Ep. 53. Cindy Jiang: How McDonald's Collaborates with Stakeholders Worldwide

Cindy Jiang is senior director, Global Food and Packaging Safety, Global Supply Chain & Sustainability, for McDonald's Corporation. Her responsibilities include leading global supplier quality management systems and programs, establishing science-based food safety standards and policies, managing food-related emerging issues, and providing guidance on nutrition information, accuracy, and consistency. She has been the lead for the McDonald's Food Safety Advisory Council since 2002, a forum for sharing food safety knowledge and best practices among leading suppliers and external experts. Cindy has been actively involved with industry and government collaboration on food safety. She has served on the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) Board since 2008 and is currently a member of the Board of Advisors at the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Cindy began her career with the McDonald's Corporation after receiving a M.Sc. in food science and nutrition from the University of Wisconsin in 1990. She has held various positions at McDonald's Corporation, from a chemist to a quality assurance consultant, a senior quality assurance manager, and a director of food safety. Cindy has been actively engaged in leading the effort on harmonization of food safety standards by working with the food suppliers and the foodservice industry since early 2007. She is a senior member of the American Society for Quality and has been a member of Institute of Food Technologists since 1989. She is also a current member of the International Association of Food Protection and AOAC International.

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak to Cindy [19:43] about:

• The importance of meetings, team building activities, and volunteering in an effort to keep food safe
• The collaborative process McDonald's follows when new equipment needs to be developed
• McDonalds' approach to new employee training
• What regulators are looking for when they visit a foodservice establishment
• Understanding why collaboration is necessary and valuable
• Why food safety is not an area of competition
• McDonalds' three-leg stool system
• How McDonald's communicates with its many suppliers
• How McDonald's suppliers are required to have at least one GFSI benchmark certification
• Why there are so many benchmarked schemes, and why having a consolidated benchmarked scheme isn't feasible
• Government-to-government and government-to-business meetings
• Food safety culture
• Why every business within the food sector should be ready for an unannounced visit 24/7
• McDonald's and World Food Safety Day
• The ongoing challenge of meeting consumers' ever-changing expectations
• Technology, predictive analytics, and using data to predict potential foodborne illnesses and outbreaks
• How McDonald's has been delivering food in other countries years before it became a trend in the U.S.
• The importance of mastering soft skills, communication, and networking even in a science-based field

News Mentioned in This Episode
EFSA Identifies Three Food Safety Priorities for the Next 5–10 Years; Codex Agrees to Tackle E. coli in Certain Foods [3:57]
Researchers Dissect 17 Years of Salmonella Outbreaks [8:51]
Viral Story: The Blue Bell Ice Cream Licker [11:12]

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