NZ Association for Food Protection webinar: Virus food safety
Friday 27 June via MS Teams
The NZ Association for Food Protection (NZAFP), through the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) speaker programme, has secured a cost-covered visit by Dr Kalmia (Kali) Kniel, Professor of Microbial Food Safety at the University of Delaware (brief CV below) to speak on foodborne viruses at the NZIFST conference.
For those who were unable to attend the conference or just want more, Kali is in Wellington on Friday 27 June and will present a webinar and discussion via Microsoft Teams on ‘Viral Food Safety, Challenges and Mitigation for the Food Industry from an International Perspective’. She will be joined by Dr Anne-Marie Perchec Merien (MPI-NZ Food Safety) who will provide the New Zealand context.
This Webinar will support harmonization of viral food safety knowledge and cooperation in food safety risk management programmes in our industry. It is timely as we await comment on the draft Codex Committee on Food Hygiene update to the Guidelines on the Application of General Principles of Food Hygiene to the Control of Viruses in Food (CXG 79-2012) (https://forum.codex-alimentarius.net/viewforum.php?f=504).
Kali is Professor of Microbial Food Safety in the Department of Animal and Food Science at the University of Delaware, and served as President of IAFP immediately before Roger (they were together on the Executive Board for several years).
Kali’s laboratory explores issues of food safety and public health that involve transmission of viruses, protozoa, and pathogenic bacteria. Research projects focus on survival and persistence in water and poultry litter and subsequent transfer onto the edible portion of the crop. Investigations into novel detection methods as well as biocontrol are also ongoing. Efforts are made to correlate behaviours of different microorganisms, including viral surrogates, with climate or other environmental metadata in our assessments. Kali also works with nearby government agencies and connect her research to the needs of policy makers.
Published on: 26 June 2025
