Baking&Snack - December 2016 - 28

OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR

think of it in terms of my customers, both internal and external," he said.
Serving internal customers, Mr. Thorson explained, includes supporting engineering, human safety and operations, helping them be more effective in their roles. "I want
to be transparent with my expectations around food safety
- and reasonable in those expectations - in talking about
risk management," he said. "We are never going to get to
zero risk, but we need to calibrate on what constitutes an
appropriate risk."
And while external customers are obviously the retailers and consumers, it hits closer to home for Mr. Thorson.
When he thinks about the people who eat General Mills
products, he needs only look around his home, at his wife,
Melissa, 13-year-old son Cal, 10-year-old daughter Sascha,
and 3-month-old son Emmett. "Am I comfortable feed-

"Karl is a true subject matter
expert in the area of FSMA
and sanitary design."
Kerwin Brown, BEMA

ing food from General Mills to my family?" Mr. Thorson
asked. "The answer is, always, 'Absolutely.' "
The SCOE mentality of "find it, fix it" ensures that
General Mills employs safe food practices in each of its
facilities spanning the globe. "One of the things I'm most
proud of is the work we've done around validating sanitation and taking a more scientific look at what 'clean'
means," Mr. Thorson asserted.
"There's a more analytical component to validating
what clean looks like and trying to translate that to engineering and OEMs to ensure that when I say, 'I need to
get this micro-clean, and these are the criteria,' they can
make sure I'm successful in my sanitation program."
As he continues the crusade for continuous improvement in creating safe food, Mr. Thorson lives by a very important principle: Visibly clean is not clean enough.
Again, in thinking of his own family, Mr. Thorson uses
the analogy of a home kitchen when teaching about food
safety and sanitation. "The hazards we're dealing with -
chemical, physical, biological - these can all be understood on the same level as our own kitchens," he said. "No
one wants to get sick in their own kitchen or have foreign
material in the food they feed their families. You want a
cleanable surface and to be able to clean up easily, right? It's
not a complex concept; we just need to scale that into talking about plants."

28 Baking & Snack December 2016 / www.bakingandsnack.com

Championing world-class excellence
When it comes to food safety, it's all
about numbers and minimizing risk. It
starts with zero - as in the "zero tolerance" that everyone strives for when it
comes to sanitation - and ends with 100
- the penultimate percentage that every
company seeks in the safe production of
the food they sell.
Minneapolis-based General Mills
produces and markets more than 100 consumer brands in more than 100 countries
on six continents. However, securing that
safety is a complex and often convoluted
global initiative. It involves a dialogue
with dozens of company-owned production operations and communication
with hundreds of facilities when contract
manufacturers of snacks and other finished goods are involved. And those numbers even reach four-digit territory when
myriad suppliers - both large and small
- fall into the fold and under the guidance of the company's Sanitation Center
of Excellence, according to Karl Thorson,
food safety and sanitation manager.
Food safety isn't an issue that's seen
on a small scope by any means, Mr.
Thorson said, and General Mills certainly
doesn't think of it in terms of only the
plants it operates.
The company's internal standards are
only a "small piece of the puzzle," according to Mr. Thorson, who recognizes
that in this industry, many bakers have
relationships with the same suppliers,
and food safety is an issue that goes far
beyond US borders.
With $18.6 billion in annual sales in
2015, General Mills spans the globe
with $10.5 billion in US retail sales, of
which 20% are snacks sold under the
Bugles, Chex, Fiber One, LARABAR and
Nature Valley brands, among others.
International sales top $5.1 billion with
41% from Europe followed by Canada
(22%), Asia/Pacific (20%) and Latin
America (17%). Meanwhile, convenience
food and foodservice garnered $2.0 billion in sales while joint ventures brought
in $1.1 billion, according to the company.
- Dan Malovany

http://www.bakingandsnack.com

Baking&Snack - December 2016

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