7:30 am
NETWORKING BREAKFAST:BUILD COMMUNITY CONTACTS
- Start your day off right and connect with food safety and regulatory leaders.
- Get to know your industry peers and colleagues over a delicious breakfast.
- Source practical tips, discuss best practices, and prepare for the day ahead.
8:20 am
OPENING COMMENTS FROM YOUR HOST
Gain insight into today’s sessions so you can get the most out of your conference experience.
8:30 am
THE FORWARD PLAN
A Direct Look at CFIA’s Regulatory Priorities for 2027
With Canada’s food safety regulator setting its priorities for the year ahead, FSQA leaders need to anticipate where scrutiny may intensify. Ensure your systems, resources, and compliance processes are ready to respond. Source practical tips to:
- Master the regulatory priorities and emerging areas of scrutiny most relevant to food businesses across the supply chain.
- Amplify the implications for preventive controls, traceability, documentation, and inspection readiness.
- Reduce compliance gaps and increase operational improvements.
Set clearer priorities for your 2027 compliance strategy and focus resources where regulatory readiness matters most.
9:00 am
PANEL DISCUSSION: WHEN NO ONE'S WATCHING
How to Build One Food Safety Culture Across Farm, Factory, and Fork
When production targets are under pressure, teams are short-staffed, or supervisors aren’t on the floor, will people still do the right thing? Leaders across foodservice operations share how you can build accountability, challenge unsafe habits, and make food safety part of decision-making. Create a roadmap to:
- Heighten safe working practices when speed, staffing pressures, and operational targets compete with compliance.
- Advance holding teams and third-party partners accountable for food safety decisions.
- Achieve consistent standards across locations while adapting training and communication to different roles and working environments.
Build your food safety culture that holds up even when no one is checking.
9:30 am
INDUSTRY EXPERT: TRAINED AND TRACKED
How to Track Staff Food Safety Training and Certification Status Across Every Location
Without a reliable way to track completion, expiry dates, and outstanding training, gaps can go unnoticed until an audit or inspection highlights them. The priority is to maintain clear oversight of your workforce and ensure every location is compliant. Source practical tips to:
- Achieve a central view of staff training completion, certification expiry dates, and outstanding requirements across all locations.
- Optimize alerts and escalation processes to address expired qualifications, overdue refreshers, and gaps.
- Advance standardizing training records and reporting to produce accurate evidence during audits and inspections.
Maintain a clear, up-to-date picture of your workforce readiness to prevent compliance risks.
10:00 am
REFRESHMENTS BREAK & EXHIBITOR LOUNGE: ATTEND VENDOR DEMOS
& CONSULT INDUSTRY EXPERTS
- Enjoy exclusive sponsor demos and experience the next level of food safety and regulatory innovation firsthand.
- Meet one-on-one with leading solution providers to discuss organizational hurdles.
- Brainstorm solutions and gain new perspectives and ideas.
10:30 am
CASE STUDY: PROOF OF ORIGIN
How to Protect a Product’s Authenticity from Fraud and Mislabeling at the Source
When authenticity is challenged, your business needs credible evidence to protect product integrity, meet regulatory expectations, and maintain consumer confidence. Walk away with an action plan to:
- Achieve and substantiate origin claims across complex supply chains, even when ingredients pass through multiple suppliers and processors.
- Reduce vulnerabilities that allow ingredient substitution and fraudulent declarations to go undetected.
- Bolster market access and brand reputation when product authenticity comes under regulatory or consumer scrutiny.
Put credible evidence behind every origin claim to strengthen your food fraud prevention and protect consumer trust.
10:30 am
CASE STUDY: CAUGHT ON THE LINE
How to Catch Ingredient Fraud That Slips Past Receiving and Surfaces Mid-Run
Ingredient fraud does not always reveal itself at receiving; substituted or adulterated materials can go undetected until they behave unexpectedly on the production line. Uncover valuable lessons for catching fraud mid-production and ensure you stay accountable. Develop a blueprint to:
- Amplify and recognize the production anomalies and quality signals that can expose adulterated or substituted ingredients.
- Master how you assess the impact across affected batches, finished products, and supplier relationships.
- Perfect balancing rapid containment, product disposition, and supplier accountability.
Turn a mid-production warning sign into a decisive response that protects your product integrity and limits wider supply chain risk.
10:30 am
CASE STUDY: THE LAST CHECK
How to Detect Mislabeling and Substitution at the Final Point Before the Consumer
Even strong supplier and production controls can fail to catch a product that is incorrectly labelled or contains a substituted ingredient. With allergen declarations, your packaging changes and product identity are all at stake, final verification can protect consumers and prevent avoidable recalls. Source practical tips to:
- Eliminate gaps between product specifications, packaging approvals, and product releases.
- Transform how ingredient substitutions and last-minute changes can leave product contents and label declarations out of sync.
- Master the final-stage verification to protect allergen accuracy, regulatory compliance, and consumer trust.
Make your final check a decisive safeguard for consumers, compliance, and brand reputation.
11:00 am
INDUSTRY EXPERT: AUDIT READY
How to Manage Farm Certification and Audit Readiness in One Place
Centralized certification management offers greater visibility into audit status, outstanding requirements, and supporting evidence. You will perfect how you maintain certification and protect access to key markets. Adopt best practices to:
- Optimize consolidating certification records, renewal dates, and audit documentation to maintain visibility across farms and production sites.
- Amplify outstanding requirements, expired certifications, and unresolved audit findings before a compliance issue arises.
- Master centralized reporting to demonstrate certification status, track corrective actions, and provide consistent evidence to auditors and buyers.
Turn your farm certification from a fragmented administrative burden into a clear, coordinated approach to compliance.
11:00 am
NDUSTRY EXPERT: FROM SAMPLE TO RESULT
How to Keep Every Lab Sample and Result Traceable End to End
End-to-end traceability provides a defensible link between the original sample, the test result and the product, or batch affected. Strengthen your accountability across the quality assurance process. Source your plan of action to:
- Bolster sample identification and chain-of-custody records to maintain confidence in sample integrity.
- Excel in linking laboratory results to the relevant products, batches, and investigations to support faster, evidence-based decisions.
- Master reliable audit trails and accessible records to demonstrate data integrity, support regulatory scrutiny, and strengthen root-cause investigations.
Make all your laboratory results traceable, defensible, and ready to support food safety decisions.
11:00 am
How to Catch Pest Activity in Retail and Food Service Spaces Before It’s Visible
By the time pest activity becomes visible in a restaurant, retail outlet or food storage area, contamination risks and operational disruption may be developing. Early-warning technologies offer a shift from reacting to sightings towards you identifying patterns sooner. Develop a blueprint to:
- Perfect real-time monitoring and activity trends to identify potential pest hotspots.
- Amplify recurring activity patterns to vulnerabilities in storage, waste management, building access, and food handling environments.
- Master early detection of pests to support timely intervention, stronger audit evidence, and consistent standards.
Move pest management from reactive treatment to early intervention, protecting food safety, customer confidence, and business continuity.
11:30 am
ROUNDTABLES:DISCOVER THOUGHT-PROVOKING IDEAS
Take a deep dive down the innovation rabbit hole in one of our roundtable discussions. Share common challenges and best practices with your food safety and compliance peers on a topic of your choosing:
ROUND TABLES I
- Meat processing at scale
- Catching food-borne illness at the source
- Climate-driven contamination risk
- Cannabis cultivation compliance
- Microplastics testing with no threshold
ROUND TABLES II
- Nutraceutical and functional food manufacturing standards
- Co-manufacturing and private-label accountability
- Staffing turnover and training retention on the line
- Beverage and functional drink manufacturing risk
- Keeping GFSI certification consistent across multiple plants
ROUNDTABLES III
- US-Canada import/export traceability readiness
- Third-party delivery platforms and temperature control
- Self-serve retail risk
- Menu and nutrition claim accuracy on delivery apps
- Consumer-facing recall communication
12:15 pm
NETWORKING LUNCH:DELVE INTO INDUSTRY CONVERSATIONS
- Meet interesting speakers and pick their brains on the latest industry issues.
- Expand your network and make connections that last beyond the conference.
- Enjoy great food and service while engaging with your food safety and regulatory colleagues.
1:15 pm
EXHIBITOR LOUNGE:ATTEND VENDOR DEMOS & CONSULT INDUSTRY EXPERTS
- Browse through different sponsor booths and test drive new technology.
- Source expertise from our industry-leading sponsors.
- Take advantage of event-specific offers and special content.
1:30 pm
CASE STUDY: THE CLOSED LOOP RISK
How Water Treatment Tuned for Crop Health Can Still Miss Human Pathogen Risk
Water treatment systems designed to support crop health do not always address the microbial hazards that threaten human health. Examine the blind spots between your agricultural water quality and food safety, highlighting the consequences for produce safety, regulatory compliance, and supply chain confidence. Source practical tips to:
- Achieve crop health indicators from the microbial risks that can make produce unsafe for consumption.
- Transform and investigate why treatment approaches that protect crops may fail to control human pathogens.
- Advance agricultural water management with food safety expectations.
Ensure the water that sustains your crops does not become the route through which pathogens reach consumers.
1:30 pm
CASE STUDY: EVEN DOSE
How to Catch Content Uniformity Failures That Pass Bench-Scale Testing and Surface at Scale-Up
A content uniformity failure at commercial scale can call process validation into question. Uncover what these failures reveal about your scale-up assumptions, process capability, and the evidence needed to support release decisions. Create a roadmap to:
- Bolster successful bench-scale results to ensure consistent commercial production.
- Master how changes in mixing dynamics, equipment, and batch size can affect ingredient distribution.
- Amplify the implications of content variability for product quality, specification compliance, and batch release decisions.
Bridge the gap between your laboratory success and production-scale consistency to protect every batch that reaches the market.
1:30 pm
CASE STUDY: UNDER CONTRACT
How to Catch Food Safety Gaps That Pass the Annual Audit and Surface Between Visits
Audit results can demonstrate compliance on one day without revealing how consistently food safety controls hold up across the year. For your brand that relies on contracted suppliers, the real exposure lies in what changes between visits and how quickly emerging weaknesses become visible. Adopt best practices to:
- Heighten the warning signs of supplier performance slipping despite passing an audit.
- Amplify the difference between documented compliance and controls applied in daily operations.
- Reduce accountability gaps that emerge when brands and contracted partners share responsibility.
Move supplier assurance beyond a once-a-year snapshot to catch emerging risks before they reach consumers.
2:00 pm
NDUSTRY EXPERT: BETWEEN CUTS
How to Master Sanitation Technology for the Knives, Bins, and Totes That Touch Every Harvest
Harvest equipment can become a vehicle for cross-contamination when knives, bins, and reusable totes move between crops and crews. Effective sanitation technology will help you control microbial risks between harvest cycles while maintaining speed and consistency. Take away specific solutions to:
- Perfect sanitation technologies to control pathogens on high-contact equipment under real harvesting conditions.
- Achieve effective sanitation methods into rapid equipment changeovers to reduce cross-contamination.
- Optimize sanitation effectiveness across reusable knives, bins, and totes to support produce safety assurance and consistent hygiene standards.
Make your equipment changeover a meaningful barrier against pathogen transfer.
2:00 pm
INDUSTRY EXPERT: BUYING TIME
How Packaging Technology Can Extend Safe Shelf Life Without Changing the Product
Expectations for product quality, food safety, and sustainability continue to evolve. Selecting the right packaging technology for your product is becoming an important part of the competitive advantage. Adopt best practices to:
- Achieve advanced barrier, modified atmosphere, and active packaging technologies to slow product deterioration while preserving existing formulations.
- Master extended shelf-life claims against microbial safety, sensory quality, and performance.
- Align packaging innovation with production capabilities, waste reduction targets, and sustainability commitments.
Turn packaging innovation into your competitive advantage, extending product life while protecting food safety, quality, and consumer confidence.
2:00 pm
INDUSTRY EXPERT: BEHIND THE BARCODE
How the Records You Keep for Compliance Are Also Your Best Case for Customer Trust
Food safety records do more than demonstrate regulatory compliance; they provide evidence of how consistently a business manages risk, maintains product integrity, and responds when something goes wrong. As your customers demand greater transparency, reliable documentation can become a commercial asset. Source your plan of action to:
- Advance traceability, testing, and corrective action records.
- Bolster accurate, auditable documentation to meet retailer due diligence requirements and substantiate food safety claims.
- Amplify how record integrity, transparent reporting, and documented improvements build trust beyond the audit.
Make compliance records a compelling demonstration of food safety accountability, product integrity, and customer trust.
2:30 pm
FIRESIDE CHAT: THE FOURTH GENERATION
How to Balance Generations of Farming Tradition with Modern Regulation
Farming families carry generations of practical knowledge, but evolving food safety requirements, traceability expectations, and buyer standards can put established ways of working under pressure. The challenge is modernizing compliance without losing the experience and your identity. Source practical tips to:
- Perfect the practical knowledge that supports safe, consistent production while reassessing long-standing practices.
- Reduce generational differences in risk tolerance, technology adoption, and expectations around documentation and accountability.
- Transform succession into an opportunity to modernize traceability and preventive controls.
Preserve the strengths of a farming legacy while you prepare the next generation to meet evolving food safety demands.
2:30 pm
FIRESIDE CHAT: BOTH SIDES OF THE WALL
How to Lead Both the Plant Floor and the In-House Lab
Production teams are under pressure to keep lines moving, while laboratory teams must protect the integrity of quality decisions. Leading both functions means you need to navigate the tension between operational urgency and scientific evidence. Take back to the office strategies to:
- Reduce the conflict between production targets and quality decisions.
- Bolster trust between laboratory and operations teams so that testing is viewed as a critical business safeguard.
- Advance laboratory findings to influence decisions on recurring process failures, product quality, and investment.
Turn two functions with competing pressures into one team with a shared commitment to your product quality and consumer safety.
2:30 pm
FIRESIDE CHAT: MANAGING A NATIONAL RECALL
How to Navigate the First 48 Hours That Decide How a Recall Plays Out
A national recall puts an organization’s traceability systems, crisis leadership, and supply chain relationships under intense scrutiny. In the first 48 hours, you need to make defensible decisions, coordinate a response across the supply chain, and maintain consumer confidence. Develop a blueprint to:
- Perfect the scope of affected products and distribution networks, using traceability evidence to assess consumer exposure and inform recall decisions.
- Advance executive leadership, CFIA, retailers, and distributors around regulatory obligations.
- Bolster the urgency of consumer protection with evolving evidence.
Lead a decisive, coordinated response that protects your consumers, preserves stakeholder confidence, and limits the impact of a national recall.
3:00 pm
REFRESHMENTS BREAK & EXHIBITOR LOUNGE: ATTEND VENDOR DEMOS
& CONSULT INDUSTRY EXPERTS
- Enjoy exclusive sponsor demos and experience the next level of food safety and regulatory technology innovation first-hand.
- Meet one-on-one with leading solution providers to discuss organizational hurdles.
- Brainstorm solutions and gain new perspectives and ideas.
3:30 pm
PRESENTATION: THE NEW BENCHMARK
How Have GFSI Requirements Changed and What it Means for Your Next Audit
Changes to GFSI benchmarking can filter through recognized certification programs, affecting how food safety systems are assessed. For FSQA leaders, the challenge is knowing which changes could affect your next audit, expose weaknesses, or require a rethink of your approach. Source practical tips to:
- Achieve the changes in GFSI requirements most likely to affect certification and audit expectations.
- Amplify where existing food safety systems, documentation, and verification practices may fall short.
- Perfect the compliance gaps and system improvements that warrant attention before an audit.
Turn evolving GFSI requirements into a clear compliance strategy and approach your next audit with confidence.
4:00 pm
CLOSING KEYNOTE: THE LONG HORIZON
How the Next Decade of Food Safety Will Unfold, and What Most Organizations Aren’t Ready For
For FSQA leaders, the big challenge will be anticipating which emerging risks demand attention, which capabilities will become essential, and where established approaches may no longer be enough. Look ahead to the forces you’ll need to reshape food safety. Create a roadmap to:
- Adapt to climate pressures, changing agricultural practices, and emerging hazards.
- Master AI-enabled monitoring, rapid detection, and connected traceability towards earlier intervention.
- Heighten the regulatory, workforce, and investment decisions that will determine which organizations adapt ahead of change.
Anticipate the next decade’s defining food safety challenges and make strategic choices that will keep your organization ahead.
4:30 pm
CLOSING REMARKS FROM THE CHAIR PERSON
Review the key solutions and takeaways from the conference. Source a summary of action points to implement in your work.
4:40 pm