Delegates from China and the United States will attend the event which is part of the Global Food Safety Forum.
It is being organised by Dr Helen Darling, executive director at the Global Food Safety Forum/ New Zealand and one of the founders of Oritain Global Ltd, which has pioneered global food verification systems.
GFSF is a US-based not-for-profit organisation with a diverse membership of multinational companies in the global food chain, Chinese companies, US state departments of agriculture and trade associations.
Its focus is on the global food chain, with its committee centring on international concerns in creating and validating multi-industry standards, tightening certification procedures, offering training workshops to companies and advancing quality controls.
Dr Darling expected between 150 and 200 people to attend the conference, which will be held at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery from November 13 to 15, with a dinner at Larnach Castle.
She was excited at the prospect of bringing together regulators, importers and food safety experts for what would be a ''very broad'' discussion about food safety.
One of the big sessions would be looking at doing some predictions of ''what the next crisis'' was going to be.
That session would involve looking at emerging threats and at ways to address those potential issues before they became a problem.
While it was a coincidence, Dr Darling acknowledged the timing of the conference was rather significant, given recent food safety issues, which included the Fonterra contamination scare and problems with New Zealand manuka honey.
One delegation, after the conference, wanted to visit dairy producers in New Zealand.
There was an opportunity for trade to come about; it was not just all about knowledge exchange but the ability to build relationships, and there was also an opportunity for academic exchange as well as business exchange, she said.
In the South, primary industries and knowledge were done ''very well'' and there was an opportunity to ''showcase'' both to the visitors, she said.
Dr Darling hoped the conference could become an annual event held in the city.
