Nestle’s Global Head of Food Safety on Digital and AI (19459000)
Nestle’s global director of food safety John Donaghy says that the biggest threats to food and beverage industries have not changed much in the past two or three decades.
He points out that the most common culprits are allergens and chemical hazards as well as microbiological hazards.
When global recalls of products are examined, pathogens and allergens will likely be the aliens. They could also be metals, plastics or glass – items that shouldn’t be in the product.
Donaghy makes it clear that despite his ability to list them off quickly, they are all very serious. In recent years, there have been some major outbreaks within the food industry.
They are caused by pathogen/food combination, like salmonella/low-moisture foods in chocolate or cronobacter/powdered infant formula.
(PonyWang/Image: Getty Images) Food safety issues are becoming more complicated. Food safety concerns are becoming more complex.
Foodborne illness outbreaks have occurred from sources less likely, including hepatitis in berries and leafy greens, STEC and Listeria in fruit and vegetables.
Donaghy says, “I refer to it as the same old pathogens but with different food vehicles.” In terms of chemicals, the traditional hazards are still present, but recent attention has been focused on PFASs, mineral oil and high-risk pesticides.
Also, there are external factors that affect food safety, including population growth, consumer habits changing, the food distribution channels and globalised supply chains.
It’s important to remember that other factors can impact food safety. These include geopolitical disruptions, technological advances, digitalisation, and artificial intelligence. All of these things have both positive and negative impacts on the food and beverage industry.
To put it plainly, he has a lot to do.
Food safety issues: How to identify them
Food and beverage companies have tackled these problems for many decades. Nestle has digitalized the FSMS, ensuring that they are interoperable. For example, we have implemented digital Food Safety Early Warning Systems, combined with predictive analysis to assess the risk of raw materials and suppliers, through to AI enabled consumer feedback sentiment analyses.” he says.
HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) are “the engine room” of Nestlé‘s FSMS. So much so, Donaghy says the business has become an early adopter of what he calls an “industry-leading” approach to HACCP digitalisation, which it is doing with third-party supplier Veeva.
“We continue to leverage the digital platform to have a lean agile approach that ensures we consistently integrate early warning food safety signals and control measures into the thousands of HACCP plans we have in our global factory network,” he says.
As the business continues to grow its analytical portfolio for emerging and existing hazards, Nestlé‘s ‘data lake’, support risk management decisions are also enhanced.
Traceability in the upstream supply chain can be challenging especially for food safety, authenticity and food fraud
John Donaghy, Nestlé global head of food safety
Nestlé also, like many large food and drink businesses, has early warning systems in place to raise food safety alerts. “Most are probably supported by commercially available digital tools, which involves scouting and digital mining of key sources of food safety information,” he says.
This approach raises issues in various grades, such as ‘urgent hot topics’, ‘slow burners’ or perhaps ‘red herrings’.
Topics that have been alerted and managed through Nestlé‘s early warning systems have included chemical contaminants, allergens and microbiological.
“Of course, there has been what I describe as miscellaneous topics which can raise food safety concerns amongst consumers, for example, microplastics in food, the recent foot and mouth disease in Germany and the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza,” He explains.
Nestle’s product portfolio spans a wide range of products across many geographies, which creates multiple stress points for Donaghy’s team.
He says that tracing the supply chain upstream can be difficult, especially in terms of food safety and authenticity.
Recall of foods containing allergens
In the case of a product recall, it is common for multinationals to have multiple factories that produce products and export them across many countries. Many of these will have different food safety laws. This is a much more difficult situation to handle than local producers.”
It is important to also keep an eye on country-specific regulations. Donaghy is not surprised by the increase in product recalls around the world.
Globally, there are more and stricter regulations. Some or all recalls can be attributed to changes in these regulations, particularly when the producer is not prepared.
He says that the addition of sesame (in January 2023) to the list of top eight allergens in the USA is an example. In 2023, about 10% of all allergen recalls were due to sesame that was not declared.
Climate change poses new food safety concerns. Nestle uses horizon scanning for the development and validation of predictive tools and models to predict high-risk food safety scenarios, or to reemerge hazards related to adverse weather.
(Dave Collins/Image: Getty Images) Climate change increases the risk of food contamination, particularly when crops are flooded. Dave Collins/Image Getty Images
For example, in regions that produce cereals or grains where mycotoxin risks are elevated. He says that, in the end, analyses and plans for internal surveillance will be used to assess and validate these models.
Climate change is expected to increase microbiological food incidents. For example, excessive rainfall can cause flooding, which then leads to contamination of foodborne pathogens by agricultural runoff.
He says that he uses a variety of Molecular Microbiological Tools, including Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) and Metagenomics to track the evolution of antibiotic-resistant pathogens as well as to discover novel ecological microbiological traits.
Donaghy, Nestle and other companies continue to work on techniques that will help them avoid, detect and monitor potential food safety hazards. It’s far from that.
Donaghy & Nestle are constantly developing new techniques and systems to combat the increasing number of threats.
