The theme of the 2018 GFSI Global Food Safety Conference is "Safe Food For Consumers Everywhere" and will include a full spectrum of plenary, keynote and breakout sessions from global leaders.

WASHINGTON and TOKYO, Feb. 28, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 1,000 leading food safety specialists from more than 50 countries will embark on Tokyo, Japan, to explore emerging technologies and address challenges with auditor competency, food fraud and the future of food safety. The theme of the 2018 GFSI Global Food Safety Conference is "Safe Food For Consumers Everywhere" and will include a full spectrum of plenary, keynote and breakout sessions from global leaders.

Drew Zabrocki, CEO of U.S.-based Centricity Global, will be speaking about innovative Agronomic Decision Aid Tools and Trellis, a new open source, industry-created framework that enables food safety data to be validated and synchronized across chains instantaneously. Centricity Global offers Enterprise Trellis Support for global brands and is a co-founder of the Open Ag Technology and Systems Center (OATS) at Purdue University which currently houses the open source framework.

Aaron Ault, Sr. Research Engineer at Purdue University, expressed his excitement for the project. "Centricity has been instrumental in the creation and application of the global framework. Their unique enterprise implementations run both on and off the blockchain offering practical apps for every size and shape organization. We're pleased to be featured at the Global Food Safety Conference and thankful for the wide-ranging support across the industry."

At the event, Centricity will also be discussing their Blockchain-based Trust & Sync Manager and real-time agronomic decision aid tools currently used by leading global brands to connect all farmers and their audit data quickly and privately.

"Safe food begins on the farm - as does the origin of the data that supports farmers in creating a more sustainable and safe global food supply. Centricity is farmer-owned and farmer-focused," explains Zabrocki, "giving our partners unique optics on farm data challenges and how to overcome them. With more timely, accurate and meaningful production data, analytics across the supply chain can be greatly improved without compromising privacy or data ownership."

Thursday afternoon, Zabrocki will participate in a session co-hosted by Gillian Kelleher, VP of Food Safety & QA, Wegmans Food Markets Inc. (USA), and Kristian Moeller, CEO, GLOBALG.A.P. (Germany), where industry experts will discuss how primary production is being managed through collaborative efforts in very different ways around the world. Drew will offer perspectives on the technological frameworks that may apply to leading innovations such as Australia's harmonized standard for fresh produce, efforts for auditor calibration, remote auditing and Japan's latest efforts to mainstream safety and primary production in high schools.

"The GFSI Global Food Safety Conference is the place to network with leading brands and executives that set the direction for the future of compliance and certification globally," said Zabrocki. "We're happy to have been invited to share our perspectives and industry-supported technologies. We look forward to continuing to support the success of those enabling equitable knowledge exchange across the food and consumer goods sectors."

Media Inquiries: Ethan Johnson, social@centricity.us

About Centricity Global

Centricity Global is farmer-owned and deeply rooted in its commitment to equitable knowledge exchange through leading-edge technologies that deliver meaningful value to the stakeholders.

Centricity's software, API and blockchain technologies enable better decisions on the farm forward across the supply value chain. They help to unlock the value of data while protecting the knowledge asset for leading agribusinesses worldwide.

www.centricityglobal.com

About The Open Ag Technology & Systems Center at Purdue University

OATS is dedicated to helping open source culture grow and thrive in the food and agriculture industry to accelerate innovation and grow markets. OATS is currently composed of over 25 faculty, staff and students at Purdue. It is structured with a board of directors composed of industry members which, in collaboration with center faculty, determine the direction of center funds and resources. OATS resources include computing and hardware, faculty and staff time and expertise, graduate student effort, and marketing and communications.

www.openag.io

About The Trellis Framework Open Source Project for Audit Data

Trellis helps companies get more ROI from their audit data. Trellis provides a produce-specific framework to electronically exchange authenticated food safety audit data and other customer-required information between trading partners. When you can mine data across all your audits, you can understand food safety risks and address them.

www.trellisframework.org

About GFSI

The Global Food Safety Conference is one of the leading annual food safety events that brings together over 1,000 top food safety professionals from over 50 countries to advance food safety globally. It provides a unique opportunity to meet and network with industry peers, share knowledge in plenary and break-out sessions, benefit from thought-provoking presentations from internationally reputed industry experts and hear innovative ideas to implement in the workplace.

www.mygfsi.com