New NSF global director stresses culture of food safety

NSF International, an authority on food safety, is developing programmes that aim to raise awareness and reinforce retailers’ knowledge of handling, food preparation, storage, and other aspects of food safety. The independent, not-for-profit global organisation has nearly 70 years of expertise, and has been certifying products and writing standards for the food, water and consumer goods industries. To flesh out the organisation’s plans, NSF recently appointed Gina Nicholson as global director of Retail Accounts.

Ms Nicholson has been in the retail food safety business for over 23 years. In her new role, she will focus on utilising new technology and science-based approaches developed by NSF International to create supply chain food safety management systems and training programmes that can be scaled to fit a global retailer’s operations worldwide. This includes overseeing NSF retail food safety experts who provide consulting and technical services brands like Sodexo, HMSHost, T.G.I. Friday’s and Jack in the Box.

“New developments in technology and increased cooperation among government and the food industry have led to improvements in addressing food-borne illness outbreaks. However, prevention through training and a strong farm to fork food safety programme must remain the focus of retailers as the globalisation of the food supply chain poses new challenges,” stated Ms Nicholson. “Food safety and quality is equal to brand protection and no third-party organisation understands this better than NSF International. Food safety is what we do.” She emphasised that NSF’s safety programmes for retailers worldwide are designed by leading scientists and regulatory experts that understand the science behind food safety and quality and use innovative approaches.

“The key is to have senior management’s buy-in with every aspect of the retail food enterprise, including associates at retail stores, manufacturing plants and distribution centres all over the world - food safety should be top of mind for everyone. It was this philosophy that led the International Association for Food Protection to select Kroger as the 2012 Black Pearl Award recipient and I was honoured to have been part of this team,” she said. “In my new role at NSF, I plan to apply this experience and the technical expertise of NSF’s retail food safety team, which average 20 years of experience, to help other organisations, large and small, build a culture of food safety.”

Human touch

In 2012, NSF International launched an innovative behaviour-based food safety training model that has caught the attention of many leading retailers. In partnership with Cognisco, a specialist in assessing and developing workforce competence, NSF International combined leading research on human behaviour and psychology with their expAdidas