How can food and beverage companies design products for global regulatory compliance?

Designing products with global regulatory compliance in mind can help food and beverage manufacturers prepare for expansion into additional markets without having to redevelop products later to meet different requirements. 

Shada Ziegler, Senior Scientist – Product Development at Brown-Forman Corporation, explains how this approach influences the company’s product development decisions. When Brown-Forman needed a product to comply with requirements in Australia, the team also considered where that product might be sold in the future. Rather than focusing only on the immediate market, the goal was to use flavors and develop products that could support broader global compliance from the beginning. 

This requires coordination beyond the product development team. Shada highlights the importance of staying closely connected with suppliers and bringing supplier regulatory teams together with Brown-Forman’s own regulatory team to support compliance decisions during development. 

In this video, Shada explains why Brown-Forman considers future market expansion when developing products and how working toward globally compliant flavors and products from the beginning can help reduce the need for redevelopment when entering additional markets. 

Video Transcript

“We needed to be compliant in Australia, but to prevent any roadblocks [in the] future, if the product is going to expand into other markets, we want it to be globally compliant, a flavor that we’re using in a product. 

I think for us, as being super connected to our suppliers, making sure we’re working with their regulatory team and our regulatory team and making sure that we are putting out a product that we know, if we want to expand it, we don’t have to redevelop it to get it to other markets. So, globally compliant flavors and products from the beginning.” 

- Shada Ziegler, Senior Scientist – Product Development at Brown-Forman