Let’s meet Danni, the second founder of Food Safety Solutions Inc.!
Danni spent 8 years in a variety of food safety roles in the food industry prior to establishing FSS with co-founder Jil Binder. Danni has extensive knowledge and hands-on experience in all aspects of food safety. She is a natural trainer and is passionate about teaching; in fact, she facilitates all our certified training programs.
Danni strives to ensure effective communication with all clients, especially when coaching food safety professionals to become masters of their jobs, and helping them to build and manage sustainable programs. She is a great project manager and has led many companies to successfully attain GFSI certification.
Let’s get to know Danni a little better:
What was your first job in the food industry?
My first food industry job was a 4-month co-op placement at a distillery when I was in University. I worked in the lab and was responsible for things like setting up the daily sensory panel and doing label checks on the line. It was during this position that I realized I was not cut out for a job in a lab due to the need for extreme focus when doing repetitive lab tests. My brain does not like precise, repetitive tasks like that!
What is the furthest you’ve had to travel for this job?
I once did a GFSI audit at a seafood facility in Labrador. It involved a flight from Calgary to Newfoundland and then to Quebec. I got the very last rental car at the very small rental car facility (an old Dodge Caravan with a faulty rear door latch) and then a 4-hour drive on gravel logging roads to the facility. There was no cell service, so I had to stop at a general store near the start of the trip to borrow a satellite phone in case of emergencies. This was before Bluetooth in the car, so I connected my cell phone to the tape deck so I could listen to an audiobook on the drive, stopping every 20 min or so when the rough gravel roads would jar open the rear door of the van, causing the interior van light and door ajar alarm to go off. I’d pull over, run around to the other side of the van, slam the door shut and off I’d go again!
What is your favourite prerequisite program?
Probably Allergen Management. I like doing risk assessments to identify potential routes of contamination and making sure that control measures are in place. Allergens are such a critical hazard that it is important to be thorough.
Please share a top consulting client success story:
I’ve had a lot of client successes over the past 14 years, but early on in my consulting career, I worked with a red meat manufacturer that needed to get BRCGS certified in order to meet their retail customer requirements. They had a really short time frame of four months in order to comply with the customer deadline. We worked really hard and managed to get them certified with a great score in that timeframe (although I would NOT recommend this short timeframe to any new potential clients that’s for sure!). I went on to work with that client for more than 10 years through several business expansions and certifications.
What is your food safety superpower?
I think I’m really good at taking a complicated concept or requirement and explaining it in a way that is easy to understand. I’m also good at making sure that programs are implemented in a way that makes sense to each facility instead of just applying a blanket approach for all clients.
