After having to be rescheduled, this year’s Food Safety Summit is set for Oct. 19-22 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL.

Registration is now open for the summit, with early bird pricing available before Aug. 31.

The Food Safety Summit is the country’s leading interactive forum on food safety with an in-depth conference program offering solutions for today and planning for tomorrow. The summit features the world’s leading authorities examining the most up-to-date innovations in the food industry.

The event will is scheduled to begin on Oct. 19, and will offer four certification programs followed by three days of interactive education sessions along with a trade show with hundreds of exhibiting companies, governmental entities and academic institutions.

about the 2020 event
This year’s keynote address and opening session will focus on the impact of COVID-19 on the food industry.

During this pandemic, food manufacturers have met the challenge of performing as an essential business and have shown the world how well the industry responds to a crisis. They have worked together to maintain a safe work environment for the employee and produced safe food, according to a statement from summit organizers.

The impact of COVID-19 will be addressed in the opening session for the Food Safety Summit and the keynote address by Will Daniels, president of the produce division at IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group. Daniels’s talk is titled “Back to Basics: Consumer Focused Food Safety.” 

“The food industry has always risen to a crisis and taken a challenge head-on. The result is usually very innovative and sometimes severe to reach the desired outcome. The COVID-19 pandemic response is no different. The food industry has stepped up the challenge and has developed some novel ways to protect their workforce,” Daniels said in the summit organizations statement.

“Now is the time to change our paradigm and refocus on the consumer and their wellbeing. We must remember that the food we make goes into the mouths of the people we love and how important it is to have food safety programs that go above and beyond regulation to protect the consumer while still being profitable.”

The focus of the keynote address will be on:

The strong relationship between the cook and the consumer and how food safety is key to survival.

How the industrialization of food has forced us to focus on costs and market share to compete and stay in business.

The impact of government required regulation.

The talk will answer such questions as: 

What if we could use this time to change the way we think about our food safety programs and focus more on the consumer? 

Could we change the way our food system is subsidized and focus those dollars on food safety efforts? 

Can we personalize food safety in ways that make the senior leadership in a company want to do more?

The summit’s opening half-day workshop will also focus on COVID-19
The “New Normal for the Food Industry” workshop is wher attendees will hear, learn and discuss firsthand with subject matter experts from epidemiology, regulatory, distribution, manufacturing, foodservice and retail on what they did to address the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis for their organizations, customers and consumers. 

Attendees will find out what worked and what did not work from experts and those on the front lines such as Steve Mandernach, executive director of Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO); Jorge Hernandez, vice president of quality assurance for the The Wendy’s Co.; and Craig Wilson, vice president of Costco, and others.