Whether they are purchasing a product from supermarket’s standard pet food range, or selecting a premium pet food variety, cat and dog owners want to know that they are choosing quality nutrition to help their pet stay healthy. That’s why C&D Foods invests in the expertise and processes needed at every stage of the product’s journey – from research and development right through to shelf – to ensure our customers can always have confidence their products’ quality.

Based in Italy, Quality & Technical Manager, Bianca Maria Falconi, is a qualified vet, with a master’s degree in veterinary science, and a post graduate qualification in food quality, who is currently studying for a degree in animal nutrition. She has 15 years’ experience in the pet food sector, the past four of which have been at C&D Foods.

Bianca supports the business on nutritional and veterinarian matters, but her role is focused on the Italian market, across both general retail and specialist pet retail market segments. She is involved in product development from the earliest concept stages, looking into the feasibility of product development requests and considering elements as diverse as texture and format. Working closely with our R&D department to make sure our recipes deliver the required nutrition and match the nutritional claims made on the label, Bianca is also involved in advising on formulations for C&D products that are marketed with ‘developed with vets’ claims.

During the product development process, Bianca is also responsible for making sure that the content of each product produced for the Italian market has accurate, clear and compliant labelling. For example, the regulations for labelling pet food are different from those required for human food labelling. This means that our customers can be confident that they are not only offering a quality product to pet owners, but that the packaging provides correct and compliant information.

Once a pet food product is in production for our customer, Bianca also works with our Italian customers to ensure our factory and production methods comply with their own quality standards. Factory audits with customers are a practice we support across our European network. Although the information required varies from customer to customer, factory visits usually include a tour to inspect our quality assurance processes across our storage, manufacturing and packaging areas.

Bianca’s varied quality assurance role in Italy and the support she provides for colleagues in other markets is part of a culture of customer-focused quality assurance across C&D’s European sites. Our goal is to ensure every product we send to shelf can be trusted by our customers, by their customers, and by cats and dogs everywhere and the expertise of our team helps us achieve that objective.