Richard Atkin
Associate
Richard, with over 30 years of experience in meat and poultry, excels in brand protection, international slaughter, HACCP, animal welfare, and farm-to-fork supply chains.
Richard Atkin is an Associate with HACCP Consulting Group, LLC (HCG), providing Food Safety, Product Quality, Animal Welfare, Sustainability and Regulatory solutions from his home in the Atlanta, GA area. HCG provides international food safety consulting services to help ensure the safety of our food supply and delivers international food safety training, equipping industry professionals with practical skills and knowledge.
At Tendergrass, Richard provided quality assurance, food safety, and regulatory compliance support to their Customers, Processors and Suppliers, with recent examples being Listeria control facility design consulting on new construction for a customer, guidance on development of animal welfare policies for a European based customer entering the US market and guidance on development of a consolidated PVP marketing program for a beef supplier under USDA-AMS.
He remains active with the Beef Industry Food Safety Council (BIFSCo) and he North American Meat Institute (NAMI or the Meat Institute), focused on Food Safety / Inspection, Animal Health/Welfare, and Sustainability through the ProteinPACT.
Prior to working at Tendergrass, Richard spent fifteen years as the Principle, Global Meat Supplier QA for Whole Foods Market, the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket, where he oversaw processing Food Safety and Animal Welfare of 1,500 global, national, regional, and local meat and poultry suppliers, representing over $4 billion in sales through the meat department, five years as the Director of Quality Assurance for Suzanna’s Kitchen, Inc. and 13 years working in various roles in Live Operations, Production and Inventory Planning, and Quality Assurance for ConAgra Foods Retail Products Company, supporting the Butterball and Armour, Swift-Eckrich business units.
While at Whole Foods Market, Richard led development of farm-to-market agricultural & environmental residue avoidance program requirements; a novel antibiotics’ residue screening program with Charm Sciences and IEH Laboratories & Consulting Group; halal processing requirements at retail; and the development of processing animal welfare requirements for rabbits, controlled atmosphere stunning (CAS) of poultry, field harvesting of Axis Deer, and the capture/transport and harvesting of Wild Boar under USDA-FSIS Inspection. Richard also served on the University of Georgia / USDA’s beef safety project advisory board evaluating advanced processing technologies as multiple hurdles to inactivate Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) and viruses during beef processing and on further processed non-intact beef products. While at ConAgra, Richard served on the National Turkey Federation’s Technical and Regulatory Committee, as well at the Animal Welfare Subcommittee, being the only non-veterinarian author of the original NTF Animal Care Guidelines. Richard also served as the Turkey Industry Representative for the Foreign Agricultural Service, USDA – Russian Federation Tetracycline Residue Task-Force.
