This special BONUS episode of Food Safety Matters focuses on Listeria Right Now, an environmental Listeria test offering molecular-level accuracy, with no enrichment and a total time to results of under one hour. This innovative food safety product was introduced at the annual IAFP meeting this year, with many people remarking that it was a “game changer”.

Because of the pervasiveness of Listeria in the environment, the risk that Listeria can be introduced into a food processing facilities can happen at any time. The goal of an environmental monitoring program is to verify the effectiveness of contamination control programs, identify microbial harborage sites, and ensure that corrective actions have eliminated organisms such as Listeria from the plant.

With the intent of helping to control this ubiquitous pathogen in food processing facilities, Neogen has developed a one-hour Listeria test that features the total elimination of the enrichment process. Neogen’s new Listeria Right Now test is fast and flexible enough to be used in a “seek and destroy” mode, as well as to identify vectors and sources of contamination.   

To understand the practical applications of this innovative new pathogen test and the possibilities it brings to food processing and production we spoke with Jim Topper, a senior marketing development manager with Neogen.

In this episode, we speak with Neogen’s Jim Topper about:

• Conventional environmental monitoring methods and how Listeria Right Now has moved the needle.
• FDA’s guidance on Listeria testing that supports “seek and destroy” methods.
• What the Listeria Right Now actually is.
• Obtaining Listeria test results in under one hour and the timeline to results.
• The types of validations performed for the Listeria Right Now system.
• How this product will be used throughout the food industry.
• Whether the product should be used for all Listeria testing.

Resources
For more information, visit the resource page on Neogen’s website for Listeria Right Now
or call Jim Topper at 1-800-234-5333

Sponsored by:

Alex LeBeau, Ph.D., M.P.H., CIH is the owner of Exposure Assessment Consulting LLC in Orlando, Florida, where he offers toxicology, industrial hygiene, risk assessment, and public health consulting services. Over his 13-year career, he has evaluated environmental and occupational exposures and has performed toxicological evaluations of chemicals and biological agents. He has also performed human health risk assessments of contaminated sites using U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state regulatory guidelines and has monitored remediation activities at those sites. To evaluate the exposure impacts on building occupants, he has performed indoor environmental quality assessments, including Legionella and water quality assessments, at healthcare, residential, and industrial facilities.

In this bonus episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak to MilliporeSigma food regulatory compliance experts about how regulators, laboratories, and manufacturers are responding to emerging food safety risks in an increasingly complex landscape.

Miguel Ramirez is a seasoned food manufacturing executive with more than three decades of operational leadership experience in the food industry. He currently serves as Vice President of Operations at Fresca Foods Inc. in Louisville, Colorado, where he has held progressive leadership roles over the past 13 years including Plant Manager, Director of Operations, and his current VP role. Prior to Fresca Foods, Miguel spent over 24 years with Butterball LLC, where he managed more than 12 production lines across a two-shift operation with a workforce of 350 employees.

Madisen Hodgson, M.S. is a food safety and quality assurance professional with nearly a decade of progressive experience spanning food manufacturing, retail bakery, beverage, and airline catering environments. She currently serves as a Quality Assurance Manager for a protein and nutritional bar manufacturer in Denver, Colorado, where she oversees the full food safety management system and leads a multi-shift quality assurance team across multiple production lines.

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak to WHO’s Dr. Elaine Borghi about the new global foodborne disease burden estimates, updates to the methodology, key insights from the data, and the importance of using data to target food safety interventions, aligning with the WFSD theme “From Burden to Solutions—Safe Food Everywhere.”

Alissa Welsher, Ph.D. is a Senior Consultant at Elanco Poultry Food Safety. Dr. Welsher received her bachelor's degree in biological sciences from the University of Pittsburgh, a master's degree in poultry science, and a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Arkansas. Her area of expertise is in meat and poultry food safety, and she specializes in integrated pest management (IPM). 

Brady Carter, Ph.D. is the Chief Scientific Officer at Carter Scientific Solutions. He specializes in water activity, moisture sorption, shelf-life stability, plant science, and wheat production and quality. He has 23 years of experience in research and development and previously was a Research Professor at Washington State University focusing on wheat end-use quality. Dr. Carter has pioneered work in using dynamic isotherms to investigate product stability and establish critical water activities for optimal shelf life. He also specializes in shelf-life loss and effective utilization of instrumentation to address product safety and quality issues. Dr. Carter holds a Ph.D. in Crop Science and Food Engineering and an M.S degree in Cereal Chemistry and Crop Science from Washington State University, as well as a B.A. degree in Botany from Weber State University.