Hal King, Managing Partner at Active Food Safety

Hal King, managing partner at Active Food Safety, founder/CEO of Public Health Innovations and former director of food safety at Chick-fil-A, has made it his mission to prevent unnecessary foodborne illnesses and diseases through the application of public health principles to the business of food safety management.

With bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in medical microbiology from the University of Georgia, King started working as a U.S. Public Health Service officer at the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the 1990s. He focused on environmental pathogens that were difficult to prevent — for example, investigating deaths resulting from bacteria being sprayed from fruit and vegetable misters in grocery stores.

Next, he was offered a job at Emory University School of Medicine, where he studied emerging infectious diseases and their prevention, researching environmental pathogens in Africa and other areas where children were becoming ill and dying from these diseases.

Wanting to integrate public health principles into business models, King reached out to his good friend and former owner of Chick-fil-A, the late Truett Cathy, about creating a food safety program for the business. King created several new food safety management systems during his more than 10 years there, such as a yellow gloves program.

“When employees handled raw chicken with yellow gloves, they knew they had to throw the yellow gloves away and wash their hands when finished with that task, whereas clear gloves were used to handle ready-to-eat food like nuggets,” said King. “It made them more aware of the risk of cross-contamination day to day, and all the employees knew how to prevent the risk of cross-contamination when handling raw chicken.”

From his experience bolstering Chick-fil-A’s food safety culture, King decided to start an advisory services firm, Active Food Safety, to share his and other food safety leaders’ knowledge on developing food safety management programs with other businesses.

King is also founder and CEO of Public Health Innovations, a public health strategy and design company, and an adjunct associate professor of public health at the University of Georgia College of Public Health. He shared the lessons learned in his various food safety roles over the years, as well as his vision for the future of the food industry.

I didn’t just do what the leadership at [CDC] told me to do. I always felt like, “We should be doing more than this.”

My personal food safety challenge is there is so much more that must be done to prevent foodborne illnesses, and I want to do all of it and more.

The biggest challenge in the government was there’s so much that needs to be done in public health, and there are limited resources. When I left the government, I left because I felt like I needed a way to get more resources. However, I found the same challenge in academia and when developing a food safety management program in the food industry.

I told Mr. Cathy I needed to come work for Chick-fil-A, and he laughed and said, “We don’t need a scientist to come work here.” It turned out that they did need some help with food safety — not because they were struggling, but they were growing, and as a company grows, risks grow.

There is nothing more gratifying than seeing someone else achieve something that you helped them accomplish. Being able to help and teach people, and from that point on, they don’t need you, that is really gratifying to me.

The future of food safety success in our industry is going to be in the young professionals. It will require that current food safety business leaders have a passion to share and to mentor, grow and train them. There really isn’t a university degree program for the business management of food safety. I would like to find better ways to get business education programs for food safety developed.