Dr. Sanjay Gummalla
Executive Director, Frozen Food Foundation
The Frozen Food Foundation is pleased to present Dr. Marcel Zwietering with the fifteenth annual Freezing Research Award. This award is presented in conjunction with the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) and specifically recognizes individuals or organizations whose research contributes to the continued enhancement of food quality and safety through freezing. Dr. Zwietering, professor of food microbiology at Wageningen University, is a deserving candidate who has helped shape the understanding and practices of effective food sampling and testing.
One of the world’s leading food microbiologists, Dr. Zwietering created a new, risk-driven approach to sampling and testing frozen food products for the presence and levels of Listeria monocytogenes. Dr. Zwietering developed this new sampling plan during his participation in an expert panel convened by AFFI, and published recommendations in the white paper, Alternative Approaches to the Risk Management of Listeria Monocytogenes in Low-Risk Foods.
As part of this white paper, Dr. Zwietering’s novel three-class sampling and testing plan revealed it could be more stringent than the two-class approach currently used by regulatory authorities, which focuses solely on the presence/absence of Lm. The three-class plan has the advantage of identifying frequently occurring low-level contamination and the rare high-contamination level events that are relevant to Lm in food products that do not support the growth of the pathogen. With this approach, a sampling and testing plan can take into account the amount of pathogen detected in the food and present a more complete understanding of public health risk.
Over the decades of his service, Dr. Zwietering has made significant contributions to risk assessment, sampling plans, and food safety management strategies for the food industry. He has participated in several other expert reports that guide food safety practices and is Chair of the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF), an elected body that provides recommendations on sampling and testing.
Dr. Zwietering received his Ph.D. in microbiology from Wageningen University. He has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is also editor of the International Journal of Food Microbiology.
Congratulations to Dr. Zwietering on this recognition and thank you for your work to advance food safety!
