Dr. Rolando Gonzalez is the Chief Scientific Officer for The Acheson Group. He has held technical and thought leadership roles at major national and global companies including Target Corporation, Bühler AG, and 3M Food Safety. Dr. Gonzalez brings over fifteen years of practical food safety and quality management experience across a broad variety of food platforms spanning from perishables to dry and low moisture foods, with primary focus on risk mitigation and brand protection.
His specific areas of expertise include development and implementation of cleaning and sanitation and microbial environmental monitoring programs, food fraud and food defense, food safety culture, sanitary design of food handling facilities and equipment, using risk analysis tools to estimate food safety risk throughout the chain, and the application of food science, microbiology and public health principles to assisting primary production, manufacturing and retail operations achieve the next level in compliance with internal, regulatory and third-party standards by strengthening their quality and food safety systems.
At an international level, Dr. Gonzalez has provided expert level support to local and global scale food ingredient suppliers, manufacturing companies and retail outlets within the United States, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East for developing processes, implementing food safety monitoring and testing protocols, and applying novel food safety approaches and technologies to enhance the safety and quality of food throughout the supply chain.
He was part of a group of 35 companies from around the world who worked together starting in 2015 as members of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI)’s Food Safety Culture Technical Working Group (TWG) to help define what a culture of food safety is and to develop a framework of distinct but integrated dimensions that are relevant to any company’s culture. In that regard, Dr. González has been intimately involved with helping various manufacturing and retail/foodservice operations in the US and abroad assess the level of maturity of their food safety culture, understand the structure and dynamics of the process of embracing a food safety culture within those organizations, and recommend measures that can be implemented to achieve advancement in their food safety culture journey.
Dr. González earned his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Microbiology and Master of Science in Food Science and Technology degrees from the University of Puerto Rico, and a PhD in Food Science and Public Health at the University of Minnesota. He is an active member of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP), the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA), and the American Public Health Association (APHA). Dr. González is also a Registered Environmental Health Sanitarian (NEHA), a HACCP Train-the-Trainer (International HACCP Alliance), and a Lead Instructor for both the Intentional Adulteration Vulnerability Assessment and the Human and Animal Preventive Controls FSMA Rules.