Huub Lelieveld Awarded 2026 World Food Prize for Global Food Safety Leadership
“My drive is to help people with this objective: safe food for everybody,” he said.
Huub Lelieveld has been awarded the 2026 World Food Prize and $500,000 for his six decades of research, leadership, advocacy, and institution-building in the food safety sector.
“My philosophy is, if you can help, then help,” Mr. Lelieveld told the World Food Prize Foundation. “My drive is to help people with this objective: safe food for everybody.”
Mr. Lelieveld is known for founding and serving as President of the Global Harmonization Initiative (GHI) to build international consensus around the science that informs food safety regulations and standards. Since its inception in 2024, GHI has grown to include more than 1,600 volunteers in 113 countries, uniting researchers, policymakers, and industry. He was also Past-President of the European Federation of Food Science and Technology (EFFoST), and the founder and Past-President of the European Hygienic Engineering and Design Group (EHEDG).
Additionally, Mr. Lelieveld was a contributor to Food Safety Magazine (FSM), having previously served as a longtime member on the FSM Editorial Advisory Board. He was also awarded FSM’s Distinguished Service Award in 2012.
Advancing Hygienic Design and Food Safety Research
Notably, Mr. Lelieveld made significant contributions to the field of sanitation, especially related to hygienic design. He began his career at Unilever as a researcher, where he pioneered the development of hygienically designed equipment and hygienic production methods. These innovations were not only scaled across Unilever’s global operations, but eventually became standard industrywide. Other innovations Mr. Lelieveld worked on at Unilever that advanced food safety included continuous fermentation, non-destructive product testing, and aseptic packaging machinery, resulting in 11 patents.
Global Food Safety Leadership and Recognitions
After Unilever, Mr. Lelieveld committed his career to advancing food safety globally, leading him to the Netherlands Microbiological Society, where he spearheaded work to address the emerging concept of biotechnology; EHEDG, which he led for 12 years as it published more than 60 safe food manufacturing standards; EFFoST, which he revitalized and grew into a network of more than 100,000 professionals in 130 countries; and eventually, the founding of GHI.
As a result of his leadership, hygienically designed EHEDG-certified equipment is today’s industry standard. Mr. Lelieveld was also awarded the EFFoST Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Science to Society Award in 2021.
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GHI, which Mr. Lelieveld founded in 2004 and served as President from 2007–2024, has helped shape countries’ food safety legislation, depoliticize and standardize food irradiation, improve food safety for vulnerable populations through grassroots initiatives, start an international food safety alert and whistleblowing system, prioritize capacity-building and training, and continuously advance scientific consensus and standards harmonization.
Mr. Lelieveld is also a prolific author and the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the National University of Food Science and Technology in Kyiv, Ukraine. Additionally, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau by the Dutch Royal House for his public health contributions.
