To get a taste of the discussions that were happening at the 2024 Food Safety Summit, we spoke face-to-face with Melody Ge, M.S., FSQA, Director at Starkist Co. and Co-Founder of Women in Food Safety (WIFS); Jacqueline Southee, Ph.D., North American Representative at Foundation FSSC and Co-Founder of WIFS; Jill Hoffman, M.S., Senior Director of Food Safety and Quality at B&G Foods; Anjan Chatterji, M.B.A., J.D., LL.M., CEO of NOMADX Holdings; Jorge Hernandez, Vice President of Quality Assurance at The Wendy’s Company; Chirag Bhatt, RS, CCFS, Director of Regulatory Affairs at HS GovTech Solutions; Tyler Williams, CEO of ASI Food; Marc Cwikowski and Tülay Kahraman, Co-Founders at World of Auditing; and Angela Nardone, COO of Share-ify. Discussions covered the advancement of female food safety professionals, allergen control in both foodservice and food processing, the future of food safety auditing, and other topics.

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.