Food Safety Quality Specialist

About the Role

The Food Safety & Quality (FSQ) Specialist is responsible for executing, verifying, and continuously improving food safety, quality, animal welfare, biosecurity, and regulatory compliance programs across shell egg grading/packing and liquid egg breaking operations. The FSQ Specialist serves as a key on-site resource to ensure compliance with company standards, customer requirements, animal welfare, biosecurity, USDA, FDA, and SQF.

Responsibilities

• Verify compliance with company standards, customer requirements, GMPs, HACCP plans, preventive controls, SSOPs, USDA, FDA (including Egg Safety Rule), and state regulations.
• Support implementation and maintenance of HACCP, SQF, and prerequisite programs.
• Interface with USDA inspection personnel as needed.
• Identify out-of-compliance situations, initiate corrective actions, and verify completion and effectiveness.
• Support traceability exercises, mock recalls, and crisis response activities.
• Perform routine verification activities in shell egg grading and/or packing operations, including cooler checks, sanitation verification, label verification, and defect monitoring.
• Conduct oversight and weekly verification within liquid egg breaking and pasteurization processes, including CCP monitoring, process verification, and finished product release activities.
• Perform operational sanitation inspections and operational GMP audits.
• Review and audit records for accuracy and completeness.
• Conduct physical, chemical, and microbiological testing.
• Perform environmental monitoring, including equipment swabbing depending on the process.
• Support sampling programs for finished products, water, and environmental surfaces.
• Maintain laboratory documentation, calibration records, and testing logs.
• Analyze and trend microbiological and process data to identify risks and improvement opportunities.
• Participate in audits of animal welfare, biosecurity, and feed safety/quality programs.
• Verify compliance with animal welfare standards, handling practices, and documentation requirements.
• Support biosecurity protocols, including site access controls, sanitation barriers, and compliance monitoring.
• Assist with auditing birds, housing conditions, egg handling practices, and feed supply programs as applicable.
• Communicate animal welfare or biosecurity concerns to management promptly.
• Support implementation and maintenance of SQF programs.
• Participate in internal audits of processing, farms, feed mills, and support programs.
• Prepare documentation and records for regulatory, third-party, and customer audits.
• Assist with root cause analysis and corrective action documentation following audit findings.
• Train and collaborate cross-functionally with operations, production, and other teams.