[In The Field] Auditor Profile:

Imagine the hectic schedule that an AIB auditor juggles. Traveling to food facilities, inspecting the entire facility and outside grounds, reviewing required paperwork, then writing a report based on the findings. Now imagine doing that in 13 countries! Food Safety Auditor Jennifer Tan definitely represents the global aspect of AIB International. Based in Malaysia, Jennifer covers the Asia Pacific region which ranges from India across to Japan and south to New Zealand. In her more than five years at AIB, she has worked in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Korea, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan and Russia. Needless to say, her passport is quickly filling up!

When Jennifer graduated from Monash University (Australia), Malaysia was in a period of recession. Although she had earned a B.S. in chemistry, she could only find a temporary job as an assistant chemist at an independent laboratory. She then taught at a college in Kuala Lumpur before being offered a permanent job in R&D for a packaging company. She worked there for five years then moved to the food industry, first in QA for seven years, then, finally, joining AIB. "My initial exposure in teaching, laboratory testing, research and development and quality assurance helped provide a platform so that I could further develop my knowledge and skills at AIB," Jennifer says. "In those early years I quickly learned that teamwork, with top management commitment and good communication between departments, is needed to build solid quality and food safety systems and create a common vision in a company."

During her years in quality assurance at Danisco Malaysia, Jennifer was responsible for improving food safety systems. In the mid-90s, food safety was not as highly focused as it is now in Malaysia. "Danisco’s headquarters referred me to our sister factory in the United States for help and that is where I was introduced to AIB," Jennifer says. "After my first experience with an AIB inspection, I understood the true value it added to a food plant." The AIB inspection was opposite what she was used to…conforming to the documentation system and following procedures to meet international systems instead of adapting the system to make things work for a company. The very practical means of inspections highlighted that despite an extensive documentation system, a company’s effectiveness was demonstrated by the findings of the physical inspection.

Since she came from the "auditee" perspective to the auditor role, Jennifer can really identify with the difficulty of balancing food safety, quality, budgeting and other food facility challenges in a developing country. Based on her own experience, she is able to reach out to companies interested in developing food safety programs.

One thing Jennifer never expected when she began with AIB was that she would become an international celebrity. During an AIB inspection, Jennifer was asked if she would mind if the facility videotaped her so their sister companies could learn from an inspection. The recording was sent to facilities in Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines and New Zealand, so when she traveled to those countries she was greeted by strangers saying, "I know who you are. You are the star in the training video where we learned about GMPs!"

In addition to her impromptu video training session, Jennifer has represented AIB in public and in-plant training sessions and seminars. In the first day of a food safety seminar last year, a rodent ran past the hotel’s training room. Jennifer used this to her advantage the next day. She had the seminar participants track down the rodent, which had crawled up a hole in the ceiling. It was a real life IPM workshop.

In her international travels to represent AIB and provide inspections and training, there are a couple of questions that Jennifer has come to expect to hear from her clients.

What are you looking for? "When I am inspecting equipment and parts I always try to answer with as much information as I can, so that they can use the knowledge in their self-inspections. I can’t inspect all equipment during my visit, and in-house staff members need to be prepared to successfully transition from depending on a third-party inspector’s eyes to being able to identify areas of improvement on their own," Jennifer says.

How many marks will you deduct? "Scores are good so that we can prioritize areas that need improvement and for benchmarking purposes, but if we focus too much on the scores, learning sometimes gets lost and staff members tend to hide things instead of addressing issues head-on."

Although AIB is still relatively little known in Southeast Asia, we are hoping to increase the industry’s awareness of our offerings.With three inspectors now in Southeast Asia, we can take on more work and offer food safety education via training programs or inspections. We are much more than just a certificate on the wall because we add a great deal of value and truly want to help the food, beverage and related industries raise the food safety levels in their countries. With Jennifer as a leader on AIB’s international team, there is no doubt that her passion for success will spread like wildfire throughout the food industry in Southeast Asia. AIB

The author is Publication Coordinator, AIB International.