Meet Our Food Technologist
Pam Thompson
When someone asks me about my career in the food industry, I simply say I’m lucky - lucky for all the opportunities I've had. My two greatest enjoyments in life are food and the natural environment. Being a food technologist and coming from a farming background, I have a deep appreciation for food production and its quality: from primary producer to high-end innovative products, I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of making a new product appealing to a consumer.
Qualifications and Experience
So, we’ll start with the foundations: my academic qualifications include a postgraduate Diploma in Meat Science and Technology and a degree in Environmental Science, as well as all the necessary food hygiene and first aid qualifications you might expect these days.
I have 20 years’ experience covering laboratories and the food industry, including waste processing (utilising membrane filtration), laboratory analysis of food products as a Public Analyst, and working as a Food Technician before becoming a Food Technologist at a research and development establishment in west Wales.
Whilst in this previous role I was a key member of the technical team offering advice to clients on a range of issues, such as product development, safety, reformulation, microbiological testing, legislative requirement compliance, packaging, shelf life validation, labelling and process validation.
As a Technical Manager for a charcuterie company, I worked closely with the local authority and customers (including Fortnum & Mason and Harrods) ensuring that all regulatory and auditorial requirements were met. Whilst working at Charcutier we were involved in the WastED food project with Blue Hill (from America) and Selfridges, where food by-products were repurposed and kept within the food chain and not downgraded to waste, demonstrating the circular economy and sustainability benefits of such an approach. I look forward to developing these approaches in my new role at AberInnovation.
Some of my practical experience in production processes include liquid milk, pasteurisation through a high-temperature–short-time (HTST) plant and batch pasteuriser, baked goods including gluten and lactose-free products, grain-based milk, butchery and cured and fermented meats.
My best experience career-wise would have to be my once-in-a-lifetime experience back in 2017, as part of a team in rural Cameroon looking at methods of better preserving fruit, waste management and upskilling the local butchers.
Training and Knowledge
I’m immensely passionate about training and the transfer of knowledge. I’ve always tried to pass on my knowledge in the food industry to as many people as possible: training previous clients to appropriately use equipment in processing facilities which include butchery, bakery, fermentation chambers… I could go on!
For some time now one of my keenest interests has been the development of alternative proteins, currently a huge emerging trend in the food and drink sector and something we will be actively encouraging via R&D projects at AberInnovation. I was once fortunate enough to be invited to present a talk to the Veterinary and Public Health Association on cultivated meat proteins during their Autumn Conference in 2017, on behalf of Cultivate UK.
Hopes for the Future
I’m still in the early days of my new venture with AberInnovation, and it’s so exciting to be a part of a new cluster of innovation in Wales. We have the capacity to better understand crops by looking at their properties, their heritage, and to then watch them come up to the Future Food Centre for a whole host of further analysis. We have a full-service circle under one roof on-campus and it’s fantastic!
In the same vein, being able to be a part of clinical trials will certainly be very exciting and our ability to test functions in product and human biological systems is something I find very fulfilling.
Thinking about trends, alternative proteins are here to stay. I think we will see an increased shift away from soy-based products to home-grown produce, oats, vegetables and crops that can be grown in the UK and sustainably! Sustainable home-grown produce is key to our future.
In terms of meat, I’m keeping my eye on the increase of outdoor beef and lamb farming, and seeing that produce reach its full potential at market, also reducing our carbon footprint along the way.
One of my favourite things about being a food technologist is the variety in the job - it’s not just the study of meat products, it’s not just cereals, it’s everything. The cutting-edge innovation and the challenge of transferring new research methods into a sustainable product are vital and we’re here to help!
Food technology facilities and novel foods development at AberInnovation's Future Food Centre
