Director of Food Safety

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Owes corporate food safety programs and ensures consistent implementation, verification, and continuous improvement across all company facilities.
• Establishes standards, tools, training, and performance expectations to assure food safety, regulatory compliance, and product quality.
• Provides corporate governance and technical leadership for all food safety intervention systems; verifies effectiveness, drives validation/verification plans, and leads continuous improvement across sites.
• Led HACCP system design, implementation, verification, and reassessment activities across facilities; ensures programs are aligned with regulatory and customer requirements and maintained current.
• Leads multi-site GFSI, regulatory and customer audit readiness; coordinates audits, standardizes evidence packages, and ensures timely corrective and preventive action closure.
• Serves as a corporate technical liaison for USDA-FSIS (and FDA as applicable), including support for NRs, regulatory correspondence, and resolution of findings across facilities.
• Develops and deploys enterprise food safety training (HACCP, GMP, sanitation, allergen management, food defense, etc.); ensures training effectiveness and compliance across sites.
• Will be the leads recall/withdrawal coordinator/director.
• Provides food safety leadership for new product introductions and process changes across sites, including risk assessments, validation plans, and start-up verification.
• Promotes partnerships with Supply Chain and QA to ensure supplier documentation and approval/verification programs support food safety requirements (specifications, allergen statements, nutritional information, ingredient formulations, COAs).
• Oversee Tracegains supplier approval module.
• Defines and monitors food safety KPIs and leading indicators; prepares enterprise reporting, trends, and action plans for leadership review.
• Conducts or leads internal audits and cross-site assessments; identifies systemic gaps and drives standard work and corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
• Serves as a technical resource for food safety regulatory and customer requirements related to export programs and Country of Origin Labeling (COOL), as applicable; ensures site execution and documentation support.
• Conducts shelf-life studies and customer-required validations.
• Provides governance for sanitation chemical program requirements (approved suppliers, inventory/usage controls, and SDS access) in partnership with Sanitation and site teams.
• Maintains corporate standards for raw material receiving and inspection program requirements and works with sites to ensure consistent execution against specifications.

Education And/or Experience

• A minimum of a B.S degree in Animal Science, Meat Science or related field is preferred.
• A minimum of five years general FSQA experience in meat processing preferred.
• A minimum of three years FSQA Management experience is required.
• Understanding of the USDA-FSIS and FDA regulations, label requirements, GMPs (Good Manufacturing - Practices) and good QA practices, processes, and requirements.

Travel expectation

Up to 30%.

Certificates, Licenses, Registrations

• HACCP Certified
• PCQI Certified
• Food Safety and Handling certifications

Pay

$95,000 - $105,000 per year