Meet Our Blog Writer

Amy Duda Kinder

If you’re looking for the inside scoop on food safety, look no further than Amy Duda Kinder’s Dandy Digest posts. As our Senior Director of Food Safety & Consumer Affairs, she’s an expert on the various ways to ensure food safety during all phases of the fresh produce production process. She can tell you anything you want to know about hazard analysis, critical control points, procedure verification, and the numerous other steps taken to protect consumers’ health and safety.

The great granddaughter of our founder Andrew Duda, Amy never doubted whether she would go into the family business. Having an interest in food safety, she intentionally focused much of her college studies on food science. After graduating from Florida State University with her Bachelor of Science in 1992, Amy began working for the Duda Fresh sales department in the Redi Foods Division, where she helped to increase retailer interest in our processed and semi-processed celery and citrus products.

The division was a good match for her skills and education, and ended up being an excellent launching point for her ultimate career goal of being directly involved with food safety. Duda Fresh has always been very pro-active with regards to setting good agricultural and manufacturing standards, and as industry and consumer emphasis pushed food safety to the forefront, Amy began actively seeking a position in the food safety department. She made the natural transition from the processed produce sales division and continued her education by enrolling in North Carolina State University’s online program and becoming certified as a Food Safety & HACCP manager.

Amy and her entire team are committed to consumers’ health and safety and are constantly looking for more efficient and effective ways to handle our products. They work hard to coordinate their efforts with operations to find the best practices and processes to maintain our high standards and specifications.

Amy has been married to her husband, Mark Kinder, for 19 years, and together, they have three boys. On the weekends, Amy loves playing sports with her boys or settling down with a good book.