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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW THE STATE OF FOOD AND BEVERAGE IN SA FRetail World and Food South Australia CEO Catherine Sayer discuss SA’s food and beverage industry amid Covid-19, the importance of state-based associations, and reconnecting in new ways. or most, 2020 wasn’t the Ms Sayer says the Food SA team easiest of years. South dealt with a major concern for food Australia was no exception and beverage operators during the in terms of the pandemic pandemic: the issue of what happens year’s impacts and uncertainty, coming if somebody gets sick in one of hard on the heels out of a devastating bushfire season. Food SA CEO Catherine Sayer, however, says the pandemic has had a positive as well as negative impact on the state’s food and beverage industry. “When things went pretty pear shaped in March \\\[2020\\\], no one knew what was going to happen and what it all meant,” she said. “What we found, as an association, was that people were constantly in contact with us to ask what they could and couldn’t do, what was and wasn’t going to happen. I was appointed to the Premier’s Industry Response and Recovery Council, which was fantastic for our industry because even though all the meetings – except the first one – were virtual, we had the Premier giving us an update about Food South Australia CEO Catherine Sayer. what goes on in national cabinet. “We’d then \\\[send out\\\] some sort of communication to our members. Within an hour after the meeting, we could send out prompts to members, and that was really well received. “So, we had really good access to the government messaging and understanding what was happening at a national level.” their factories. “We were writing the rule book as we were going,” she said. “We were very fortunate to be working with our state government, which got hold of some guidelines from the Australian Chicken Meat Industry Council, which gave us permission to modify \\\[them\\\] for our sector. We presented them to the Health Department. “This was never fully endorsed, but it became that rulebook of what happens with Covid in your workplace. That went really well, and then what happened was that the government... they didn’t need to have a whole lot of different documents. That was accessible to the whole of the industry, and that was a really big milestone for us.” In terms of specific food channels, 22 RETAIL WORLD APR, 2021