Mar 28, 2023   SOURCE: BusinessWire

The Global Food Safety Initiative Announces 22nd Annual Conference Keynote Speakers

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), part of The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), announces today its keynote speakers for its 22nd Annual Conference, "Delivering Safe Food in Turbulent Times: The Need for Agility & Resilience." The conference will feature three keynote sessions during the three-day event at the Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, USA, from April 24-27, 2023.

The opening keynote session, "Law and Order: Food Safety," will feature Dr. Julian M. Cox, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales Sydney (UNSW). Throughout that role, he worked closely with the food and diagnostics industries, particularly the poultry industry, while holding Faculty executive roles in education and international recruitment and partnerships. Though semi-retired, he still teaches at multiple universities and maintains a number of professional community roles. He currently serves as Scientific Director of Australia's Food Safety Information Council.

A second keynote session will feature Lucia Anelich, Ph.D., Managing Director of Anelich Consulting. Anelich is a food safety expert, consultant and educator in food safety, food microbiology and food safety management systems with over 40 years of experience and a Ph.D. in microbiology. She guided the food industry on Listeria monocytogenes during and after the 2018 listeriosis outbreak and SARS-CoV-2 related to food and food packaging safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is the author of the book "Present Knowledge in Food Safety," published this year.

The closing keynote session will feature award-winning information architect, filmmaker, photographer and writer Douglas Gayeton, Co-Founder and Chief Investigator with The Lexicon. Gayeton directed the "Know Your Food" series for PBS, "Growing Organic" for USDA and "Molotov Alva" for HBO. He has authored two books, "SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town" and "LOCAL: The New Face of Food & Farming in America." He is one of Crop Trust's Food Forever champions and a visiting professor in the Masters Program at Slow Food's University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.

"We're excited for attendees to hear from the amazing keynote speakers we've lined up for this year's Annual Conference," says Erica Sheward, Director of the Global Food Safety Initiative. "All three keynote speakers are experts in their respective fields and will bring that wealth of knowledge and insight to their sessions. These keynotes represent only a small portion of the great sessions and panels we have planned. We look forward to the conversations this year's conference will spark."

Additional speakers include experts from the USDA, Instacart, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the University of Georgia and the Food Standards Agency. The full conference program can be viewed online here.

For more information about the conference and to register, visit https://mygfsi.com/events/gfsi-conference/register/. To request sponsorship info, brands can contact sponsorship@theconsumergoodsforum.com. For practical info, including COVID-19 requirements, travel and lodging details, and dress code, visit https://mygfsi.com/events/gfsi-conference/practical-info/.

About The Consumer Goods Forum

The Consumer Goods Forum ("CGF") is a global, parity-based industry network that is driven by its members to encourage the global adoption of practices and standards that serves the consumer goods industry worldwide. It brings together the CEOs and senior management of some 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers, and other stakeholders across 70 countries, and it reflects the diversity of the industry in geography, size, product category and format. Its member companies have combined sales of EUR 3.5 trillion and directly employ nearly 10 million people, with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain. It is governed by its Board of Directors, which comprises more than 55 manufacturer and retailer CEOs. For more information, please visit: www.theconsumergoodsforum.com.

About the Global Food Safety Initiative

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI; the Coalition) is a CEO-led Coalition of Action from The Consumer Goods Forum, bringing together 45 retailers and manufacturers and an extended food safety community to help oversee food safety standards for businesses and help provide access to safe food for people everywhere. As one of the world's largest networks to help achieve safe food, GFSI is committed to making food safety everyone's business and the Coalition members are addressing challenges facing food safety systems in their supply chains and the markets they operate in, and are helping to raise the food safety bar globally. Its ambition is to strengthen and harmonize food safety systems so they are able to feed the growing, global population and develop markets that can deliver food safely, no matter where in the world the consumer is. To learn more, visit www.mygfsi.com.