11th Annual Food Safety Forum

About

With the recent E. coli and Listeria outbreaks food safety has been thrust into the forefront of every ones minds, but, what can your organisation do to help ensure the safety of the food products you prepare, manufacture and sell? With your organisations reputation on the line there is no room to be complacent with regards to food safety.  

The 11th Annual Food Safety Forum features industry leaders and practitioners and will showcase a range of regulatory and technical sessions, and case studies. The forum has been specifically designed to stimulate discussion around industry best practice, provide delegates with new ideas and to cover emerging themes and trends coming out in the food safety sector.

Case studies from Delmaine, Frucor, Hellers, Barker Fruit Processors and Lion Nathan will look at supply chain management, managing and learning from product recalls, safety in new product innovation, working HACCP into your every day operations and managing the human factor during product manufacturing. 

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to network with your peers and learn from industry leaders.

Take advantage of our two for one offer and train your entire team! Refer to the back page for more details

Masterclass

Full Day Masterclass    

30 March 2012 | 9:00am – 5:00pm 

Managing your supply chain to help assure the quality of your products

PLEASE NOTE: This full day Masterclass has been cancelled

Customer safety should be paramount for all food manufacturers. A well managed supply chain will help your organisation save money, source high quality goods and deliver better and safer products to your customers. This full day interactive workshop will feature group discussions, case studies and best practice guidelines.

  • Performing a supply chain audit: How, what, when
  • Adapting best practice auditing and food safety practices to suit you organisations needs
  • Managing a global supply chain and quality control measures across boarders
  • HACCP and ISO 22000 in multi-nation and multi-site operations
  • Using supply chain traceability and country of origin labelling to deliver safe products and meet consumers’ expectations.
  • Leveraging new technology and innovations to deliver a safer supply chain


Agenda

Agenda: Day 1

8:30am

Registration and coffee

9:00am

Opening remarks from the Chair

Dr Sally Hasell, FNZIFST; Consultant, Hasell Consulting Ltd
Past President, New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology

9:10am

Recent regulatory developments: The Food Act is coming: Are you ready for it?

The Food Bill is due to be passed into law in early 2012. It will represent the first major update of New Zealand’s food safety regulations in over 30 years. The core intent of the legislation is to make the Act more effective and efficient, and to reduce regional inconsistencies in the application of the current law. This session will look into how the Food Bill will improve food safety and reduce the incidence of food borne illness in New Zealand.
• Regulatory impact and implications of the Bill passing
• Managing the transition from old to new

Ian Milnes, Manager - Southern Licensing and Compliance, Auckland Council

10:00am

Country of origin labelling and other food labelling requirements under the Food Standards Code

This session will look at the current issues in the food labelling debate including issues such as the role of labelling in food safety, what customers really want on a label and what the future of New Zealand’s food labelling regime may look like.
• What are the potential food safety benefits of having more stringent country of origin labelling on food products?
• What testing currently happens to ensure food labels are accurate?
• What about post-market problems with food?

Michael Moyes, Principal, Chapman Tripp

10:50am

Morning Tea

11:10am

Recent food safety and Fair Trading Act prosecutions

There have recently been a number of prosecutions under the Fair Trading Act regarding incorrect claims about food products, under the HASNO Act in regards to chemical residues and under the Animal Products Act. We will discuss these cases and look at what your organisation needs to do to ensure ongoing compliance with the relevant food safety regulations and laws.

Joe Edwards, Senior Solicitor, Russell McVeagh

12:00pm

Managing your supply chain: Enabling product & consumer safety through global standards and industry solutions

Uncover GS1’s increasing role in helping improve product and ultimately consumer safety around the globe. Learn about who GS1 is and what the organisation is doing to enable improved food safety, including efforts in traceability and recall solutions.
• About GS1 and what it offers to the food industry
• The role of unique identification and effective traceability in supply chains now and in the future
• GS1 Product Recall NZ: A new industry solution for managing notifications for food recalls and withdrawals

Shaun Bosson, General Manager Operations, GS1

12:50pm

Lunch

1:50pm

Case Study: Product recalls (Case Study)

This case study will show how Frucor turned a negative experience (a product recall) into a positive learning experience and the steps they took to improve the quality assurance of their products.
• Managing the cost of a product recall and a potential impact on brand reputation
• Turning a negative into a positive, learning from failure to ensure success into the future and earning goodwill from potential customers through a concerned proactive response
• What are some best practice product recall guidelines to follow?
• Identifying the source of your problems in your supply chain

Paul Thompson, Quality Assurance Manager & Crisis Manager, Frucor Beverages

Speaker has declined permission for his material to online

2:40pm

Case Study: Maintaining food safety in new product development (Case Study)

This case study will look at the development process behind Hellers innovative new products and at how they ensured the product was safe for consumption.
• Quality controls and rigorous testing
• Ensuring food safety standards and best practice are adhered to and appropriate monitoring is put in place
• Managing the risk of food borne bacteria

Jonathan Cox, MNZIFST; Product Development Manager, Hellers

3:30pm

Afternoon Tea

3:45pm

Implementing electronic processes, Compliance and Food Safety considerations. (Case Study)

Barkers is part way through the process of implementing computer based process control, this is a brief overview of the benefits and hurdles moving from paper based systems in the factory to computer based systems.
· Preparation for change
· Challenges in maintaining compliance
· Integrating better HACCP controls
· Knowledge gaps
· Resourcing

Richard George, Process Development Manager, Barker Fruit Processors

4:30pm

Lessons learnt from the 2011 E. Coli and Listeria outbreaks (Case Study)

In mid 2011 both Europe and the USA were rocked by major E. coli and Listeria outbreaks. The source of Germany’s outbreak is still being debated with early tests indicating the outbreak came from an organic sprout farm in Lower Saxony; however subsequent tests have lead investigators to believe the likely source of the outbreak was Egyptian Fenugreek. The source of the US Listeria outbreak was more easily found, with a Cantaloupe (Rock Melon) farm in Colorado the culprit.
• Locating the source(s) of the respective outbreaks
• Managing the risk of future outbreaks
• Lessons New Zealand regulators and organisations can learn from the outbreak
• Managing the risks of imported food products
• Negative impact on suspected industries and how this could have been handled better

Dr. Siouxsie Wiles, HRC Hercus Fellow, University of Auckland

5:15pm

Networking Drinks

Agenda: Day 2

9:00am

Welcome back from the Chair

Dr Sally Hasell, FNZIFST; Consultant, Hasell Consulting Ltd
Past President, New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology

9:05am

Food safety in the aftermath of a natural disaster

The Canterbury Earthquakes of 2010/11 showed us the need to develop processes and plans to quickly respond to potential hazards and issues in the aftermath of an emergency. Soon after the earthquakes struck MAF and the Ministry of Health both issued directives around food safety. This session will look at the response to the earthquakes in respects to food safety and lessons learnt from the experience.
• Managing the risks associated with eating, storing and preparing perishable foods
• Inspecting food establishments in the aftermath of a natural disaster to ensure their food is safe for consumption
• Cross contamination risks
• What are the primary issues for food manufacturers, retailers and consumers?

Dr Cheryl Brunton, Public Health Specialist, Canterbury DHB

9:55am

Case Study: Managing the human factor in food safety (Case Study)

Ensuring food safety cannot happen without first considering the human factor, with recent research indicating some form of human error is responsible for up to two thirds of reported food safety incidents. What can your organisation do to reduce human error as a cause of incident in your organisation’s food safety programme?
• Humans as a food safety hazard
• Ensuring staff a correctly and adequate trained to consistently perform their jobs
• Building and maintaining a food safety culture within your production teams
• How easy to understand process flow and standard operating procedures can help mitigate the human factor

Peter Krafft, Quality Assurance Manager, Lion Nathan

10:40am

Morning Tea

11:00am

Allergy management: Food allergies and food safety – what your organisation needs to know (Case Study)

• Ensuring food allergy labelling is accurate, clear and understandable
• Knowing the labelling requirements of your export markets
• Integrating allergen controls into wider food safety programmes
• The Food Bill and allergen management

Penny Jorgensen, CEO, Allergy New Zealand

11.50am

Case Study: Managing allergy risks during the production process (Case Study)

In order to avoid the unintentional presence of allergens in your food, organisations need strong quality control and risk mitigation programmes.
• Putting controls in place to mitigate risk – production schedules, cleaning machinery and isolating allergens
• Working allergen management systems into HACCP
• Managing inadvertent contaminations

David Lowry, Manager - Food and Beverage Division, EcoLab

12:40pm

Lunch

1:30pm

Trends in safer food packaging

Through advertising campaigns and television programs consumers are becoming increasingly aware of what is in their food, and of the importance of food safety. But, are consumers as informed when it comes to food packaging. While on the face of it food packaging doesn’t seem like a likely food safety issue plastics, dyes and the packages manufacturing process can present a health risk for consumers. In this session we will investigate the risks posed to the safety of food products and consumers from the different types of packaging currently in use.

Craig Houston, Laboratory Services Manager; Public Health and Food Chemistry, ESR

2:20pm

What is really in our food: Chemical contaminants in spices

While the quantity of spice consumed by any individual may be nutritionally insignificant, spices by no means escape the issue of chemical contamination to which all foodstuffs are in some degree susceptible. Being a high value commodity, adulteration and fraud are on-going issues. This presentation will touch on:
• The history of spices and the spice trade
• Spice and New Zealand – local spice production and key overseas sources
• Stages of spice production, shelf-life and storage
• Potential contaminants and adulterants including mould toxins and adulteration with undeclared colours

Darren Saunders, Scientist, ESR

3:10pm

Closing remarks from the Chair and end of conference

Sponsors

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