Renee McVey: Pioneering Excellence in Food Safety

Renee McVey is the food safety and quality assurance manager at Redbarn Pet Products. She is one of the first industry professionals to hold the Safe Quality Food Institute’s new Certified SQF Practitioner credential, which is administered by Exemplar Global.

McVey is also the winner of the prestigious SQF Excellence Award for Excellence in Practitioner Leadership, which was presented at SQF Unites in Orlando, Florida, on March 3. Exemplar Global is the proud sponsor of the SQF Excellence Awards.

In this conversation, Exemplar Global spoke about McVey about her background, how she consistently pursues professional development opportunities, and what she’s learned from pursuing the Certified SQF Practitioner credential.

EXEMPLAR GLOBAL: Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to a career in food safety.

RENEE MCVEY: I got into food safety by sheer accident about six years ago. I was working at a farm here in south central Kansas, and the customers decided they wanted them to become certified by a GFSI-benchmarked food safety management program. I led the way in developing a program for them and getting their foot in the door for an initial certification audit. That’s really where I got introduced to the concept of food safety management. Like many people, I had never really given a lot of thought as to how our food comes to be on our tables safely. Growing up in a rural community, I believed I had a good appreciation of that, but even though I knew how farms worked, I hadn’t really thought about one as a commercial production.

Once I started learning about the industry, I wanted to find out more and do more. My current employer, a local pet food company, was looking for a quality supervisor and so I jumped at that opportunity. I got immersed very quickly in finding out about the very different processes and different equipment and helped with our first SQF certification audit process.

EG: What have you studied in your educational career?

RM: I really didn’t start my educational career until I realized how much I wanted to work in the food safety industry. I had earned an associate’s degree in science, but I always had a bit of a hard time figuring out my passion. Once I got into food safety, I realized this is what I was meant to do. I wanted to learn more and understand how everything works, so I started pursuing my bachelor’s degree in animal science and food science at Kansas State University. I’m graduating this May 2025, at which point I intend to continue my education and pursue a master’s degree in food science.

EG: Congratulations! You mentioned this, but maybe you can go back and expand a bit about your first encounter with SQF and how you came to understand the importance of the certification within the food safety industry.

RM: The pet food company I work for had a customer come forward and require them to achieve SQF certification. It wasn’t a certification they had previously, so it was a new learning process for everybody at the company. A lot of the SQF food safety management program covered elements we were already doing, of course, but it also involved putting it into a little different structure to comply with the SQF requirements . That also pushed us to better understand the concept of continuous improvement and some of the other methodologies that go hand in hand with good, organized processes.

EG: In terms of your own professional journey, how have you acquired information and grown in your career?

RM: I’ve always been on a quest for knowledge. I want to feel confident that when making decisions, I’m basing them on reliable information. As part of that, when I started in this industry, I spent a lot of time on the SQF website looking for different training opportunities. Implementation courses and some specialty courses like supplier approval, verification, and validation allowed me to enhance the programs that we were already doing. That additional training always led to more questions and a sense that I wanted to go a little bit further, so I started attending webinars and other online events as well as attending training and breakout sessions at in-person events like SQF Unites. My goal has always been to get as much knowledge as possible.

EG: How and when did you first hear about the Certified SQF Practitioner credential?

RM: Last year at SQF Unites, I got into a conversation with a few colleagues and some staff at SQFI. They mentioned that this credential was in development and that they were looking for feedback to help get it launched. We spent some time talking about different ideas, how it might look, and how it might work.

It’s great that SQFI took the time to put very intentional thought into what was required for this credential, and I’m sure a lot of that came from their collaboration with Exemplar Global. I even sent an email to some of those members from SQFI after I took the exam because I was working through all the requirements and the personal development plan and all of that. I had never really taken the time to consider my potential areas of growth. It was helpful to make some smart goals for the upcoming year and to think about how I could best spend my time to benefit not only myself as a practitioner, but also my site and my customers. This credential has been put together in such a way that it’s great for both individuals and the industry as a whole. Everyone pursuing this credential has had the opportunity to put a lot of thought into overall improvement. The benefit there is safer food for everybody.

EG: When did you learn that you could pursue the credential, and how did you find the process of going through the process of earning it?

RM: A notification went out from SQFI last year to those who are registered on their website, stating that they had launched the Certified SQF Practitioner credential. I really wanted to pursue it as soon as it came out, but of course I got busy with other things. So, when I went to register for this year’s SQF Unites, I saw they had a big link for the credential right on their home page. It was very easy from there to link out to the Exemplar Global website to get the steps for application, upload the documents, and set up the exam.

EG: Now that you’ve gone through the process and earned the credential, how do you feel about it and what it might mean to your career now and in the future?

RM: The people I interact with, mostly within my site and our corporate site, have been excited that I’m among the first people to earn this credential and demonstrate our company’s commitment to food safety. It shows that we’re really going to put in that work for our customers and that we’re doing everything we can to take advantage of new opportunities to advance our food safety program.

EG: How would you characterize the experience of working with SQFI and Exemplar Global on this credential? What would you say to people who may be considering pursuing this for themselves?

RM: It was a very simple and straightforward process, and it gave me a lot of opportunities to look at things I can work on to improve myself professionally. It also allowed me to build on what I already had.

The collaboration between SQFI and Exemplar Global in developing this credential shows a lot of intentional thought into building up each professional and setting them up for success. It will end up creating a safer industry overall. If you’re putting in those intentional steps every day to ensure that you’re addressing areas of weakness or areas of opportunity, you’re moving in a direction that will lead to success.

Learn More About the Certified Practitioner Credential