Maple Leaf appoints food safety council

Maple Leaf Foods announced on its website that it has established a Food Safety Advisory Council.

The team includes independent experts that will increase the company’s access to global knowledge and expertise in areas of food safety practices, microbiology, technology and public health.

The team includes:

• Dr. Harvey Anderson, director, Program in Food Safety, Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs and Professor, Nutritional Sciences, Physiology and Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto;

• Professor Colin Dennis, chairman, Industry Advisory Group, International Agri-Technology Centre Ltd, and retired Director- General of the Campden, BRI food research centre in the U.K.;

• Dr. Mansel Griffiths, director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety and Chair of the Masters Program in Food Safety at the University of Guelph;

• Dr. R. Bruce Tompkin, a microbiologist with more than 45 years in the food processing industry and one of the developers of HACCP; and

• John Weisgerber, former director of Quality for a major North American meat processor with nearly 40 years experience in quality and food safety management.

The council’s mandate “is to challenge the status quo of Maple Leaf’s food safety program so that the company continues to raise the bar ever higher.”

There are three key areas the council will focus on in its first year:

• Perform ongoing critical reviews of the company’s Food Safety Strategy that will include recommendations on additions or modifications to advance Maple Leaf’s programs

•  Provide insights on any global emerging food safety risks

•  Provide guidance on Maple Leaf’s employee training and education programs.