2007 Review

After a prompt from Caz I've opened up this thread so that members can share their highlights and lowlights from 2007. It could be related to food safety and quality, work or personal.

Regards,
Simon

After a prompt from Caz I've opened up this thread so that members can share their highlights and lowlights from 2007. It could be related to food safety and quality, work or personal.

Regards,
Simon

MMMM a number of things spring to mind.

Foot & Mouth and Bird Flu to mention just two.

For the most part of 2007 I was very cheesed off with the website and discussion forums. After 4 years of hard work I was beginning to resign myself to the fact that I was flogging a dead horse. My hopes and desires that this place would one day be a vibrant community for food safety and quality folk was beginning to wither.

However, over the past few months my enthusiasm has been rekindled. We now have a strong nucleus of very knowledgeable members who are willing and able to share. We are building a fantastic repository of information here, which is bringing in new members every day in ever greater numbers from all over the world. Earlier today our membership passed 2,000 with new members arriving from the UK, USA, India, Canada and Singapore.

Rather than me being a very active if unintelligent poster I can now for the most part sit back and look on at the discussions taking place. To be honest I couldn’t offer anything intelligent anyhow.

So the future is bright.

Without naming names I want to take this opportunity to thank members old and new who provide their time, energy and knowledge supporting other members and furthering learning in the field of food safety and quality. I appreciate your efforts and it is all of you who make this place what it is. Sincere thanks.

I’m very much looking forward to 2008.

Cheers,
Simon

Can i mention million pound fines???

Supermarkets and dairy companies (not mine i hasten to add) getting caught price fixing (like we were surprised!)

hopefully consumers will become more aware in 2008......i think the next big scandal will revolve around "Food Miles" (Welsh milk packed in England then brought back to Wales springs to mind) and regionality of products.

and then there's BRC edition 5, just slipping in at the end of the year.

Supermarkets and dairy companies (not mine i hasten to add) getting caught price fixing (like we were surprised!)

I wonder if Tesco's don't want to pay because they've squandered their money on the spice girls to advertise their wares!

Every little helps

On a personal level, 2007 has brought me home to Wales, after spending 2 years working in a group position , based in Staffordshire.

The challanges that my new role has brought are far to many to mention, but ive loved every second.

I have a plant, where there has been a "vague" system, and have spent 6 months introducing the group systems. this has included implementing HACCP, internal auditing, training, Corrective action repoerting amongst other things. the challange hasn't stopped there; i'm sure i have at least another 18 months worth of hard graft until things really settle down.

This forum has not only offered me help and being a sounding board on occassion, but has been a place where i can comment on the things that affect me, both personally and professionally.

The only downs of my year have been that Wales didn't life the Rugby World Cup. next time maybe