| Headline: | Food Safety Summit 2024 Keynote - Being Right Is Not Enough: Leading Food Safety in a Corporate and Global Environment |
| Location: | US |
| Post Date: | May 9, 2024 1:05 PM |
| TAG ID: | awire158945 |
| DocID: | 861508 |
| Word Count: | approx. 677 words |
| Related: | View Related Photos |
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| Mary Weaver Getz, Chief Food Safety and Quality Assurance (FSQA) Officer at Yum! Brands Inc., Delivers Keynote Address at Food Safety Summit ROSEMONT, IL / ACCESSWIRE / May 9, 2024 / The Keynote presentation at the 2024 Food Safety Summit , titled, "Being Right is Not Enough: Leading Food Safety in a Corporate and Global Environment," took place on Wednesday morning. The Keynote speaker, Mary Weaver Getz, Chief Food Safety and Quality Assurance (FSQA) Officer at Yum! Brands Inc., shared about the critical importance of developing soft skills in food safety leaders to enable effective food safety leadership throughout a business. Before Mary took the stage, Stacy Atchison, Publisher of Food Safety Magazine ( FSM ), invited Adrienne Blume, FSM Editorial Director, and Larry Keener, C.F.S., P.A., Chair of FSM 's Award Committee, to introduce this year's recipient, Kathleen Glass, Ph.D., who was selected for her work at the Food Research Institute (FRI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When accepting her award, Dr. Glass remarked, "This award serves as a testament to our teamwork and as a reminder of what we can achieve through collaboration." In the Keynote Address, Mary Weaver Gertz first discussed her personal history, and how it led to and intertwines with her career in food safety. From Mary's mother contracting severe foodborne illness as a child, leading to her exemplifying stringent food safety practices in her home kitchen, to Mary's own daughter being sickened by three different foodborne parasites and pathogens throughout her life, the crucial public health importance of food safety has always been in Mary's awareness. "Food is supposed to be nourishing, celebration, comfort, connection, love… and above all else, food is about trust," said Mary, before going on to explain how trust is a core pillar in her work as Chief FSQA Officer for Yum! Brands. Yum! Brands operate more than 55,000 restaurants around the world (Yum! Brands is the parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and the Habit Grill). Yum! Brands implement the same rigorous food safety standards in all of its restaurants regardless of geographic location, resource difficulties, or local regulations. The way Yum! Brands accomplish this, explained Mary, is by giving their food safety leaders worldwide the tools they need to meet food safety goals no matter what. In fact, "Unrivaled Capability and Talent" is one of Yum! Brand's core strategic pillars that help the company assure food safety at such a large scale. "It all comes back to people and preparing them to execute," she said, elaborating that global objectives carried out locally require clear and defined governance, oversight, and reporting. Yum! Brands leverages several "secret weapons" that help to reinforce food safety throughout all of the company's restaurants, such as an intentionally built, connected, and empowered food safety community; constant recognition when people are "caught doing the right thing;" and operating from the assumptions that "change is the new normal" and "compliance moves slower than risk." Additionally, Mary advised food safety leaders to lead without authority. Rather than relying on standards, regulation, and governance in justifications for food safety decisions, only pull-out governance when you need it. Explaining the "why" behind decisions creates credibility; if you lead by referencing someone else's authority, you diminish away your own authority, Mary said. Finally, Mary underlined the importance of "marketing" food safety throughout the entire company-such as by celebrating events like World Food Safety Day and giving food safety awards to employees-to elevate its status as a business priority. "Food safety is not a function, food safety is a movement… and you're all a part of it," Mary concluded. The 2024 Food Safety Summit is taking place this week at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. The event is owned and produced by Food Safety Magazine ( www.food-safety.com ) and BNP Media ( www.bnpmedia.com ), one of the country's leading business-to-business media companies serving industry professionals across 60+ industries through magazines, custom media, e-newsletters, webinars, events, and market research. ### For further information, contact: Amy Riemer, Media Relations 978-502-4895 [email protected] SOURCE: Food Safety Summit View the original press release on accesswire.com |
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