Ahead of P&P 2019 Judith Vermeulen, Food Safety Lead within the R&D Department at Mars Wrigley shared a short interview. 

Q. Could you please give us a quick sneak peek of what we can expect to hear during your presentation? 

Recently I moved from Regulatory Affairs to Food Safety for Veghel factory which means I am now more directly involved in managing compliance for food contact materials in our factory. This is a great opportunity to put the legislation into practice. This is also what I am going to bring in my presentation: the practical implications of delivering compliance on ALL food contact materials in a very large food production environment. What do you need to do to bring this to life? What are the challenges and how to choose the right priorities to focus on? 

Q. What do you consider to be one of the biggest challenges that the food contact industry is facing? 

For over 8 years I am now involved in the fantastic world of Food Contact Materials. I remember the first time I joined a conference on this topic and being overwhelmed by the wealth of knowledge of all the experts in the room and the sheer complexity of the topic. I believe the biggest challenge is to communicate well throughout the whole supply chain and therefor these conferences are very important. If you get to know your supply chain and its challenges it is a lot easier to overcome them and think about solutions together. 

Q. How can you ensure you stay compliant with the latest food contact regulations and best practice? 

Luckily we have a large global internal network within Mars Inc. across the different segments (chocolate and gum products, main meal products and petfood products for example) with a lot of colleagues who love talking about this topic. Connecting with our Dutch Food Federation (FNLI) is also key. I have been chair of the FCM group for a couple of years which gives me a great network to pull from and to connect with when I am looking for information. And next to that of course conferences like this of course. Meeting people face to face is very valuable.