NAFS 2022 | Smarter Approaches to Food Safety

Over 200 food industry companies convened in Chicago last week for the North American Food Safety & Quality's annual gathering, NAFS 22. FoodLogiQ was among the attendees, connecting with food safety executives, sharing insights, and discussing today's supply chain opportunities. Here are a few highlights from this year's event

Over the two-and-a-half-day conference, the FoodLogiQ team was privileged to speak with many of the delegates at our booth. These substantive conversations included regulatory compliance, supplier management, and digitization of food safety processes.

NAFS 22 Session Highlights

The event included informative workshops and concurrent case study sessions. Here are a few highlights from the program:

• Walmart's session, "One Team" Global Approach to Food Safety," presented by Sara Mortimore, Vice President of Global Food Safety, highlighted the importance of aligning food safety management systems, working as one food safety team, and creating global centers of excellence to strengthen your overall food safety program. Ms. Mortimore highlighted the need to leverage technology for virtual assessments but also noted the value of providing time to visit locations, stand in the plants, and see what is happening.
• Starbucks Vice President of Global Food Safety & Science Affairs, Tom Wiester, presented on "Developing Smarter Capabilities to Understand, Anticipate, and Prevent Food Safety Risk during which he asked the audience, "What's possible"? He noted that keeping the right steps in place is key and that companies should not overcomplicate tasks, such as maintenance checklists. Their approach is to provide foundational knowledge and integrated training to enable partners in all roles to become stewards of food safety, public health, quality, and regulation.   
• The FDA shared a regulatory update, "Moving from Outbreak to Prevention." This session focused on the advantages of supply chain traceability and an overall prevention strategy against foodborne illness and major recalls affecting our food supply chain. The FDA is evaluating opportunities for New Era approaches within outbreak categories, including data sharing, data trusts, AI/ML, traceability, and root cause analysis. 
• Jeff Edlen, Vice President of Food Safety Retail Operations at FoodLogiQ Customer, Whole Foods Market, sat on a panel with Costco, Amazon, and Kroger leaders. Their discussion explored how evolving consumer and regulatory expectations on a global level are shaping how companies in the food industry are doing business. This includes collaborating with suppliers, creating feedback systems, and understanding in-store food safety "must-do's" to control and eradicate foodborne pathogens. 

FoodLogiQ and Chick-fil-A Roundtable

Sarah Blackmon from Chick-fil-A joinedFoodLogiQ's Julie McGill to co-host a roundtable entitled "Tech-Enabled Traceability: Preparing for FSMA 204 and More".

During this luncheon, there were very engaging conversations about the pending FSMA 204 regulation, Chick-fil-A's current approach to traceability, and utilizing FoodLogiQ Track + Trace and their areas of focus as they have been preparing for enhanced traceability recordkeeping for regulatory compliance. Guests at the roundtable included representatives from Walmart, McDonald's, A&W, Amazon, Coca-Cola, and representatives from our partners at Conagra and Thrive Market.

If you couldn't join the roundtable or meet with our FoodLogiQ team and want to learn more about FSMA 204 preparedness, click here to view our on-demand webinar.

View Webinar

About North American Food Safety & Quality 2022 (NAFS 22)

NAFS 22 is designed and built to bring together people from across several sectors within the food industry to network, benchmark, learn and share. The participants gathered for two and half days of keynotes, case studies, workshops, panel discussions, pre-arranged one-to-one meetings, themed lunches, focus groups, and networking. The focus is to cross-pollinate the ideas and innovations generated by manufacturing leaders as they pioneer unique solutions to the universal challenges they all face in their working lives. This year's topics included FSMA reviews and compliance, integrated food safety systems, supply chain and risk management, quality assurance, and leadership development.