A multi-stakeholder collaboration in Canada, involving food manufacturers, Université Laval, Canadian Allergists, and Canada’s national patient organization, Food Allergy Canada, has led to the development of new proposed Allergen Management Guidelines for Food Manufacturers. These guidelines aim to help to support food manufacturers in their implementation of effective allergen control plans including the responsible use of Precautionary Allergen Labelling, to better meet the needs of Canadians managing food allergy.

Join us to hear from Food Allergy Canada and Université Laval on the launch of the new guidelines and related resources for the food industry.

To register for this event, please follow this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PALwebinar

AGENDA

1. Why change is needed: multi-stakeholder perspectives to support moving forward

• Food Allergy: The Canadian Landscape
  • Consumer Perspective – Beatrice Povolo, Director of Food Safety & Regulatory Affairs, Food Allergy Canada
  • Food Manufacturers Perspective & CFIA Recalls – Silvia Dominguez, Research Associate, Université Laval

2. The Path Forward

• Introduction of the Allergen Management Guidelines – Silvia Dominguez, Research Associate, Université Laval 

3. Why this is important to food manufacturers

• How guidelines will help the food industry in managing allergen risks – Sharon Mohammed, Director, Regulatory Management, Maple Leaf Foods

4. Discussion/ Q&A

Speakers

Dr. Silvia Dominguez

Research Associate, Université Laval

Dr. Dominguez is a food engineer specialized in food safety risk assessment, allergen management, statistical analysis and data modeling. She holds a MSc and a PhD in Food Science from Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA). After graduation, she worked as a food microbiologist for the food industry in the United States, before returning to research and consulting in 2016. She currently works as a research associate at the Food Risk Analysis and Regulatory Excellence Platform, hosted by the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods (INAF) of Université Laval (Quebec, Canada), where she manages research projects on allergens and food fraud, industry outreach activities, and food safety capacity building initiatives for competent authorities at the international level.

Beatrice Povolo

Director, Food Safety & Regulatory Affairs – Food Allergy Canada

Beatrice is the Director, Food Safety & Regulatory Affairs at Food Allergy Canada. In this capacity, she leads the organization’s food safety initiatives working with both government and industry stakeholders, with a specific focus on access to accurate ingredient information in food labelling and foodservice. She is actively involved in international discussions related to allergen management as a member of the Health Canada delegation for the CODEX Committee on Food Labelling (CCFL) and collaborates internationally with other patient organizations globally.  Beatrice is currently the Project Management Lead for a multi-stakeholder initiative for the development of Allergen Management and Pre-cautionary Allergen Labelling Guidelines for the Canadian food industry. She graduated from the University of Toronto, with an Honours BA in political science and economics.

Sharon Mohammed

Director – Government and Industry Relations

Since my graduation from the University of Manitoba in Food Science and Microbiology,over the past 25plus years I have worked in successive roles within the Canadian Food Industry (FSQA, manufacturing, sanitation, retail and foodservice).

I joined Maple Leaf Foods (MLF) in Sept. 2006 in a Corporate Food Safety and Quality role, and only 18 months afterwards I was one of the many MLF personnel stationed on ground-zero at a plant which was the centre of a national Canadian Listeria recall and illness outbreak. I was on the front line working with Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) local and regional staff assigned to the crisis. Looking back, this became the pivot of my regulatory career.

In my current role as Director – Government and Industry Relations, I support the MLF teams with regulatory services such as interpretation and analysis which leads to Issues Management, Operations Support & Strategic solutions. In addition, I work with CFIA Regional Operations and CFIA National personnel to enable commercial and consistent decision making (with enforcement discretion when applicable). Via MLF industry association membership and directly with CFIA officials, I share industry knowledge / best practices and escalate / advocate issues to solve industry’s common objectives. I represent MLF on various industry committees / associations: Canadian Meat Council (CMC), Import-Export Canada (IEC), Plant Based Foods Canada (PBFC) and strategic working groups such as AAFC’s Agile Regulatory Table (ART), Covid Flexibility, Irritants and Food and Beverage Canada’s (FBC) Labour Taskforce.