Sirocco Food and Wine Consulting specializes in delivering technical consulting services including Food Safety Management System implementation (HACCP, SQF, FSEP, Preventive Controls for Human Food) as well as Sensory Testing of food, wine and other beverages. We focus on science and best practices to provide value to our clients.
Public awareness of food safety is on the rise and new food safety regulations are being enforced to protect consumers. Is your company compliant? Do you know what it takes?
Are you trying to navigate the world of Food Safety Compliance and Certification? As you’ve probably discovered, achieving compliance and certification takes a lot more than filling out forms. It can mean learning a whole new language of food handling and regulations, and it could involve overhauling your system of production.
Food and beverage processors increasingly use sensory analysis to remain competitive and meet or exceed their customer needs. Sensory testing of food, wine and other beverages relies on science-based methodologies to assist with new product development, shelf-life analysis, development of product specifications, quality and process control and competitor benchmarking.
Karine Lawrence, Owner and Principal Consultant, has worked for the wine and food industry for over 20 years and brings an extensive working knowledge in Food Safety, Sensory Evaluation of food and wine, and Quality Management. Since the inception of Sirocco Food + Wine Consulting in 2014, she has provided research and consulting services to food and wine industry stakeholders in Canada and the United States. Karine holds a Master of Food Science degree as well as a diplôme d’ingénieur (specialized in agri-food industries). Karine’s teaching credentials include being a Lead FSPCA instructor (human Food), Certified SQF trainer and Wine educator at Okanagan College (Penticton Campus). She is a certified HACCP professional and a member of the Society of Sensory Professionals
Dereje Bezabih (Ph.D.) has worked as a Quality Assurance team member in Beverage and Natural Health Product Manufacturing companies, before holding his current position of Agricultural Scientist. In the past three years, Dereje has been collaborating with Sirocco to develop several HACCP Projects for small and medium food companies. Dereje holds a Ph.D. degree in Horticulture, with a research in the post-harvest food quality of horticultural crops. Moreover, he completed a one year course from the M.Sc. Program called ‘Safety in the Food Chain’ in an Austrian University before he earned his Master of Food Science degree from the University of British Columbia.
Darcen is a market researcher specializing in both consumer behavior and sensory evaluation. With over a decade of experience designing and implementing research studies, he is currently working at the University of British Columbia Okanagan to better understand the sensory experience of wine and how this impacts consumer decision making.
Previously, as the Associate Vice President at Ipsos, he designed and implemented consumer behavior and product understanding studies for clients throughout North America. As an experienced moderator and facilitator, this included dozens of qualitative projects, including focus groups, IDI’s, shop-alongs, and ethnographies. Additionally, he has designed and conducted dozens of quantitative studies, many of which utilize advanced analytics like Implicit Association, TURF, Discrete Choice Modelling and MaxDiff.
As a Panel Leader for Sensory Spectrum Inc., he led descriptive analysis panels to understand the sensory experience of consumer products, a skillset he continues to implement with wine panel research across Canada.
Last month, Sirocco food and wine consulting launched Sirocco Insights, a new consumer behaviour and trends research service, to help wineries and wine retailers collect reliable consumer preference data and effectively engage their customer base. Why Consumer Research? The United States consumes more wine in total than any other country according to the Wine Institute,…
Read More
A previous blog post provided a-step-by-step approach to developing a Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessment. For this month’s post, we introduce new resources and give you tips to train your team and satisfy the SQF code’s food fraud control requirements. One easy way to meet SQF food fraud audit expectations is to create a register of…
Read More
Continuous improvement is a requirement of SQF and all food safety quality management systems. When demonstrating process improvements, the CAPA process is followed. This is a diagnostic procedure aimed at identifying the root cause(s) of system non-conformities. The objective of a CAPA investigation is the development and implementation of an action plan designed to prevent…
Read More
