Stories by David Edwards

David Edwards (NSF International Food Safety Consultant and Former Managing Director of NSF International's Global Food Safety Division) serves on the board of the trading arm of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health – CIEH Ltd, a global provider of accredited qualifications in health and safety, food safety, environmental protection, fire safety and first aid.

With more than 35 years of commercial experience in the food safety industry, David was a founding director of CMi plc prior to being acquired by NSF International in 2007. With extensive experience in environmental health and government relations, David has focused on retail and consultancy business lines, providing strategic support to the U.K. government and leading European retailers and restaurant chains and has developed consulting models that are used worldwide. David also oversees the NSF Consulting Group, which focuses on the major issues and risks emerging in the global food supply chain, utilizing the foremost experts in food fraud, functional foods and behavioral food safety.

NSF International, a non-profit organization, charges a fee to do food safety certifications. Certification is based on meeting specific food safety criteria; if those criteria are not met, an organization is not certified. Any fee for services is invested back into the organization to further NSF's public health and safety mission, including on-going consumer education about human health and the environment to adding more laboratories around the world to help protect public health. Most food safety audits are paid for by the facility/company being audited, which is just like financial audits of publicly held companies or accreditation audits of laboratories and hospitals.