Hygienic Design Risk Assessments – a new GFSI Benchmark Requirement - David Lowry

Presented by David Lowry - EHEDG – the European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group

Hygienic Design is arguably the most important pre-requisite program of the HACCP elements having an enormous impact on cleanability ad process efficiency. Not only is it critical for food safety but adherence to hygienic design principles positively effects productivity, sustainability, and equipment lifecycle. GFSI has recently promoted this importance to food safety with the issuing of Hygienic Design Benchmarking Standards for equipment suppliers and food manufacturers (2020). Crucial to meeting these requirements is having the risk management systems in place for hygienic design coupled with in-depth understanding of hygienic design principles. This presentation addresses how EHEDG can provide the learnings to conduct a HDRA and meet GFSI expectations.

David has been active in the field of Food Safety in New Zealand for over 40 years and has diverse experience in R&D, microbiological troubleshooting and consultancy, hygiene program expertise across many sectors and most recently as the Chairperson of the NZ Regional Section of EHEDG which he set up in 2019.A microbiologist by training, David worked at the Meat Research Institute of New Zealand (MIRINZ) before joining Ecolab as the Technical lead for NZ. His career at Ecolab spanned 25 years where he had multiple technical and food safety leadership roles in NZ & Australia, Asia Pacific and the US. He now has his own consultancy company Lowry Food Consulting Ltd and dedicates a significant portion of his time to championing the importance of hygienic design to food safety through the not for profit industry good global organisation EHEDG – the European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group where he currently chairs the NZ section. David is a fellow of NZIFST.