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About Sirocco

Sirocco Food and Wine Consulting specializes in delivering technical consulting services including Food Safety Management System implementation (Canadian PCP Plans, HACCP, SQF, FSMA 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.

Mission + Core Values

Sirocco Food and Wine Consulting believes in continuous improvements to achieve service quality and customer satisfaction. We strive to provide value to our customers through confidentiality, respect, integrity, openness, and commitment.

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Meet Sirocco’s Expert, Karine Lawrence

Karine Lawrence, Founder and Principal Consultant of Sirocco Food + Wine Consulting, has worked for the wine and food industry for over 20 years and brings expertise in Food Safety, Sensory Analysis and Regulatory Compliance. 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’s specialty is SQF and HACCP certification programs. Her wine research projects have been published in Consumer Science and Strategic Marketing: Case Studies in the Wine Industry (Woodhead Publishing, 2019). Current partnerships include working with the BC Beverage Technology Access Centre. She is a Lead FSPCA instructor (human Food), Certified SQF Trainer & Consultant and Wine Educator at Okanagan College. Karine holds a Master of Food Science degree as well as a diplôme d’ingénieur (specialized in agri-food industries). She is a certified HACCP professional and a BC VQA Wine Assessor/WSET Level 2 Certificate Holder.

Meet a Collaborator of Sirocco, Sean Xia

Sean Xia is currently working in the seafood industry as an operations manager. With a master’s degree in food science, strong quality assurance skills and 7 years of hands-on experience in the quality assurance and operations field, Sean provides insights into the development and maintenance of food safety management systems with an operational point of view. Sean believes that a successful quality assurance system must be well integrated to the business supply chain and inventory management systems. Combined with the adoption of lean manufacturing principles, a quality/food safety management system should help improve the company’s objectives while meeting regulatory requirements. With years of experience working with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), Sean understands the principles of developing and implementing an effective preventive control program. Sean is familiar with HACCP and GFSI certification schemes, as well as Kosher, Organic, Oceanwise and BAP certification requirements.

Meet Felicia Loo

Felicia Loo is a Certified Food Scientist (CFS) and Certified SQF Consultant. She has worked in quality assurance, regulatory and product management for food and natural health products for the past 6 years. She has experience working with multiple food safety compliances and voluntary certification schemes such as SQF, FSSC 22000, CFIA, Health Canada, Organic, Kosher and Halal. Felicia has graduated from the University of British Columbia with BSc in Food Science with a Minor in Commerce.

Meet Sofia Copado

With a BSc in Food Science, Sofia Copado has been working in the food industry in Canada since 2013. Her roles have covered new product Research and Development, Quality Assurance and SQF Systems. Over the years, Sofia has implemented food safety and quality control programs for various food processing operations. She has helped businesses achieve and sustain certifications including SQF, HACCP, Organic and Gluten Free. She has a broad experience in Project Management, research, Product Development, Regulatory Compliance and CFIA label reviews including Nutrition Facts tables, special claims, allergen and ingredient declarations. Sofia is fluent in English and Spanish.

Meet Varinder Randhawa

An accomplished compliance driven food safety & QA professional with over 16 years of progressive experience which includes development and implementation of robust food safety program, building team, interfacing with industry representatives, executives, and communicating with stakeholders. Recognized for clear, decisive actions credited with improving performance, encouraging intense collaboration among teams, and implementing best practices for QA and food safety for compliance to regulatory and industry standards. Extensively conducted independent food safety audits as a lead auditor throughout Canada & US for compliance assessment for food safety program implementation across wide range of food manufacturing and handling plants.

Lead Auditor
• BRC GSFS Issue 8
• SQF Code Edition 9.0.
• Gluten Free Certification Program (GFCP)
• CanadaGAP Program
• Gluten Free Certification Program – GFCO.
• Gluten Free Certification Program – AOECS.
• GMP and HACCP Verification Programs.
• FeedAssure Program.

Gain the knowledge & skills to develop a food safety plan that meets FDA’s Preventive Control Human Food requirements.

View Our Upcoming Courses

Sirocco is the expert that provides your company with:

  • Consistent Quality Products.
  • Consumer Confidence.
  • New Market Opportunities.
  • Long-term Money Saving.
  • Ensured compliance with Law and Regulation.
  • Reduce Risk of Product Recalls.
  • Organization to Food Management Processes.
  • Knowledgeable and Accountable Staff.

Sirocco will help your business succeed with consulting, training and implementation of:

What Clients Are Saying

We would like to express how grateful we are to have found Sirocco Consulting. We were a week away from our first ever SQF desk audit when we decided to purchase the SQF Templates Bundle from Sirocco. We had about 60% of our procedures in place but were able to rely on Sirocco’s template to cover the rest. The SOPs and Forms provided by Sirocco were detailed and covered all requirements of the SQF code.  We did not have any non-conformities on procedures that we implemented using the templates provided by Sirocco. After the desk audit we continued to work with Karine. A month and a half later we passed our first SQF site audit with only 6 minor non-conformities. This would not have been possible without Sirocco Consulting. Thank you from the team at Blue Ocean.
I would like to take this opportunity to express how very satisfied I was to receive and work with the Sirocco SQF bundle.  What a time saver! The templates are very easy to use and adjust to make your own. They saved me countless hours of work, guiding me through the necessary steps and gave my program a cohesive professional look. One can become overwhelmed with the volumes of paperwork that is needed for SQF and HACCP.  The Sirocco SQF bundle definitely lightened that load and combined with Karine's expertise, I couldn't be happier. Highly recommended.
I am very happy with the service Sirocco provided us. Karine and Sean are amazing food scientists/experts!  They are super knowledgeable and respond in such a timely manner when I need the support urgently with my seafood business. I cannot thank them enough for their help. Highly recommended!

Karine, […] I just wanted to thank you for the work you did on our PCP [plan]. We were audited by CFIA in November and did very well.

We were in a situation that required that we get an SQF Certification in a very short period of time. Sirocco Consulting provided us with the templates we needed and talked us through the process. No doubt without them we could not have achieved receiving our certification in the allotted time. Karine was our consultant and she made the process understandable and much less daunting than it would have been otherwise. I highly recommend Sirocco Consulting to any company that needs a third-party audit. It was one of the best investments we made in our trek to become third-party certified. We are counting on significant return on investment having achieved this milestone in our growth. Thanks Sirocco!
When we decided to implement the SQF program in our facility we knew we would have to develop a lot of new procedures and forms. We reached out to Karine Lawrence of Sirocco Consulting and with her guidance and templates, we were able to smoothly implement the code. The template package was very complete and easy to follow; each document made reference to the element of the code being covered making it easy to track our progress and if we had any questions Karine was quick to answer and provide examples. We had our desk audit recently and the auditor was happy to see how complete our documentation was, the template package and Karine’s support were key in this accomplishment.
“Thank you” very much for being with us for conducting the “Basic Sensory Science” Training here at Silver Spring Foods on the 27th September 2019. It was a great pleasure meeting with you and working with you during the course of the workshop and It was indeed a great training session. [...]It was great that our teams had the opportunity to screen the basic characteristic of the food products and along with our own range of product samples. We were very delighted the way that you presented the training and conducted the sample screenings during the session. Once again Thanking You for the job well done and for providing Certificates of Accomplishments to our Teams!
I would like to express my gratitude to my instructor Karine Lawrence, for dedicating her valuable time and energy into the FSPCA (Preventive Controls for Human Food) workshop which I attended in Toronto. The workshop was extremely informative. The teaching method, contents, and the combination of presentations and assignments were in a perfect accordance with the objectives of the workshop, as it addressed all my questions and the ambiguities that I had in my mind before the meeting. I believe that the enthusiasm and positive responses of all participants to the workshop were a reflection of usefulness and credibility of Karine’s performance during the event as well as the importance of the presented topics throughout the workshop.
I am writing this testimonial to express my gratitude to Karine Lawrence from Sirocco Food + Wine Consulting. We started our SQF implementation using the Sirocco SQF templates last August (2019) and just passed SQF 8.1 stage 1 and 2 audits on October and December. The templates are professionally written and the implementation was very easy. I highly recommend the Sirocco Consulting Templates. Thank you very much Karine.
I would like to thank both of you for organizing & presenting this informative valuable training for Food Industry Professionals within the QA Sector. With the SFCR enactment recently, I have gained valuable insight on the expectations of CFIA along with the opportunities & grants  that are available from the “Post - Farm Food Safety Program through your presentation.
Also, Ketki’s presentation on compliance with the FSMA-“Foreign Supplier Verification” gave me valuable information on the expectations of the “Importer” from the “supplier” with regards to pertinent documents associated to food products being exported to the US.
Thanks once again  for all you support.
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