Canadian Food Business
Maple Leaf Foods recently hosted its Sixth Annual Food Safety Symposium. At the event, 170 representatives from more than 100 companies gathered to discuss the most pressing concerns in food safety. This year’s event was themed “People or Technology”, asking participants to debate which was the best investment to make a significant change in global food safety.
“Food safety incorporates a broad cross-section of people and technologies and so we adopted a deliberatively provocative theme this year,” said Dr. Randy Huffman, SVP Operations and Chief Food Safety Officer at Maple Leaf. “Everyone would choose “both” to the question of investing in people versus technology, but in reality, resources are never unlimited and choices about investments, both large and small, are made each and every day. The provocative question we debated was which investment would lead to the greatest advancement?”
The symposium also gave participants the opportunity to learn more about the “Safe Food Canada – The Learning Partnership” model. While it is still not finalized, it aims to standardize food safety competencies, enable workers in the Canadian food industry to progress and grow in the profession, and improve Canada’s food safety performance.
