HYGIENIC ENGINEERING & DESIGN IN PRACTICE
THE EXTENDED HAND OF CARGILL CARGILL GLOBAL FOOD SAFETY MANAGEMENT STARTS AN INDUSTRY-WIDE DIALOGUE This article series is about leadership in food safety and food quality. It investigates what industry leaders do on a daily basis to optimize their companies’ performances regarding food safety and food quality. Jan Welberg, Vice President Food Safety & Quality at Cargill sets the bar by inviting EHEDG Connects readers to share their leadership challenges, because he believes that everyone is willing to improve but that no one can do it alone.
Can you describe one of your typical working days? Jan Welberg: “I travel frequently because it helps me to understand local circumstances, so what I do on a particular day depends on where I am located at that moment. The Cargill corporate head office is situated in Minneapolis, where I work quite regularly. From Minneapolis, I mainly focus on the Cargill production facilities in the United States. When I am working in my home country, The Netherlands, I concentrate on the rest of the 200 Cargill food-processing plants worldwide for which I am responsible for in regard to food safety
20
and food quality. I am a member of a global Cargill Food Safety Quality & Regulatory (FSQR) team that aligns policies, implementation processes, and auditing procedures and offers support to other groups across Cargill. In spite of its size, Cargill does not have a notation at the stock exchange and continues to operate as a privately held company, so a big part of the revenue is re-invested in new factories and new acquisitions. Consequently, our FSQR team members are also busy ensuring that new factories and new acquisitions will comply with all of our food safety and food quality regulations.”
