Brendan A. Niemira, Ph.D. is a research microbiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (USDA's ARS) in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of the University of Chicago and Michigan State University. His research develops and validates cold plasma, pulsed light, radiofrequency energy, and other nonthermal food processing technologies. He has published over 180 peer-reviewed research articles, book chapters, and critical reviews, is the co-editor and author of a well-regarded reference text, and holds one patent. Dr. Niemira is a Fellow of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) and a past member of the IFT Board of Directors. He currently serves on the Educational Advisory Board for the Food Safety Summit. A member of IFT, the International Association for Food Protection, and the American Society for Microbiology for more than 20 years, he also serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Food Protection and Applied and Environmental Microbiology. He received the 2016 U.S. Department of Defense Award for Excellence and the 2020 Federal Laboratory Consortium Technology Transfer Innovation Award.

Alissa Welsher, Ph.D. is a Senior Consultant at Elanco Poultry Food Safety. Dr. Welsher received a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as 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 meat and poultry food safety, and she specializes in integrated pest management (IPM).

Lyle Probst is the CEO of NomadX and an accomplished entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in operations, product development, engineering, biodefense, and advanced technology commercialization.

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.”