To get a taste of the discussions that were happening at the 2026 Food Safety Summit, we spoke face-to-face with Roberta Wagner, M.Sc., Senior Vice President of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs for the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA); Steven Mandernach, J.D., Executive Director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) and Sandra Eskin, J.D., CEO of STOP Foodborne Illness; Jacob Nelson, Asset Protection Sales Manager at the Sherwin-Williams Company and Feraas Alameh, Food and Beverage Marketing Manager at the Sherwin-Williams Company; Conrad Choiniere, Ph.D., Director of  the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA's) Office of Microbiological Food Safety, Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D., Director of the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness, and Lone Jespersen, Ph.D., Founder and Principal of Cultivate SA; and Cindy Jiang, Senior Director, Global Food Safety Risk Management, Global Supply Chain at McDonald's (retired).

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In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak with:

• Ms. Wagner about food ingredient safety and labeling trends, policy developments, and risk communication [2:48]
• Mr. Mandernach and Ms. Eskin about progress and gaps in the implementation of FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in the 15 years since it was passed [26:19]
• Mr. Nelson and Mr. Alameh about a facility lifecycle approach to food safety [47:37]
• Drs. Choiniere, Coffman, and Jespersen about perspectives, challenges, and opportunities related food safety culture across sectors [1:16:42]
• Ms. Jiang about practical applications for artificial intelligence (AI) in food safety. [1:44:37]

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