CMi

10/9/2010 -

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) announces New Board Chairman

Jürgen Matern, Vice President, Strategic Quality Management at Metro AG, to take over Chairmanship of the Global Food Safety Initiative Board of Directors.

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), managed by The Consumer Goods Forum, announced during the closing session of the Global Food Safety Conference in Washington D.C. the appointment of Jürgen Matern, Vice President, Strategic Quality Management at Metro AG to succeed JP Suarez, Wal-Mart as its Board Chairman. Jürgen will take over the leadership of GFSI effective immediately.

Commenting on the appointment, outgoing Chairman JP Suarez said: “The GFSI Board is delighted that Jürgen has agreed to take over this role, which occurs at an important time for GFSI. The initiative has gained tremendous momentum over the last few years in many parts of the world. GFSI still has a key role to play in effectively managing the adoption of GFSI recognised schemes by building awareness among key stakeholders in the food industry to demonstrate the efficiencies associated with having a set of globally accepted food safety schemes.”

Jürgen Matern added “There are many more challenges ahead, and we look forward to building on our existing work in global markets and across the entire supply chain, to continuing to build relationships between the private and public sector, and to expanding awareness of GFSI and measuring its global impact.

Jürgen Matern will become the fifth Chairman of the Global Food Safety Initiative. Jürgen Matern

Having completed a Food Technology Engineering degree, Jürgen was responsible for Research & Development / Quality Assurance at Quaker Oats and Royal Canin in Germany from 1981 to 1989. In 1990 he joined Metro Germany to set up Quality Assurance (QA) for the food business in Germany. In the following years he developed quality assurance in Metro to an international department with almost 500 engineers and specialists in 32 countries, covering the whole food and non-food business and assuring fulfillment of legal and company requirements in the stores.

Metro Group

METRO Group is one of the largest and most international retailing companies worldwide. 290,000

employees from 150 nations work at around 2,400 outlets in 32 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.