Veronica joined Commercial Food Sanitation (CFS) in 2017 and has supported food processors across Meat, Poultry, Seafood, Fruit and Vegetables categories. She is passionate about collaborating directly with customers during sanitation assessments and consulting, ensuring execution of practices is supported by strong programs in sanitation and hygienic design. She enjoys learning from the plants’ challenges and helping their continuous improvement efforts.
As a Senior Food Safety Specialist, Veronica now primarily focuses on the Seafood industry. She conducts sanitation and hygienic design training both onsite with customers and at CFS Institute training facilities. Additionally, she supports services combining CFS and Intralox expertise to mitigate conveyor risks, such as conveyor assessments and development of conveyor hygienic design guidelines.
Prior to joining CFS, Veronica held a corporate quality manager role at Tyson Foods. In this collaborative position, she managed the resolution of food safety and quality issues, as well as conducted food safety assessments for external manufacturers and suppliers. Earlier in her career, Veronica worked at Kraft Foods as a Manufacturing Quality Specialist for Oscar Mayer and as a Corporate Quality Auditor, focusing on areas such as plant audits, corrective action investigations, food safety and quality program reviews, allergen contamination prevention efforts, and HACCP assessments.
She began her food industry journey at RTE meat plants in Chicago and WI, transitioning to Abbott Laboratories for 8 years before returning to the food industry in 2010.
Veronica, fluent in both English and Spanish, holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology/Microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico and a Masters in Food Safety and Technology from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Throughout her career, she has complemented her knowledge with certificates and training in various areas, including Implementation and Validation of HACCP Programs, Sanitary Design, Certified Sanitarian Kraft Foods, FSSC 22000, FSMA PCQI Training, SQF Lead Auditor Training, and GMA Labeling Workshop.