Environmental Monitoring: Protect Your Customers and Business While Reducing Costs of Non-Quality Registration

Duration:60 minutes

One of the biggest threats a food company can face is a food safety incident leading to a recall. A recall may not only harm consumer health, but could also majorly affect brand integrity and profitability. One of the best proactive approaches to mitigate this risk is an Environmental Monitoring Plan (EMP). A robust Pathogen Monitoring Program is imperative for every food company. Well-designed EMPs can save companies money by reducing product holds, product destruction, and recalls.

This webinar discusses EMP best practices, tools, techniques, hygienic equipment design and layout, zoning, choosing sample sites and frequency, and guidance on microbiological testing.

Attendees will learn about:

Environmental monitoring within the context of a pathogen monitoring program.
Defining environmental monitoring zoning and sampling site selection within a food production facility.
Selecting the appropriate environmental sampling tool based on location.
Establishing a corrective action procedure for an environmental monitoring program.

Speakers

Andrea Chmelar

Micro Supervisor

Nestle Quality Assurance Center

Andrea Chmelar is a Microbiology Supervisor and Environmental Monitoring Specialist at Nestlé Quality Assurance Center where she works directly with factories to evaluate, improve, and design customized and effective Environmental Monitoring (EMPs) Programs as a Microbiology Operations Supervisor. She specializes in leadership development and lean process improvements. Andrea’s strength lies in empowering and enabling associates through training and development of EMPs to build a more positive and proactive food safety culture. When Andrea is not in the lab or in a factory (which isn’t often because pathogens don’t take vacations), she enjoys travel to scenic destinations. In addition to her food science education, she is also a certified culinarian.

Lauren Devlin

Microbiology Laboratory Supervisor

Nestle Quality Assurance Center

Lauren Devlin is a Quality Assurance Specialist at the Nestlé Quality Assurance Center (NQAC) in Dublin, Ohio, and serves as the Proficiency Test Coordinator for Nestlé USA. She received her B.S. in Biology from Utah State University. At NQAC, Lauren leads programs for factory environmental monitoring services, microbiology risk assessments, laboratory assessments, and management of the internal quality, safety, and environmental management systems. Prior to joining the quality team at NQAC, Lauren worked as a microbiologist carrying out both quantitative and qualitative analytical testing in the laboratory. Lauren is passionate about food safety and assisting factories in the implementation and improvement of their environmental monitoring programs.

(Moderator) Barbara VanRenterghem, Ph.D.

Editorial Director

Food Safety Magazine

Barbara VanRenterghem, Ph.D., is the editorial director of Food Safety Magazine, a position she has held since 2008. From 2005–2008, she was the chief editor of Controlled Environments Magazine and the science editor of Animal Lab News and Lab Manager Magazine at Vicon Publishing. At Eaton Publishing (1999–2005), she rose from the positions of assistant scientific editor for BioTechniques and acquisitions editor for BioTechniques Press to the editor of content development and acquisitions and director of commercial product development. While at Eaton (then acquired by Informa), she served as the chief editor of Preclinica. She received a B.Sc. in biology in 1989 from Bowling Green State University and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1994 from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.