Earlier this month, the Food Safety Magazine team gathered in Salt Lake City, UT for the Annual Meeting of the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP). The IAFP Annual Meeting was attended by more than 3,800 top industry, academic, and governmental food safety professionals from six continents. Each year, this premiere event for industry professionals convenes and discusses current and emerging food safety issues, the latest science, and innovative solutions to new and recurring problems. The meeting also presents opportunities to network with thousands of food safety professionals from around the globe.

While in Salt Lake City, we invited experts from across the industry to come to our booth and chat with us about all things food safety. Some of those impromptu conversations and interviews are included in our 30th installment of the Food Safety Matters podcast.

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we spoke to a number of food safety professionals about a variety of hot topics:

Tim Stubbs, National Dairy Council (NDC)

• NDC's role within the dairy industry, resources provided, etc.
• Various food technologies including atmospheric cold plasma for packaging treatment, antimicrobial use in cheese, and more
• Advances inl food safety and technology in the next three to five years.

Will Daniels, IEH Laboratories & Consulting Group

• The romaine lettuce outbreak that originated in the Yuma, AZ, growing region (desert Southwest) and new food safety issues that have been brought to the forefront because of it
• One health concept: Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and soil… the connection between the animal world and the produce world
• Reducing microbial shedding events
• Community relations and food safety
• Lessons learned from the Earthbound Farms spinach outbreak
• Communicating risk within an organization, and publicly 

Paul Kiecker, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

• His roles within USDA
• What “modernizing” does (and does not) mean
• What food companies should expect
• USDA inspection roles (vs. U.S. Food and Drug Administration roles)
• Top priorities at USDA in terms of modernization
• Progress with pathogen sampling and whole-genome sequencing use
• Salmonella as an adulterant
• Standard setting for Campylobacter

Carmen Rottenberg, USDA

• An in-depth conversation about USDA's study on consumer handwashing, meal preparation, and thermometer use

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 Aiameh, 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).

To get a taste of the discussions that were happening at the 2026 Food Safety Summit, we spoke face-to-face with Jeremy Zenlea, M.B.A., Vice President and Head of Health and Safety for EG America and Laurie Farmer, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Office of Retail Food Protection; David Clifford, M.B.A., Director of Food Safety at Nestlé USA and Sara Mortimore, M.Sc., Founder of Sara Mortimore LLC and formerly Vice President for Food Safety at Walmart; Frank Curto, Ph.D., Vice President of Operations at Ecowize North America; and Drew McDonald, Senior Vice President of Quality, Food Safety, and Regulatory Affairs for Taylor Fresh Foods and Conrad Choiniere, Ph.D., Director of FDA’s Office of Microbiological Food Safety.

Larry Keener, CFS, PA is President and CEO of International Product Safety Consultants Inc. and an internationally regarded microbiologist and process authority in the food industry. His areas of expertise range from applied food microbiology to the development and application of novel preservation technologies.

In this bonus episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak to Jenny Du, Ph.D., Co-Founder of Apeel Sciences, about Apeel—a clean alternative to traditional post-harvest produce coatings and treatments—its transparent approach to disrupting an $11 billion industry.

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak to Sandro Tarchini of the Cardano Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the blockchain ecosystem, about the applications for blockchain throughout the food supply chain and how it can improve farm-to-retail traceability and transparency.

Suzette Stalker is Director of FSQA Program Compliance at FreshRealm Inc. Formerly, she served as Director of Food Safety, Quality, and Regulatory compliance at Target Corporation. At Target, Suzette was responsible for food safety standards and programs, covering nearly 2,000 stores and more than 60 supply chain facilities. Her work encompassed owned brand supplier manufacturing facilities, product labeling, produce farms, supply chain facilities, retail stores, and managing food recalls. Previously, Suzette led teams to develop and execute comprehensive internal audits of food safety and operational risks across Target. 

Sabrina Terada is the Manager for Food Safety Risk Management and Measurement at Yum! Brands. She is a seasoned professional in food safety and quality assurance with extensive experience at Yum! Brands, where her roles have included Manager of Global Food Safety Risk Management and Measurement and Manager of Global FSQA. In these positions, Sabrina held responsibilities supporting the Food Safety Governance Framework, coaching, and assisting business units with crisis management.