Meet the team with Ruth McBride

From quality and compliance in meat to animal welfare specialist at Foods Connected — Ruth McBride shares her non-linear path through the food supply chain.

After studying Food Quality, Safety and Nutrition (with Professional Studies) at Queen’s University, our Senior Implementation Specialist – Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability (AWCE) started her career in quality and technical roles in the meat industry.  Here she chats about how industry helped her find her voice, the benefits of non-linear career paths, and seeing the bigger supply chain picture.

Hi Ruth, can you tell us a little about yourself

I grew up in Northern Ireland and studied food and nutrition at Queen’s University. After that I worked at a pork slaughterhouse for six years. I continued into more quality and technical roles in the meat sector, with a lot of crossover into agri.

Then the role came up at Foods Connected. I’ve been here four years now. I am part of the AWCE team, focusing on animal welfare. I really enjoy my role – no two days are the same. I can be involved in planning audit schedules with auditing bodies, providing technical animal welfare guidance, helping with technical queries, reviewing data, identifying trends and emerging issues, to assisting customers with building the right requirements into the system to support their objectives. Driving continual improvement in the animal welfare space is a huge part of day-to-day life.

So, why the food sector?

Well, I wanted to do something I enjoyed and followed my heart. It started with Home Economics being one of my favourite subjects at school, and hence a food degree, but I didn't know what I was going to do with this in the long term.

After completing my placement in the food industry, I found I enjoyed the environment and had an interest in supply chains as a whole. Then when I graduated, I looked at industry again and started applying for jobs.

My first job was working for a pork manufacturer in Ballymena. I didn't really know what I was getting myself in for, but I found it really interesting. I'm the type of person who likes to know why and how things happen. I like to know a process, so I can make sense of the bigger picture.

The pork sector was a good starting point for me. The technical work there was a crossover between technical quality, technical and agri elements which opened the door for everything that was to come.

During my time here, I found the animal welfare aspects really interested me, so when I joined Foods Connected and had the chance to work within the Animal Welfare, Compliance and Environmental team, I jumped at it.

I find it rewarding looking at the full supply chain back to farm and being part of the bigger picture of driving positive changes in the sector, supporting and guiding others, seeing improvements and highlighting challenges. Prior to Foods Connected, my experience was very much limited to the world of the pork industry, however I now have a good grasp of supply chains and processes across multiple species, such as red meat, poultry and aquaculture.

Your background is in quality and compliance – how has that informed your work in the animal welfare space?

There's always been a lot of crossover between the two. Yes, I started in quality and compliance, but I was always involved in the agri side of things also, due to the small team size on site.

I was involved in daily discussions with vets, reviewing food chain information, monitoring tracebility back to farm, and reviewing technical and welfare standards to ensure compliance. I did internal audits on the quality and compliance side of things. Plus, my technical manager was excellent at identifying areas she thought I would thrive, so she threw me into things. Very quickly I was sitting in on both technical and animal welfare audits and then I was leading some of them.

I enjoyed the structure and when you start to get your confidence, you realise it’s all a similar process, whether that takes the form of technical or welfare standards. Working with the agri people and the farmers, you could sometimes see progress faster, which was always rewarding.

Then when I started at Foods Connected, I started in food compliance, but very quickly moved over to support the agricultural team. In fact, one of my first jobs was to help with antibiotic usage reporting. This then led to standards benchmarking. My current work is made so much easier having sat on the other side of audits, knowing the challenges that suppliers can face, and having a worked in the slaughter environment. It is always easier to understand processes when you can visualise them, or understand the meaning of a document when you see it in use.

What are you most proud of in your career so far?

Good question. I think in some ways it's not necessarily a tangible thing, but it's the amount I have learnt in quite a short space of time.

I would always have doubted myself and my ability, but working both in industry and at Foods Connected has helped me find my voice. I'm naturally more of an introvert. I can get on with people socially, but I'm happy in my own company.

The same when I moved to Foods Connected. We have a great team and they have been keen to share knowledge and help me grow. The more you learn, the more you start to believe in your own abilities and have confidence in your suggestions.

Now I'm leading on calls with customers and stakeholders. If I look back four years, I wouldn't have had the confidence or the knowledge to do that. The growth in my knowledge and confidence is therefore one of the things I’m most proud about. At the end of June, I’ll be doing lead auditor training - something I could never have imagined myself capable of doing in the past.

The fact that the people I work with are saying “this is the next step for you – you are a specialist in your field” - That's a massive thing for me. 

What’s something people wouldn’t immediately guess about you?

Well, we’ve covered the fact people see me as this social outgoing person – and I’m really not. My favourite things are gardening and singing in my local choir. So I guess the fact that I’ve sung on the stage of the Ulster Hall in Belfast might come as news to people. I also dressed up as a minion for a colleagues leaving do in Belfast... but that’s another story.