Quality Management

In 1992, during the finalization of the succession of Professors Alexandre Granville (admitted to the emeritus in 1979, died in 2009) and Léon Fiévez (deceased in 1985), the chair Hygiene and technology of food of animal origin was split into a Chair in Food Technology (for more information, see fact sheet for this sector) and a Chair in Hygiene and Inspection of Food, the direction of which was entrusted to Professor Henri Vindevogel until his retirement in 2005.

A new restructuring of this chair, now considered a sector, is underway. From the 2011-2012 academic year, the Inspection domain will be entrusted to a permanent scientist; the other area will be covered in a teaching sector titled Food Chain Quality Management. This change in title is explained by the spectacular evolution of the methodological approach used in this field.

Indeed, until the end of the 1980s, food safety was only guaranteed through compliance with good general hygiene practices, which were included in legislation. The major turning point in this discipline is the development of a more targeted approach to the hazards specific to a particular sector with the implementation of specific control measures, their monitoring and the verification of their effectiveness. This approach, called the HACCP method, for “Hazard Analysis – Critical Control Point” appeared in European legislation at the beginning of the nineties and constitutes the backbone of the new European regulations in force since January 1, 2006. In order to guarantee the proper implementation of this method, which must be adapted by each company, a set of standards have been published, first at the initiative of large retailers and then by the "International Standard Organisation" in the form of the ISO 22000 standard. Compliance with these standards is guaranteed by independent audits and certification by accredited third-party certification bodies. In the future, the HACCP approach will be increasingly quantitative and based on quantitative assessments of company-specific risks, which will require even more specialized skills from quality managers. This rapid methodological evolution over the past twenty years justifies the continual need to adapt the teaching dedicated to it.

Contact : Véronique DELCENSERIE