The event, entitled The Food Epprentice Experience, was developed jointly by Paragon Leadership International and food safety standards writer and certifier NSF International.
Industry leaders spanning food manufacturing, farming and academic backgrounds were divided into teams and each was tasked with developing solutions to given industry challenges: Food safety, childhood obesity, hunger, and Michigan’s agricultural economy. The teams were given leadership coaching as they worked and were funded in their projects by various non-profit organizations, before being judged on their strategies by a panel of food industry judges.
Now the winning ideas from each category are to be put into practice.
Merisa Campbell of the Michigan Farm Bureau Promotion and Education Committee, which sponsored the agricultural teams’ projects, said: "We have come away with ideas today that we're going to take back and try to implement. They don't end here. We're going to build on them and get them in front of the target group we're after."
Strategies
The winning strategy to assist Michigan’s agricultural economy involved promoting agricultural careers among high school and college students, and developing social networking platforms, through YouTube and Facebook, for promotion of Michigan agriculture.
For food safety, the winning team developed an education campaign on safe food handling practices that targets pregnant women – an at-risk group for foodborne illness – while the winning approach to childhood obesity centered on school lunch programs.
The Food Bank Council of Michigan has also said that it intends to implement strategies developed by forum participants who identified alternative sources of fresh produce to replace the soon-to-be-scrapped Michigan Agricultural Surplus System. Suggestions included setting up state prison farms and corporate-sponsored food bank farms and farm markets.
The event’s organizers said that forty food companies and organizations were represented, including Kellogg’s, Spartan Stores, Gordon Food Service, Michigan Restaurant Association, Michigan Department of Agriculture, Gleaner’s, Eastern Market and Michigan State University.
NSF International recently became the first North American standards certification body to obtain both British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Safe Quality Food (SQF) accreditation from the American National Standards Institute, the company claims. It said that the addition of BRC standards will allow it to expand the number of companies for which it can provide independent safety certification.