Global Food Protection Organisation Makes Key Appointments

21 November 2013

Global Food Protection Organisation Makes Key Appointments

Global food protection organisation SSAFE has announced the appointment of Dave Harlan as its new President and Jo Finer as Vice President.

SSAFE is a global organisation of leading consumer food companies that work to improve public health and wellbeing. Its members include representatives from organisations such as Nestle, Cargill, McDonald’s, Danone and Fonterra.

Dave Harlan is the Director of Food Safety Risk Management at Cargill – an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services.

Mr Harland says, “SSAFE aims to foster the continuous improvement and global acceptance of internationally recognized food protection systems and standards through public private partnerships. This focus improves the collective ability of the food industry to provide a diversity of safe and affordable food to consumers worldwide.”

Jo Finer is Fonterra’s General Manager - Product Assurance and Regulatory, and leads the development and implementation of Fonterra’s global quality strategy and standards framework.

Ms Finer has 20 years of technical, quality and general management experience in the New Zealand dairy industry, building on her food technology qualifications and post-graduate studies in dairy science and technology.

Ms Finer says she’s honoured by the appointment and excited about helping to lead SSAFE and the organisation’s new 2014 initiatives.

“SSAFE has just confirmed its commitment to a number of new food safety initiatives which will make a real difference to public wellbeing. This includes establishing an open-source framework for food safety training to support dairy farming in developing countries, and working with Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) to deliver a training programme on food safety,” says Ms Finer.

SSAFE’s new 2014 ‘Dairy Farming Capacity Building’ project will support dairy farming modernization in low and medium income countries by enabling smallholder dairy farmers to meet FAO-IDF good dairy farming practices. SSAFE will also provide an open-source framework to support the roll out of public-private training programmes for dairy farmers in low and medium income countries.

SSAFE is a public private partnership born in 2004 in response to the worldwide threat of Avian Influenza. SSAFE has since expanded its scope to include not only animal health but wildlife, agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and beverages. All types of food (human and animal) and beverage products, including water are addressed.

For more information please visit www.ssafe-food.org

ENDS

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