Friday 21 September 2012 - SESSION III: FOOD SAFETY UPDATE
11.30 hrs - ECMA Technical Committee Update Arend-Jan Luten (Contego Packaging, NL), Chairman of the ECMA Technical Committee, presents an update of ECMA’s progress since last year’s launch of the ECMA Good Manufacturing Practice Guide for food cartons. The list of carton manufacturing facilities carrying the ECMA Food Seal, declaring compliance with the new ECMA Guide, is growing. A year after the introduction, the ECMA GMP and Food Seal have already been widely accepted within the Food and Drinks industry
Already 43 carton manufacturing facilities have issued a self-declared compliance statement for the manufacturing of food cartons and are allowed to use the ECMA compliance seal. But we should not yet be satisfied with this number. It’s in the interest of the whole industry that we increase this number. ECMA aims to have a wider group of companies adopt the Food Seal and increase the number of carton manufacturing facilities that have issued a self-declared compliance statement up to one hundred by the end of 2012.
What are the next steps and what are the Committee’s plans to facility continuous improvement in food safety at company and at sector level? What are achievements and planned other areas of engagement of the Technical Committee, and how can members contribute to the work of the committee? You’ll learn at the Congress.
11.45 hrs - Managing food safety along the supply chain
Beate Kettlitz is Director Food Policy Science and R&D at FoodDrinks Europe, the European association for the food and beverage industry (B). At last year’s ECMA Food safety seminar, she welcomed our association’s initiatives to promote GMP but stressed that because of the complexity of the supply chain, a combined effort between end-users and their upstream suppliers is a crucial factor of success. What can ECMA members do to develop a common understanding of food safety requirements?
12.15 hrs - ECMA GMP Compliance – initial experiences (panel discussion)
Robert Davison, Managing Director of Alexir Packaging (UK), and Heinz Traussnig, Director Product Safety and Compliance at the Mayr-Melnhof Group (A), are sharing their initial thoughts and experiences with the implementation of the ECMA GMP Guide in their respective companies. What made them to the adoption of the Guide? What were practical steps undertaken to implement it? Being a representative from the independent carton community, what were the bottlenecks? Did it help their business in meeting with customer requirements? What could ECMA and the national associations do more to help their members serve the market needs?
We hope to facilitate an interactive discussion, and the exchange of valuable experiences from a medium sized and multinational converter. You are invited to join the discussion at the Congress!
