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Spotlight on... Michael Ciepiela

Ahead of the American Food Sure Summit 2025, Torie spoke to Michael Ciepiela, Director of Food Safety & Quality Assurance at The Spice Lab, about his career in food safety, the importance of a good food safety culture and his outlook on the future of the industry.

Jan 28, 2025

The FSQ Network and Michael Ciepiela

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Ahead of the American Food Sure Summit 2025, Torie spoke to Michael Ciepiela, Director of Food Safety & Quality Assurance at The Spice Lab, about his career in food safety, the importance of a good food safety culture and his outlook on the future of the industry.

Michael will be speaking at the annual American Food Sure Summit in Atlanta - don't miss out on two brilliant days of presentations from experts across the food safety and quality industry. Click here to get tickets.

Video Transcript

Hi everyone and welcome to this FSQ Network interview with Michael Chipiella.

Michael has over a decade of diverse experience in the food and beverage

industry, along with experience in the

pharmaceutical sector specialising in quality assurance and food safety.

His current role is Director of Food Safety and Quality Insurance at the Spice

Michael will be speaking at the upcoming American Food Show Summit in Atlanta in

March about food safety culture and joins me today to share a bit more on this

So thank you so much for being here, Michael.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

So let's just kick off a bit with a bit of background to you.

When and how did you get into the food safety industry?

And also, can you share a bit about what your

current role is?

Yeah, so I started in the food industry about

12 years ago now.

I started as AQA Tech right out of college, in college.

So I didn't really take any food safety courses.

It wasn't really offered to me.

My degree was more focused in biology and genetics based.

So when I got to school, I applied for everything that said

biology and got into the food science side of things and then just started

climbing the corporate ladder very quickly.

You know, as AQA Tech, you're, you're eager to learn all fast sets of

food safety operations.

I've always been in quality assurance throughout my entire career.

I've never gone like production or R& D or anything like that.

But I'm very big on taking advantage of any,

every opportunity you have in front of you.

And I knew I wanted to do more than just be AQA Tech the rest of my life.

And the, the next position up at my, my first company,

the supervisor had been there for like 30 plus years.

So I'm like, I need to bounce around a little bit here.

And then as I started bouncing around to different food sectors,

I started getting more and more experience.

You know, I worked in confections, I worked in dairy, worked in meats,

worked in salsas and then in pharmaceutical a little bit.

So like I said, just taking advantage of that.

Went to school in New York, so I wanted to escape the snowy weather

So eventually it bounced right down to Florida and that's where I am now as

director of food safety and quality assurance at the Spice Lab.

I am actually going to New York in a couple of weeks,

so I'm hoping that the the cold chill has like passed a little bit,

but we'll have to see.

Yeah, it's it's it's a little chilly down here

in Florida right now.

It's in the 50s.

So that's why I got the long sleeve on.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Poor you, poor you.

So I guess from that kind of extensive experience,

I wonder how you think that the food safety industry has changed since when

you first started out and where you are now.

So I would say the biggest thing is probably going paperless.

A lot of things are going to the online integration,

whether you're tracking quality or regulatory compliance cheques through an

iPad or doing production cheques on the floor.

I'm used to walking around or early on walking around the clipboard,

doing the the cheques with the pen and then filing away that piece of paper in a

filing cabinet.

And the filing cabinet just keeps growing, growing, growing, growing.

And then obviously for traceability purposes,

it makes it a lot more challenging with being able to find that specific document,

especially one if you have a lot like a longer shelf life.

So for example, we have salts here that go 10 years.

I mean, salt really never expires, but we, we put ten years on it and then having to

go back 10 years looking for that specific document.

If you have a a recall on there for some reason, knock on wood,

you know you're able to find it, but you know the first one being

Secondly, I attended a conference last year and GS

1 is really starting to do a really good job with magnification of clean labels,

including a smart label on a lot of the products.

Specifically in produce side of things.

You want to know exactly where your crop came from,

what field it was treated with is organic, it's non organic,

so the pesticide comes into play in there.

And then being able to track that all the way through both domestically and

internationally.

And then lastly, going forward, just the exposure of conferences and

papers and webinars and seminars and all this has really grown a lot.

And that might just be from my exposure from starting as AQA Tech to becoming a

You know, I get a little bit more of that side of

things in the regulatory and trainings and education,

but I feel like there's more of that out there now.

Consumers are demanding more from manufacturers as they should.

And I think it's a really good thing that we're playing into that and giving more

education to everyone.

Yeah, I guess it's really about our ability to

have so much more information at our fingertips,

both as consumers and then also from a kind of as a employee of a company being

able to access the the information and and dig into it a little bit.

So that's great.

I guess on the flip side of that come, well,

we all know kind of that that digital transformation piece comes with its own

But what do you think that the main challenges are currently facing the food

safety industry?

So from a couple different side of things.

So internally, I would say driving a food safety culture,

it's hard to establish a robust food safety culture across especially like a

bigger CPG where you have multi sites, thousands of employees as opposed to a

smaller privately owned company where you have one site.

That's one of the biggest things for that.

And then in conjunction with that, the management pie in for that.

So as the quality representative you want to be on the shop floor driving this

culture if you will, that forces the employees practise good

food safety practises.

And then how you measure that ultimately externally keeping up with harmonised

There's a lot of different regulations, especially internationally and domestic.

We're getting closer to that now, but overall,

just kind of tying that all together and making sure that SQF lines up,

BRCGS lines up, FSSC 22,000 lines up, and that all suppliers are meeting those

I talked earlier about blockchain analysis on raw materials and finished

goods and packaging, bringing that in and making sure that

they're meeting the US regs or the European regs, whatever it may be.

So that kind of ties in quite nicely I believe with the next question,

which is more focused on what you're going to be speaking about at our

American Food Show Summit.

So can you just share a bit with us about the topic that you'll be speaking on?

And I, I guess within that, because I think you're going to say food

safety culture, share a bit more about kind of how you

would define a good food safety culture.

Yeah, so I am talking about food safety culture

leveraging my experience working out like a Kraft Heinz where it's a larger CPG,

thousands of employees to small private, like the spice lab is a single site

facility implementing that on the shop floor and driving it.

So essentially what the main topic is around that is how to quantify

qualifiable traits.

You'll be talking, or I'll be talking about what KPIs you

want to be measuring and then ultimately how that measures the healthiness of your

And then as I mentioned earlier, driving from the top down for management

And I guess within the kind of the food safety culture, if you have a good one,

once you've managed to measure it in that way,

whatever way you deem to be appropriate, what impacts do you think that then that

then will have on an organisation output?

I mean, ultimately it's going to be everything,

you know, if you drive a good food safety culture

from management commitment and you have ultimate buying from everyone,

the consumers getting a safe quality product.

We try and educate, at least here, educate the employees on the shop floor,

not so much the ultimatums of what could happen if we're not driving good food

safety practises, but you know, the risks that are involved with,

you know, their jobs on a daily basis.

A lot of employees, they're coming in and just getting a

They're hitting a time clock, They're getting out of here,

collecting a paycheck where they don't understand the full meaning as to why

they're here, why they're doing their cheques.

Why do we have to fill out all this documentation?

Well, because XYZ.

So really educating employees on why their job is so important in this field.

So from your experience, could you possibly provide a few examples

of practises that you've used at the spice lab to develop a good food safety

And I also wonder whether or not you had any examples of where perhaps there

hasn't been one and the kind of the repercussions that that could lead to.

So I think being able to measure it first is, is how we need to look at it.

You can typically measure a good food safety culture by predominantly audit

scores and customer complaints.

If you're getting a lot of heavy customer complaints on the same product,

there's probably not good awareness around that product.

And then you just start want you, you throughout your investigations on

your corrective action reports, you can usually find out why employees

aren't engaged in making sure that the product is going out safely.

It's not just one thing, Like I said, you know,

employee engagement's a big thing being present on the shop floor.

I know it's very hard to do for some employees at times where you know,

you have to meet documentation purposes or you have audits coming up.

But it could be as simple as walking around and saying good morning everyday,

walking the lines, asking employees how their vacation was,

that kind of stuff.

And then ultimately having their educational awareness of the the quality

management system on the shop floor.

It's not just simple as saying OSQF is coming in.

We need to do XYZ today or we have an organic audit coming up or the kosher

rabbi is coming in today to do an audit.

They need to know why they're there and what role they play in it because it in

auditor will ask an employee, do you know what pass up is?

Or do you know what your critical control points are or whatever may why are you

doing these weight cheques every hour?

So if they're educated and they could speak to a confidently,

that'll drive the further food safety culture on the floor.

Yeah, absolutely.

I guess it's not dissimilar from kind of other industries where employee

engagement really relies on kind of an understanding of of the bigger picture

and why everyone's there and what role you play within the kind of the big

machine as such.

So yeah, I guess, I guess just kind of could you provide a

few different examples then on on where you've seen something that's really

worked or where you kind of sit see that maybe something hasn't worked and what

that could have led to?

So we use QAD red Zone as our quality compliance on the shop floor that drives

us to do whether it's line leader huddles or an all steering committee huddle.

So we're really pulling everyone together.

Granted, it's easier to do when you have only 70

employees on the shop floor versus 1000 employees.

But we had the same concept at Taylor Farms as well,

where we go from the FDA section to the USDA section to the packing section and

make sure everyone's aligned with, you know, the,

the food safety policy that we implement here, our mission statement.

Having visual boards and TV's on the floor also help because they can track

the productivity.

I think that real time data is very beneficial.

I talked earlier about going from paperless to the electronic version.

Now I can be in my office and if they're, if the line's down for over 5-10 minutes,

I'll get a ping on my iPad and it'll say why the line's down and it prompts

employees to put in, you know, is it a mechanical issue?

Are we waiting on ingredients?

Are we waiting on packaging?

Are we just in a changeover right now?

So driving that engagement with that and giving them the technology.

Now I don't have an employee walking across, you know,

the entire facility coming to find me wherever I may be in,

in the facility at the time saying we have a quality issue.

We need to do something about it where it's as easy as, you know,

basic texting me saying, hey, we have an issue.

And then I'm, I'm there within 5 minutes or so.

So I think between that and then we utilise red zone as well for data

So we'll track how individual lines are doing,

how individual line leaders are doing.

And then we'll celebrate those, those small victories as well.

We'll do like an employee of the month, we'll put the name on, you know, the TV,

the picture on the TV will give out gift cards.

And that really gives the extra motivation and incentive to keep doing

And ultimately that drives better throughput, better customer satisfaction,

safer products.

That's really just the base framework as to where you need to start.

Because they're, they're all the experience on the floor.

They, they run those lines every day.

You're not standing next to them every day.

So any kind of experience that you could leverage off of them to help drive the

efficiencies is what you want to do.

And sometimes, as you say, it's just so small,

kind of what feels like a small acknowledgement of success.

And actually it goes a really long way.

Well, I don't want you to over share too much

because obviously you'll be presenting on this in Atlanta,

but that's a nice kind of starting point for those who aren't able to attend.

I guess similar kind of keeping in that vein of employee engagement.

Next month actually on the FFQ Network, we're hosting a round table which is on

the topic of how to address staffing challenges just within the food industry.

So I wonder if you could just talk very briefly on, you know, what,

what staffing challenges you think that there are, if there are any and what,

yeah, what the main challenges are facing both

employees and organisations from a staffing perspective in this,

in this current kind of era we're in of, of visual transformation within.

So I like I say, if there are any staffing issues,

there's always staffing issues.

I would say from like a shop floor line line worker type thing.

You're competing with areas around you.

I know that we've battled companies in the past,

so they offer an extra dollar per hour.

And really the working conditions come into play a lot too.

At Taylor Farms, you were essentially working in a cooler

all day, and being in Florida, it's hard going from 100° outside to 34°

inside the cooler.

So there's the battles of your environment and then financial impact,

So what we do at Spice Lab here is we offer employee incentives where we do a

workout class twice a week and a yoga class once a week.

Granted, it's a little bit easier because you can

do it outside in Florida.

And we also have a little bit of a bigger, bigger warehouse,

so we can isolate it into the back warehouse area where we're able to do

that in a safe manner.

But that really keeps employees around too.

We it's, it's paid during the entire time too.

So as they're here doing that, we're paying them to be here for that for

the extra half hour of the day.

And they really look forward to it at the end of the day from a management

standpoint, you know, people are always kind of bouncing around.

I know I'm one that's bounced around a little bit,

so I can't say too much on that.

But again, taking advantage of every opportunity,

there's always going to be the next person up that wants to do that next

level experience.

They want to get involved.

And if they're showing any sort of growth opportunities,

definitely plug them into that position and see if they're able to see to succeed.

And I guess just to kind of round things up here,

we've kind of spoken a bit about the past.

We've spoken a bit about the present, and now we look towards the future.

I wonder where you see the industry going in the next 5 to 10 years and what you

kind of view that might be the main hot topics coming up that we're going to be

talking about in, in summits to come.

I I so the easiest answer is AI use.

AI is still not as sophisticated yet where you can't just type in the ChatGPT.

Write me a food safety plan.

You still need to have that level of experience, that shop floor experience,

hands on experience where you can take chat GPTS template or framework and then

modify it to your facility.

I know that there are times where I'm struggling with a sentence or need a

phrase a paragraph differently.

I say hey can you reword this?

But it's still me typing up what I want in there.

It it scares me a little bit right now with how a lot of software developers are

trying to get an overarching umbrella food safety plan.

And as we all know in the industry, not one food safety plan fits all.

It's great to have like that PCQI background and has a training background

where you know the framework as to what you need to write,

but you still need to be educated on all your risks that go into it,

how to formulate the actual template itself.

But I think AI is going to be the growing trend here.

There's just so much that it offers right now that I don't think it knows what to

For creation of a documentation, we do use it for stuff like write me a

letter of guarantee, write me a bioterrorism act letter,

write me GMP letter, that kind of stuff.

But we still have to go in and comb it through with a pine tooth comb and make

sure it reads to what we want to say.

Yeah, we're still in the stage where the humans

are very much required in order to tailor what their AI can kind of work with.

But what, what would you ideally like to see change

within the next 5 years within the industry?

So I think more visibility of foreign suppliers, well,

not just foreign but domestic as well.

And I talked to her about GS1 with the the blockchain analysis getting more rags

I know that in the spice industry, we source stuff from all corners of the

world, whether it's packaging or raw materials

I know FISMA 2O four traceability is really starting to come down on that a

lot more, where they're demanding more evidence as

to where things are coming from and it's heading in the right direction in my

But that's one of the things.

And then I think just bringing more awareness to the industry.

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't take any food safety courses in

college, but once I got into it, I realised that there was a lot out there

between the conferences and the education, the seminars,

because it's not a glorified go be a doctor, go be a lawyer, go be, you know,

whatever it may be.

So I think people, and we're starting to get there a lot

I'm seeing a younger group of people attending these conferences,

becoming more involved on LinkedIn, which is great to see.

I love seeing that because I I still consider myself younger in the industry

right now, but it's nice seeing that new regime

start to come up and you know, being.

Being able to educate them and take them on your wing and tell them about,

you know, my career path and how I got to where I

And then just, you know, promoting good food safety practises for

the future use.

I mean, we've spoken to a couple of other, I've spoken to a couple of other FS2

network members who have had a similar experience to you where they didn't go

into university with this kind of grand plan to end up in food safety.

But when kind of then looking at the opportunities available with science,

with the science background, this is kind of how they've where they've

found themselves to be.

And it's increasing that awareness around the opportunities available within this

And obviously, how impactful it is on every single

person around the world's kind of health and well-being is key.

So hopefully, hopefully we can continue doing that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you so, so much for your time.

It was great to speak.

And as we said at the beginning, obviously you'll be in Atlanta in at the

So anyone watching this will be able to hear your full presentation there.

And I will put all of the details about how to get tickets and where you can kind

of find more information around the event underneath this video when we share it on

Thanks so much for your time, Michael.

It's great to speak to you.

Thank you, Tori.

I appreciate it.

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