Food Safety Management

To provide consumers with safe foods, SKM actively rolls out food safety management plans and requires that all foods, fresh produce and raw meats, cooked foods, and foods from counters comply with MOHW Food and Drug Administration's Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation and Regulations on Good Hygiene Practice for Foods. Imported SKM foods must comply with MOHW Food and Drug Administration's imported food inspections before being imported. SKM also stays up to date on any regulatory changes and asks all vendors at SKM to comply with government regulations as well.

Internal regulations established by SKM include the Department Store Management Guidelines, Food Hygiene and Safety Operating Procedures, Food Safety Management Guidelines, and Counter Vendor Agreement for F&B Counters. The regulations above govern themed restaurants, food courts, supermarkets, and coffee shops.

Sustainable Food Safety Management 2.0.

Building on previous foundations of food safety and hygiene management, SKM aligned with HQ's initiative in ESG project planning in 2023 to develop internal inspection programs, introducing a vision for sustainable operations - Sustainable Food Safety Management 2.0. Sustainable Food Safety Management 2.0 consists of three core dimensions and six action items:
 

Food safety and hygiene poster

Food safety team

Food safety incident response process

Food safety
incident occurred

Inform

Food safety team

Set up
food safety
emergency team

Inform

Feedback in
30 minutes

Headquarters

Stores

The stores and departments shall process food safety incidents based on their duties by contacting the supplier, inspecting products, and processing consumer complaints.

Digitalization of Food Safety Audits: Digital Food Safety Audit Platform

To ensure retail counters comply with inspection requirements and conduct internal/external audits, prevent omissions from lists sent from department stores, and reduce repetitive work in inputting audit results, SKM introduced the Digital Food Safety Audit Platform in August 2020 for all SKM department stores across Taiwan.

The Digital Food Safety Audit Platform digitalizes results from monthly internal audits and quarterly external audits and compiles related scores and uncovered deficiencies by working with SKM's backend system. The platform has given SKM insight into secondary inspections for prior failed inspections and reduced manual work to double check information, thereby reducing the required work time, increasing work efficiency, and ensuring the accuracy of audit subjects and data management analyses.
 

Food Safety Roadmap

Regular Tasks

Continue to enforce food safety practices and tasks, conducting regular inspections of the environment and random product inspections to maintain sanitary F&B counters and control risks from product offerings.

Preemptive Actions

Strengthen random inspections of high-risk products sold at SKM and, in compliance with TFDA’s annual audit program, conduct random inspections of seasonal products before the five major holiday seasons each year to ensure product safety.

Culture Building

Continue to offer offline and online food safety training and optimize related materials to ensure food safety through comprehensive audit schemes.

Robust Protection

Compile common deficiencies relating to food safety, learn more about risks and insufficiencies in food hygiene and safety, and introduce three new management items in food safety audits to strengthen protection against food safety incidents.

ESG Projects

Support SKM’s ESG projects and policies to introduce reminders and notes for food deliveries and voluntarily disclose findings from self-management to fulfill our social responsibilities, ensure our customers feel safe purchasing from SKM, and strengthen SKM’s image.

Internal and external audits provide assurance and guarantee

To provide consumers with safe products, SKM meets all requirements of the Food and Drug Administration of the Ministry of Health and Welfare and requires the implementation of the Regulations on Good Hygiene Practice for Food (GHP). We enhance the items and frequency of internal and external audits and complete internal re-inspection for any deficiency within three days. If we fail a sampling inspection, the on-site sales operation staff will report the hygiene deficiencies. We will also make corrections according to improvements recommended by the Health Bureau. Our sale operation staff and customer service staff of the store will strengthen internal environment sanitation inspections during the improvement period until the improvement is completed or the Health Bureau visits again.

External audits are conducted every quarter on themed restaurants, food courts, supermarkets, and coffee shops, which amounts to 4 audits every year. SKM conducted random inspections of 1,489 products and corrected 100% of deficiencies uncovered from audits.

Audit instructions and flowchart