Guest lecture HVHL University of Applied Sciences

Guest lecture By George Miedema

Introduction lecture

On the 8th of June, I was invited by my former lecturer, Martijn Kreeft, and went back to my old university of Applied Sciences to talk about food safety compliance and our company QAssurance. During my studies, I learned a lot about food safety, product development, and certification. Furthermore, I was prepared to work in global food safety by, from the get-go, studying in English, working with different cultures and with different studies, by doing cases together. By doing several internships, I got actual experience, allowing me to compare perfect textbook examples with reality.

Lecture

Together with a small group of students, we discussed several topics. A food company has many difficulties and is pressured by multiple stakeholders. When you’re a food manufacturer, you will have to deal with consumers, suppliers, regulations, and industry standards. When it comes to retail distribution in the Netherlands, just three major firms remain: AH, Jumbo, and Superunie. Because of this, one party has a much greater and more powerful advantage over the other, with all of the related problems. To generate even more stunning items for more customers, you may not have the time to see how the rest of the world is changing around you. More about this is addressed in the following article ‘Trends in the Global Food Supply Chain‘. Secondly, we discussed the challenges and operations related to certification and how time-consuming and costly certification can be. As well as how iMIS can help out with reducing costs and speeding up the certification process, with the methodology of iMIS in addition. At last, as food security and food safety are closely related to each other, we discussed the challenges and chances of implementing quality systems in emerging countries.

The presentation

The full is made available for everyone down below.