The Food Partnership Reshaping the Industry
How CFS has improved food safety at Intralox and around the world
- Insights
- March 23, 2026
At the end of 2012, food recalls had reached a 2-year high with the FDA reporting about six per day. They classified more than half of the recalls that year’s third quarter as “high risk,” and reported twice as many related illnesses as the previous year.
Also in 2012, Intralox welcomed Commercial Food Sanitation (CFS) into our global company structure. With dangerous contamination events and product recalls on the rise, both we and our customers saw food safety as increasingly critical.
“Using a belt to move something from A to B is easy,” said David Bogle, Lead Engineer and Global Research & Development Director at Intralox. “We did that 35 or 40 years ago. Now it’s making it so that somebody can clean it, know it’s clean, and contribute to safer food and a more efficient workplace.”
Bogle explained that CFS’s industry-defining expertise was essential as Intralox began to place a stronger focus on hygienic equipment design.
“They’re the experts we can run things past,” he said. “Ask them how they clean this or what they normally do—what they see out there. That way we can really tailor a product to the application and get the best payback for a customer.”
We caught up with our experts to discuss CFS’s effect on Intralox and our end users.
Using a belt to move something from A to B is easy. We did that 35 or 40 years ago. Now it’s making it so that somebody can clean it, know it’s clean, and contribute to safer food and a more efficient workplace.
David Bogle
Lead Engineer and Global Research & Development Director at Intralox
A Shared Sense of Responsibility
In the years since partnering with CFS, the results have been undeniable. Not only has hygienic design become more ingrained in Intralox’s culture, but we’ve seen greater passion, concern, and aptitude for food safety across our global customer base.
“We’re out there with these customers and the most important things to them are food safety concerns—contamination risk, proper cleanup, things like that,” Bogle explained. “There are far bigger constraints to designing things these days than mechanical fit or compatibility. With all of our designs now, we spend a lot more time on the hygienic side.”
Jason Klein, Operations Director at CFS, is pleased with this industry progress but wasn’t surprised that gaps existed. In his experience, many food processors working with OEMs never get the opportunity to see or evaluate all available technologies.
“A lot of Quality leadership is simply not exposed to the technology, the engineering solutions,” Klein said. “So, in addition to—and during—our trainings and assessments, CFS really helps expose our partners to potential solutions that they’re not aware of.”
In the decades before joining the CFS team, Klein was working directly with food processing giants in the field. The approach to food safety he brings now to CFS—along with his expertise—is personal.
There are families around the world missing a member because of food safety’s impact.
Jason Klein
Food Safety Director at CFS
“Early in my career a major food company had a contamination incident,” he shared. “It claimed some lives. I was one of the subject matter experts sent in to help handle it. After that, it never left me how important this job is. Without intervention, it could have been so much worse. There are families around the world missing a member because of food safety’s impact.”
He explained that each member of the CFS team feels a similar drive.
“Everyone I’ve interacted with in CFS has that same ingrained sense of responsibility,” Klein said. “We all see the same risks. We go out to eat together and can’t turn it off—noticing things that could be safer. Each individual approaches it in their own way, but I believe it’s the intense core responsibility that draws us to work here.”
That innate understanding of food safety as a responsibility to your neighbor—to the world—is what CFS instills in the food processors they work with.
Then, they teach them to harness it.
Ahead of the Best
“Risks in the food production market are never standard,” Klein said. “The experts here expect best practices to change quickly, and they embrace it. You can fall really far behind if you just pat yourself on the back and assume you’re doing well enough.”
He explained that a sense of responsibility helps motivate processors through the food industry’s ever-changing demands. The Food Safety Modernization Act, which was signed into U.S. law in 2011, saw the FDA emphasize prevention of foodborne illnesses rather than containment. This shift aligned deeply with CFS’s approach.
“No facility or issue is ever exactly the same,” Klein said. “So the Intralox-CFS continuous improvement mindset—it encourages really flexible engagement with industry challenges.”
That philosophy exchange between Intralox and CFS strengthens both company’s ideals. For instance, all new product engineers at Intralox take CFS’s Hygienic Design Training and continue the learning pathway to become Hygienic Design Certified.
“Having CFS on hand and attending their trainings with our designers helps to elevate our awareness and thought process when it comes to designing for hygienic performance,” Bogle said.
Bogle explains further that customers find added credibility and brand security in the “Developed by Hygienic Design Certified engineers” badge present on new FoodSafe solutions like our OneTrack tools and components suite.
“Like Intralox, CFS has built our industry reputation on constant innovation,” Klein adds. “Working with Intralox encourages us to keep committing to that.”
To that end, CFS continuously updates their trainings to reflect what’s happening in the global food industry.
“It’s exciting to have a team that’s both flat and diverse enough to keep up with that evolution in real time and be pioneers of food safety,” Klein said. “CFS is global. If we were just a North America team or a Louisiana team or something like that, there’s no way we could appreciably wrap our heads around global trends. But this team, from our varying vantage points, we can sit just talking with each other and see the influence. Something one region is changing will have a ripple effect on another. Even better, sometimes we can say, ‘Wait—what did you guys do when you went through this years ago?’”
This is how they keep processors not just up to date, but ahead of evolving best practices.
“Every year, a customer could attend a given training with CFS and they’d get an improved product, improved ideas,” Klein said. “It’s a growth model even within their own experience year to year.”
Many companies do return to CFS for more trainings or to complete certification pathways. But some of the most effective sessions, he explained, are dedicated training sessions with entire operations in attendance.
“Most training participants tell us they wish the rest of their leadership would take the training,” he said. “We’ve had dedicated sessions where the whole business comes in and attends the training. Quality, Engineering—all the way up to leadership like the vice president, senior managers. It makes a companywide difference instantly.”
When everyone at a company shares the same understanding and passion, the results are huge. For example, after partnering with Intralox and CFS, Senpilic quintupled hygienic performance and reduced cleaning time by 75%.
More importantly, by training together, their team created a shared language and drive from top to bottom.
Want to create your companywide passion for food safety?
Klein said that any food company could benefit from CFS’s partnership, just as Intralox has. The diverse industries, regions, and roles each expert brings to the CFS team combine to form a holistic, global perspective on food safety that ensures your brand is covered.
“When you know you’re backed by a team of experts in all these different fields” Klein said, “if you just had one field or one type of production, you’d be limited and couldn't really engage certain types and segments.
“With this team, it’s pretty much boundless.”
