Keynote Address – How Culture Drives Sustainability and Workforce Engagement
Clif Bar & Company, a leader in nutritious and organic foods, is guided by five bottom lines – Sustaining our People, our Business, our Brands, our Community, and the Planet. Join us for the Closing General Session’s Keynote Address as we learn about how Clif Bar, a family and employee-owned company, uses these five aspirations in a manufacturing environment and how this disruptive operating model permeates throughout the entire business. Walk away with insights such as how leading with your company’s values can improve long-term performance, how facility design must be consistent with culture and values, and how community engagement leads to teamwork and employee engagement
Keynote Speaker
Rich Berger, Clif Bar
Closing General Session
Session Schedule
1:45 pm: PDC Winner Presentation, Chairman Thank You
2:15 pm: Keynote Address – Progressive/Sustainable Bakery, Rich Berger, Clif Bar
The Future of Bread and The Biodiversity of Sourdough
For thousands of years, bread was leavened using Sourdough. Around 200 years ago, the bread world was completely changed by the invention of modern milling techniques and commercial yeast. These disruptive technologies have created the bread market we are familiar with today where most of the bread is produced very consistently and quickly. Although this means bakers can make more bread at more affordable prices, we lost certain elements of quality when we lost the use of Sourdough.
Like cheese and wine, the diversity of bread is primarily defined by its fermentation. Transforming grain into sourdough is a very complex process, in which the flour, water, microorganisms, time, and temperature play a crucial role.
Consumers around the world are now rediscovering the complexity and quality that sourdough can impart to even a basic, standard bread. This is leading more and more people to seek higher quality breads even if that means paying a premium.
Learning Objectives:
- How sourdough has risen in popularity as a driver for premium rustic style breads.
- The difficulties of transforming undigestible grains into a nutritional and flavorful leavening agent.
- The role of microorganisms, fermentation substrate, hydration, time, and temperature in sourdough flavor development.
Presenter
Michael Gleason, Puratos
The Evolution of Automation
Presentation summary to follow.
Presenter
Jorge Izquierdo, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies
Safe Handling of Enzymes in the Baking Supply Chain
Microbial enzymes have been widely used in the baking industry due to their valuable contributions to the quality of finished baked goods as well as fulfilling the need for sustainable ingredients. Microbial enzymes have a long history of safe use in foods and are not considered food allergens through ingestion. However, enzyme proteins have long been recognized to have a potential to cause occupational allergy and asthma through worker inhalation exposures to enzyme dust or aerosols during bakery processes such as blending and mixing. The Enzyme Technical Association (ET) has developed guidance on the safe handling and use of enzyme in occupational environments. This presentation will provide an overview of the hazards, control measures, training, and surveillance practices as part of an overall enzyme safety program.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the health effects of enzymes associated with inhalation exposures
- Learn about the hierarchy of controls that can be implemented to minimize enzyme exposures
- Gain access to key industry guidance documents and tools to help manage enzyme safety within your organization
Breakout 6: Clean Label
Session Chairs: Linda Dunning, DuPont Nutrition & Health; Jill Stang, DuPont Nutrition & Health
Session Schedule
- 12:15 pm: Clean Label – Mythbusting Edition, Nicole Rees, AB Mauri North America
- 12:55 pm: The Future of Bread and The Biodiversity of Sourdough, Michael Gleason, Puratos
Clean Label – Mythbusting Edition
Consumer research continues to indicate that a majority of consumers are looking for ingredient lists that are simple and understandable. Many food manufacturers are working to make products with cleaner, simpler ingredients as a response to consumer desire for transparency in the foods they eat. As ingredient lists are made shorter and simpler, often functional ingredients may need to be removed. Finding alternatives is often challenging. How many ingredients are on your label? How many do you need to make a good quality product? These are key questions to ask yourself. While consumers don’t want long confusing ingredient legends, they still want high quality, convenient foods that have a fair shelf-life. Many hurdles and pitfalls can occur as bakers look to clean up labels.
Learning Objectives
- Contrast consumer perceptions and industry viewpoints related to cleaner label products as well as labeling regulations such as organic and natural
- Show solutions for replacing functional ingredients with clean label alternatives & describe results in performance, volume, appearance and shelf-life
- Describe production and processing hurdles and pitfalls to avoid when switching to “cleaner” labels
Presenter
Nicole Rees, AB Mauri North America
Breakout 7: Engineering
Session Chair: Cindy Chananie, Erika-Record
Session Schedule
Environmental Control for Food Safety & Quality
Food Safety & Quality is greatly dependent on the environment that the finished product is exposed to and over the past few years there has been a significant increase in what is considered an acceptable environment in Food Processing Facilities. What has evolved is a change of mindset from Facility Ventilation Designs that focused only on Occupant Heat Stress Management to one that is focused on creating a safe and more consistent environment for the product. This change has resulted in increased air filtration requirements to minimize molds and other airborne contaminants while maintaining facility pressurization to prevent unwanted infiltration from outdoors. This presentation will focus on “Good Practices” to address this changing requirement and how dedicated systems can be applied to the finished product cooling cycle, which is normally 95% of the exposed time, which can help assure Food Safety & Quality by providing a “Clean Room” with a consistent environment.
Learning Objectives
- Industrial Ventilation System Parameters for Food Safety & Occupant Heat Stress
- Environmental impact on finished bake products
- Increased focus on product zones rather than whole facility.