Main Conference Day One: Thursday, October 11th, 2012

8:45 Chairperson’s Welcome & Opening Remarks

Angela Nardone
Chairman
N2N Global

9:00 Food Safety Around the Globe - Understanding Food Safety Initiatives Inside & Outside of The U.S.

Food safety is not only a responsibility restricted to the United States, it is a priority shared with the rest of the globe. Understanding the challenges and successful initiatives that companies in foreign lands have implemented can go a long way in improving your company’s food safety. Attendees of this session will learn about:

• Recognizing successful continuous improvement processes in food safety management systems
• Understanding cost effective approaches in the supply chain
• Identifying challenges and issues within the global food safety initiative

Ann Baker
QA Director
H.J. Heinz Company

9:45 Case Study: Maple Leaf Foods’ Journey to Implementation of a Single Standard Food Safety and Quality Management System

Maple Leaf Foods adopted the GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) approach over 3 years ago, following a significant Listeriosis related recall event. Since then, Maple Leaf has been working to design and implement a standard, effective Food Safety and Quality Management System across its Business Units, including primary and secondary protein processing, fresh and frozen bakeries and fresh prepared foods divisions. Topics that will be discussed in this session include:

• What is GFSI and what are the elements of a comprehensive Food Safety and Quality Management System?
• Maple Leaf’s approach to Food Safety and Quality Management System (FSQMS) design and implementation
• How Maple Leaf Foods is leveraging SAP for automation of FSQMS related standard business processes

Dr. Marianne Elia, Ph.D.
Director, Food Safety and Quality Management Systems
Maple Leaf Foods, Inc.

11:15 Part A: Finding the Right Subcontract Laboratory: Challenges in Choosing a Long Term Strategic Partner

More companies are looking into using subcontract laboratories to fulfill their testing needs and regulatory requirements. Choosing a subcontract laboratory is a process that should be carefully planned, researched and actively monitored. This process should be geared towards finding a long term strategic partner that meets the client requirements for accreditation, quality, cost, turnaround times, and customer service. This discussion, addresses:

• Overcoming the challenges of a subcontract laboratory selection process
• Providing an overview of the Genysis Nutritional Labs
• Discussing GNLs vision of partnership commitment

Edgar Grigorian
Senior Manager
Genysis Nutritional Labs

11:35 Part B: Food QC Seminar

It is easy to see that the final product is the last point at which we can test before the product goes out to market. The testing here needs to be thorough and reveal any errors that may not have been discovered in the previous steps. Ensuring quality and complying to any regulation is the key to this type of testing.

• Understanding the pressure to get the right results in a quick turnaround time
• Assessing how to keep your product recalls to a minimum
• Analyzing Waters latest work on H-class system

Christopher Shevlin
Americas Field Marketing Manager
Waters

1:00 Food Safety: As Good As the Weakest Link

As food safety continues to be an issue, there is a need for an integrated end to end food safety approach. Being in retail and at the end of the chain, organizations encounter the importance of making sure that there are appropriate food safety programs at each part of supply chain. Attendees of this session will hear about:

• Discussing how food safety programs can be better integrated
• Having appropriate and strong food safety at every step of the chain (i.e. farm, manufacturing facilities or stores)
• Understanding how having weak or insufficient programs (i.e. transportation) nullifies the efforts made and poses risk to product safety and consumer health

Neshat Soofi
Senior Group Manager – Food Safety/Quality
Target

1:45Panel Discussion: Validation, the 8th Principle of HACCP?

The seven current principles of HACCP have deemed great food safety results, however, improvements can still be made. Adding another caveat in which evidence or proof that food manufacturers are indeed practicing up-to-date food safety processes may or may not help to improve this initiative. Attendees of this session will learn about:

• Determining whether validation will have a positive or negative impact on the industry
• Understanding what this principle will mean for your organization
• Studying the overall effect on food safety

Moderator:

Angela Nardone
Chairman
N2N Global

3:30Panel Discussion: David vs. Goliath - Should There Be Different Standards for Larger Companies than for Smaller Companies?

While larger companies have taken what they can from the FSMA and began to work on implementing programs and policies now, smaller companies may struggle to do the same due to limited resources. Whether or not all companies should abide by the same standards remains debatable. Topics covered in this session include:

• Exploring options left for smaller companies who do not have resources of the larger companies
• Understanding why smaller companies will struggle to implement programs similar to that of their larger cohorts
• Examining the reasons why all organizations should operate under one standard

Moderator:

Angela Nardone
Chairman
N2N Global

4:15 Ideas Exchange: Studying the Lack of Information Provided by the FSMA

The lack of published information as it pertains to the FSMA has both confused and frustrated many in the food industry making food safety protocols a hit or miss process. Topics discussed in this session include:

• Analyzing what companies are doing in preparation for this regulation without complete information
• Accessing whether the wait-and-see approach is the right approach
• Understanding why the information is limited

Kendra Lee Clark
Assistant General Counsel
Chiquita Brands International

5:00 Close of Conference Day 1