Samuel Laing

Carel du Marchie Sarvaas

Carel du Marchie Sarvaas has been working as a senior government affairs and communications advisor in Brussels and Washington DC for 20 years.

He will move to IFAH from EuropaBio, the Association of Biotechnology Industries, where he has been Director for Agricultural Biotechnology for some 4 years. Prior to EuropaBio, Carel worked at international consultancies and think tanks in Brussels and Washington DC, most often serving clients with science-based policy and communications challenges.

Carel is experienced in the interplay between regulatory, political and communications issues as they relate to science, innovation and policy. A Dutch national, he is married and has four children. He has lived in South Africa, Canada, Brussels, and Paris and holds degrees from the University of Leiden and Johns Hopkins University

Cliona Duffy

Cliona is the Head of Partnerships, at RSPCA Assured, the RSPCA’s welfare assurance scheme for farmed animals. Cliona leads engagement and collaboration with the retail and foodservice sectors, encouraging and supporting them to adopt higher welfare sourcing. Prior to RSPCA Assured, Cliona started her career in buying, before moving into managing commercial partnerships at a number of large UK charities, most recently leading the Retail Partnerships team at Fairtrade Foundation.  

Dave Ross

Nick Davies

Joseph Keating

Roger Young

Emer Fardy

Emer has a honours degree from University College Dublin in Agriculture Science specialising in farm animals, she also holds a MSc in Business Development from the University of Ulster, which looked at the barriers of implementation of responsible antibiotic use in a retail supply chain. In her current role as Group CSR Senior Manager at Hilton Foods she has a global remit to support each of the Hilton businesses deliver our sustainable protein plan; this covers animal welfare, environmental sustainability, healthy diets and human rights. Since joining Hilton she has led the development and implementation of the Hilton Foods animal welfare standard and outcome measure process. In addition to delivering the Hilton Foods animal welfare statement. Prior to this Emer worked in retail responsible for driving animal welfare and standards through the supply chain. Before that as a technical advisor in the animal health department of a pharmaceutical wholesaler.

Giovanni Montefiori

Giovanni is a polyglot, experienced traveller with a background in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London and management consulting from McKinsey and Company. He discovered the world of poultry during an unlikely university study with SE Asia's leading chicken grower during Summer 2019. Fascinated by the untapped potential of AI/ML to reduce waste and improve animal welfare, Giovanni returned to Imperial with a new mission – bring harvest prediction technologies to poultry, and then broader agriculture.

Birthe Steenberg

Since 2017, Birthe Steenberg has been Secretary General of AVEC, The Association of Poultry Processors and Poultry Trade in the EU countries. The 19 members of AVEC are national organisations for the production of poultry meat in 17 different European countries.

 Birthe Steenberg leads the strategic direction of the association together with her team, board and the President of AVEC. Birthe’s team is based in the heart of Brussels, Belgium, close to policy makers and other stakeholders where Birthe is building the bridge between the poultry sector, policy and future legislation. Birthe has a broad and extensive international network that she actively uses in order to increase the visibility of the poultry sector in Europe and beyond.

Birthe Steenberg ‎ has strong knowledge and expertise in the food and agriculture sector and has more than 20 years of experience in European public affairs, interest representation and strategic management.

Previously, Birthe worked as Chief Consultant in The Danish Agriculture & Food Council in Copenhagen, Denmark. From 2012 to 2017, Birthe was the Manager of the Danish Poultry Meat Federation.

Birthe has a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Copenhagen, and she is a member of The Executive Committee of the International Poultry Council as well as a series of committees including the European Commission Animal Welfare Platform, European Food Security Crisis preparedness and response mechanism, Advisory Group - Food Chain and Animal and Plant Health and Civil Dialog Group on Animal Products - Poultry meat and Eggs.

Birthe’s motto is action creates change.

Richard Vecqueray

Rich is a vet, turned entrepreneur, with over 25 years’ professional experience in farming focusing on animal welfare, health and production as well as the environment and agriculture’s influence on it.

With wide-ranging experience, he has practised in UK’s Lake District, at Bristol University and on the Canterbury Plains of New Zealand. In 2001 he was seconded to DEFRA for the 2001 Foot & Mouth Disease outbreak in Cumbria where he eventually led the Tracings team.

In 2003 he joined Dugdale Nutrition, a ruminant feed compounder, to deliver farm management consultancy and nutrition advice. Two years later founded an independent consultancy business to continue this work, which became Evidence Group (EG) in 2006 when he was joined by James Husband. In the same year he also co-founded TotalDairy, an annual conference event which has gone on to be one of the most successful of its type in Europe over the past 16 years.

In 2007 EG was approached by Sainsburys (one of the UK’s largest retailers) to deliver a herd health and welfare initiative for its dairy farm suppliers. This began EG’s evolution to become a technology led, farm data business supporting the agrifood chain and its supplying farms, and its subsequent expansion to a European cross-livestock sector operation.

In 2016 Richard undertook an MBA at London Business School to grow the business more aggressively. Following EG’s acquisition by Map of Ag in 2018, he became CEO of the Map of Ag group to lead its vision of becoming the most trusted global data platform connecting farms and industry.

Richard has served as Non-Executive Director for Cumbria’s Penrith Building Society and still gets on farm once a month to consult and keep his hand in. He now lives and runs in the Lake District fells with a long-suffering partner, 5 kids, 3 pigeons, a stubborn dog, and sheep called Magic!

Cerys Jenkins-Lowe

Cerys graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2014 with a BSC Hons in Agriculture, specialising in livestock production and farm business management. She holds a PGDip in Agri-food, also from University of Nottingham, and has undertaken studies into Sustainable Food Security at Wageningen University.

Cerys has spent the last 9 years working in a variety of agriculture and sustainability roles across hospitality, retail and consulting. She spent several years within the Agriculture team at Sainsbury's, particularly focusing on pork and egg supply chains as Agriculture Manager. Following a consulting role in the Agricultural Value Chains team at South Pole, Cerys joined Heart with Smart in August 2022, where she leads on the development and delivery of their sustainability strategy and decarbonisation journey for the Pizza Hut and Itsu brands.

Jason Aldiss

Bojan Blazevic

James Mcullough