About the award
New Zealand food and beverage production is full of outstanding people who demonstrate a positive contribution to food safety in New Zealand. We want to highlight their work now more than ever.
Sponsored by New Zealand Food Safety, the Significant Contribution to Food Safety Award is part of the New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology (NZIFST) Awards.
The award recognises an organisation, team, or individual that displays outstanding, original, or creative improvements or developments to food safety.
The 2025 award winner (Phil Bremer) was announced in June at the NZIFST conference dinner.
Nominations and eligibility
We welcomed nominations from any sector within the food industry. Nominations were open to those who worked at a New Zealand organisation or contributed to New Zealand’s food safety system.
Fields of achievement included but were not limited to:
- building and maintaining an effective food safety culture (such as staff engagement, leadership, or continual improvement)
- equipment or processing technology
- industry best practice
- product or packaging development
- science and research
- contribution to a well-functioning food safety system.
Achievements must have demonstrated a positive contribution to food safety in New Zealand.
An organisation, team, or individual could be nominated and self-nominations were also accepted.
2025 award winner – Phil Bremer
In 2025, we congratulated Distinguished Professor Phil Bremer for his significant contributions to food safety. Professor Bremer is currently the chief scientist at the New Zealand Food Safety Science and Research Centre (NZFSSRC), and Distinguished Professor of Food Science at the University of Otago.
His contributions to food safety in New Zealand stretch across several sectors, including a staggering 200-plus journal articles and 276 keynote speeches and presentations. He has been instrumental in advancing research that ensures the safety and quality of New Zealand’s food supply.
Previous award winners
Dr Pierre Venter, Director of Research and Development at Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited received the award in 2024 for his substantial impact on Fonterra’s food safety and quality science that underpins risk management.
He is also recognised for his world-leading research on applied food safety science and advocating and influencing transformation of food safety and quality science, risk management, and communication in the global arena.
Previous winners of the award are:
- Dr Pierre Venter (2024)
- Dr Rob Lake (2023)
- Plant and Food's highly regarded Food Safety and Preservation Team (2022)
- Denver McGregor (2021)
- Aaron Dodunski (2020)
- Rosie Waller (2019)
- Professor Nigel French (2018)
- Dr Lesley Rhodes (2017).
