After lurking for a couple of months I thought I should get my act together and say hello, especially as I am sure that I will need to ask lots of questions shortly!
I graduated summer 2016 with a BSc in Food Science from the University of Reading (UK) after a former life as a chef, and now I'm working in Orange County, California for a company manufacturing tea and spices and RTD beverages. Ostensibly I am here to work in R&D/ product development, but I was also awarded the poisoned chalice of collating our HACCP plan and running the HACCP team, and generally helping to work towards BRC accreditation and eventually FSMA. Absolutely no challenge thanks to the pretend HACCP plan I had to write at Uni 
The HACCP plan is just about there so now I'm onto the fun of risk assessments for BRC.
I should point out that all of our food safety systems are a mess as the business is essentially a new acquisition so a lot of people are putting out a lot of fires at the moment and this forum has been invaluable for giving me some guidance on what the hell I should be doing! Thank you to those FS experts who are constantly posting the benefit of their wisdom in these forums; your work is very much appreciated!!
Ben Smith
