dr. PA (Pieternel) Luning

Pieternel Luning is associate professor in the Food Quality & Design group. 

She is co-founder of the MSc programme Food Quality Management (started in 2003), which yearly attracts circa 40-50 MSc students from Europe and beyond. Since 2006, she developed an interdisciplinary research program in Food Quality Management, with the techno-managerial approach as leading research methodology. It comprises the integrated analysis of food and human behaviour and their impact on food quality, safety and integrity.

She is author of three books about ‘Food Quality Management; technological and managerial principles and practices’ and the latest full revision was published in 2020. The bookes are used in multiple courses in the MFQ program.

She is one of the editors of the new journal Food Safety Management in Practice (Wiley) wich will be launched in 2021.

Her main research areas are about effectiveness of food safety management systems (FSMS), impact of food safety culture, dynamics of food safety and hygiene practices, interplay food safety governance and FSMS, risk-based auditing, food integrity and fraud, and food quality and consumption. In these projects, interdisciplinary diagnostic tools are being developed to study the performance and dynamics of the socio-technical systems and how they affect food safety, quality and integrity in view of the particular food business context.

She participated/is still participating in multiple European, National and Global projects including FoodSafety4EU (started in 2021), NWO-WOTRO LIQUID, Veg-i-trade (7th EU), Sensory Specific Satiation (STW, program), PathogenCombat (6th EU), PROFETAS (STW program).On average she supervises and is (c0)promotor of 8 PhDs at WUR and external Universities.

She co-developed (2015-0216) with her colleagues (professor in food authenticity (FQD) and professor in criminology VU Amsterdam) the Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessment tool for the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Moreover, she was member of the Technical Working Group that drafted the GSFI Food Safety Culture position paper for the food industry (2016-2018). She is also co-founder and member of the Food Safety Culture science group ‘Salus’ in which more than 20 scientists from Europe, North America and Africa participate.

Pieternel studied Food Chemistry and Microbiology at the Wageningen University (WU) in the Netherlands. After her study, she worked as post MSc graduate on a flavour project for the food industry followed by a function as project manager at the (now-called) Food & Biobased Research, where she did her PhD on flavour of fresh and processed bell peppers. Thereafter, she worked as post-doc in flavour research for Unilever Vlaardingen. Subsequently, she was employed as product Manager "Innovative Packa­ging" at TNO Research and Nutrition Institute. Since 1999, she is engaged in the ‘Food Quality & Design’ group at Wageningen University, and has become Associate Professor since 2006.