Joe Stout

Joe Stout founded Commercial Food Sanitation, after a nearly 30-year career at Kraft Foods. While at Kraft, Joe held a variety of positions related to operations, quality, and sanitation, leading to his role as Director of Global Product Protection, Sanitation, and Hygienic Design. He had global responsibility for plant cleaning controls and processes, allergen and pathogen control programs, pest control, and hygienic design for facilities and equipment used in over 200 Kraft plants. Joe also managed the Global Product Protection group, assuring global support for internal and external plants.

In 2010, Joe founded CFS and has since built a global team of food safety specialists that supports 40% of the Fortune 50 food companies, in addition to many smaller food processing companies and OEMs who manufacture food processing equipment.

Joe has been actively involved with various industry trade groups to advance food industry design and food safety objectives, amongst others:

• He led the North American Meat Institute’s (NAMI) Equipment Design Task Force and conducted Listeria Intervention training for the NAMI.
• He developed and trained the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI) Listeria Control Programs, and is leading the Listeria Working Group focused on Hygienic Design.
• The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) selected Joe as the Vice Chair for the Technical Working Group on Hygienic Design in 2018–2019, which creates expectations for GFSI audits that are completed worldwide.
• He initiated and led the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s (GMA) Equipment Design Task Force and partnered with the Food Allergy Research Resource Program (FARRP) for training and allergen assessments.
• With Dairy Management Innovation Center (DMI)/IDFA, Joe served as a facilitator for the Food Safety Task force to address food safety issues in the dairy industry, and trained over 2,000 people in Food Safety in Dairy from 2011 through 2018.

In addition to his involvement with these and many other leading industry organizations, Joe is a published authority on the subjects of food safety, sanitation, hygiene, and other related areas.

Joe was honored with the International Association of Food Protection (IAFP) Sanitarian of the Year (2015) and Food Safety (2020) Awards in recognition of outstanding contributions to food safety research and education.