Monday, September 13, 2021
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Speaker Bios
Bill Burnard
Bill has over 25 years with INFICON’s Leak Testing, Gas Analysis, Vacuum Coatings, R&D, Defense, Analytical and Industrial clients as well as extensive experience deploying the vast array of technologies and process innovations from INFICON into manufacturing environments. Specifically, Bill leverages his academic and professional experiences to lead the North American efforts to deliver value and productivity to clients tied to food, pharmaceutical and medical package seal integrity
Dan Fone
Dan Fone has been in the food industry for more than 30 years. He has worked internationally across various food safety and environmental compliance programs as a regulator, a systems assessor and consultant/ advisor. He started his career in environmental health in the UK, before working for Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance (LRQA), Safeway Stores, NSF and Walmart where he served as senior director for international food safety; subsequently he accepted the position as senior director II and US Food Safety SME for Walmart US and in this role he leads the Walmart US food safety team in all aspects across the food safety continuum of Wal mart's operations.
Gina Misra
Gina Misra is a research scientist at the non-profit organization Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. She earned her Masters in Cell and Molecular Biology from University of Arkansas in 2020, where she studied microgreens. She is also a microgreen grower for the indoor farm GreenSpace. She is interested in the food safety of controlled environment agriculture and how CEA crops can be produced for human spaceflight.
John Shanahan
John Shanahan is the leading designer and patent holder in the development of HOCl- Hypochlorous onsite generation technology for applications from consumer to bulk sanitizing applications. John has dedicated more than 20 years of his career to developing systems that can reduce the chemical footprint in produce sanitation and provide a real “kill step” with safe, organic solutions. John’s work with Dr. Hal King has led to the first produce wash that can provide the sanitizing on the produce vs just the water that the produce is rinsed in like traditional produce wash systems provide.
Wendy White
Wendy White is the Industry Manager for Food and Beverage for Georgia Tech’s Georgia Manufacturing Extension Program (GaMEP). Before joining academia she spent the first 17 years of her career in the food manufacturing and distributing industry. She has a BS in Biology and MS in Food Science, both from University of Georgia. She has been a member of the International Association of Food Protection since 2001 and is a past Chair of the Developing Food Safety Professionals PDG and Meat & Poultry PDG. Wendy is currently serving as Vice Chair for the IAFP Foundation Committee and is on IAFP’s Executive Board as the Affiliate Council Chairperson. On a local level, she is a Past President and current Delegate for the Georgia Affiliate Chapter, GAFP.
Dilshika Wijesekera
Dilshika received his BS in Poultry Science and MS in Cellular & Molecular Biology from the University of Arkansas. Dilshika has worked in various food safety leadership roles in manufacturing, retail, and e-commerce. His manufacturing experience comes from working for Tyson Foods as the Food Safety and Quality Assurance Manager at a dual inspection (FDA and USDA/FSIS) complex and later working for Lopez Foods as the Food Safety and Quality Systems Manager. In 2013, Dilshika joined Amazon to build the Food Safety program for Amazon Fresh, including supplier approvals, under-the-roof operations, mid/last-mile chill chain, regulatory compliance, and adverse incident management.
Dilshika joined Instacart in January 2019 to lead the Food Safety and Regulatory compliance program. In his current role, Dilshika along with the Instacart team of data scientists, engineers, and program managers are working to provide pragmatic and scalable food safety solutions to a rapidly expanding online grocery delivery platform.
Shawn Stevens
Shawn K. Stevens is the founding member of Food Industry Counsel LLC, the only law firm in the world that represents food industry clients exclusively.
Mr. Stevens works throughout the country and abroad with food industry clients (including the world’s largest growers, food processors, national restaurant chains, and food distributors and grocery chains) helping them protect their brand by reducing food safety risk, complying with FDA and USDA food safety regulations, managing recalls, and defending high-profile foodborne illness claims.
Joel Chappelle
Is an attorney and consultant with Food Industry Counsel LLC, where I am proud and honored to assist food and cannabis industry clients from across the United States with a broad range of interesting legal and regulatory issues. I regularly speak and publish to national audiences on a wide range of issues, including food safety, FDA and FSIS compliance, and cannabis law. I believe exceptional work begins with unwavering dedication to client service, continues with hard work and creativity, and ends with achieving great results at an exceptional value.
Katie Walker
Katie Walker serves as Food Safety Technical Director for QSI contract sanitation and ZEE Company chemicals, both of which are member companies of The Vincit Group (pronounced “vin-CHEAT”).
Katie has 24 years of Food Safety and QA experience with special expertise in sanitation, sanitary design, and combatting environmental bacteria. Katie’s QA career began as a QA Manager for PM Beef Group, LLC, and later served as a Corporate Food Safety Director for Butterball, LLC. Katie has worked for The Vincit Group 15 cumulative years. In her current role for QSI and ZEE, Katie provides training, auditing, and consulting services to internal and external clients in the areas of food safety, sanitation, and regulatory affairs. Katie’s passion for industrial sanitation is in development of supplemental programs aimed at targeting biofilms and preventing specific microbiological issues in the processing environment.
Katie earned her degree in Food Science & Technology at Virginia Tech and is a long-term resident of Virginia.
Richard L. McMullen, Ph.D.
Dr. McMullen holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, a Master of Science degree in Agronomy with an emphasis in soil chemistry, and a doctorate degree in Crop, Soil and Environmental Science with an emphasis in applied soil physics from the University of Arkansas. His expertise relates to broiler litter application rate effects on water quality and carbon dioxide emissions from soil. His post-doctoral work related to seasonal water tables of the Mississippi River and animal waste management at the watershed level. He is currently enrolled in the Doctor of Public Health in Public Health Leadership program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He currently serves as the Associate Director for Science for the Center for Local Public Health and the State Environmental Health Director at the Arkansas Department of Health and serves as an adjunct assistant professor at the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at UAMS. He serves as a Commissioner of the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission. Previously, he has worked in quality assurance with Tyson; soil conservation with the USDA-NRCS; and an elected official the City of Johnson, AR. He holds numerous certifications and licenses and is a member of numerous organizations, including Gamma Sigma Delta and Alpha Chi Sigma. Dr. McMullen is a native of Fayetteville, AR.
William “Bill” K. Shaw, Jr., PhD.
Dr. Bill Shaw works in the Office of Public Health Science (OPHS) as the Executive associate for Laboratory Services (EALS). The EALS leads the 3 FSIS Field Services Laboratories and the accompanying Laboratory Quality Assurance Staff and Food Emergency Response Network Staff in the analysis of meat, poultry, and egg products for known and emerging foodborne hazards. The EALS leads a dynamic and geographically dispersed staff of ~230 staff. The EALS leads studies, reviews, and evaluations of scientific lab sampling data collected by FSIS and other public health partners related to meat, poultry, and egg products to determine potential impact on human health; directs analyses of food safety hazards as a science-based resource used for public health decision making; and serves as a national and international resource on food borne hazards and collaborates with other public health officials at the Federal, State, and local levels.
Bill received his Bachelor of Science in Food Science from the University of Delaware in 1996. He then received a Master of Science in Food Science in 2001 and Doctor of Philosophy in Food Science in 2004 from the University of Massachusetts. While part of the academic research community, Bill conducted research in the areas high hydrostatic pressure processing, pulsed electric field processing, rapid microbiological detection and enumeration methods, and Listeria spp. biofilm formation.
Prior to joining OPHS, Bill spent his first years at FSIS in the Office of Policy and Program Development (OPPD) where he eventually became the the Director of the Risk, Innovations, and Management Staff. As director, Bill led the agency policy development in the areas of EIAO methodology, sampling and testing policy, food safety risk management, compliance guidance, new technologies, new ingredients, and financial management of OPPD.
Dr. Eric W. Brown
Dr. Eric W. Brown has been with the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) since 1999 and currently serves as Director of the Division of Microbiology in the Office of Regulatory Science. Here, he oversees a group of 60 food safety microbiology researchers, students, and support scientists engaged in a multi-parameter research program to develop and apply microbiological and molecular genetic strategies for detecting, identifying, and differentiating bacterial foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella, Listeria, and shiga-toxin producing E. coli. His laboratory has been instrumental in adapting next-generation sequencing technologies to augment foodborne outbreak investigations and to ensure preventive control and compliance standards at the FDA including the establishment of the GenomeTrakr whole-genome sequencing network for food safety. Dr. Brown received his M.Sc. in Microbiology from the National Cancer Institute/Hood College joint program in the biomedical sciences in 1993 and his Ph.D. in Microbial Genetics from The Department of Biological Sciences at The George Washington University in 1997. He has conducted research in microbial evolution and genetics as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology at Loyola University of Chicago. He has been a member of the American Society for Microbiology since 1994 and was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2015. He has co-authored more than 250 refereed publications and book chapters and has presented nationally and internationally more than 150 times on the molecular differentiation, evolutionary genetics, and ecological persistence of bacterial pathogens.
Julie McGill
Julie McGill is the Vice President of Supply Chain and Insights at FoodLogiQ, a leading SaaS provider of food safety compliance, traceability, and supply chain transparency solutions. Their solutions help foodservice and grocery trading partners achieve end-to-end traceability while supporting safe and high quality food products across the supply chain.
In her role, Julie works with FoodLogiQ leadership to advise on industry, regulatory, customer, and product insights to improve market adoption and penetration, customer satisfaction and value generation. She supports FoodLogiQ teams on evolving industry activity including regulatory, standards, traceability and food safety.
Before joining the FoodLogiQ team in May of 2017, Julie spent over 16 years at GS1 US. She led the Foodservice GS1 US Standards Initiative, and on the PCATS initiative with NACS, working with industry stakeholders in the convenience retail space. Julie also worked for Transora, which was one of the first GDSN data pools.
Julie started her food and beverage career at Coors Brewing Company in Golden, Colorado, supporting the Store Level Data program, engaging their distributor network to implement EDI with convenience and grocery retailers.
Julie serves as co-chair of the PTI Technology Workgroup and sits on other various industry workgroups covering topics from AIDC, RFID, food safety, traceability, transparency, and supply chain management.
Mock Trial Overview
Foodborne Illness Outbreak Mock Criminal Trial – What would 12 Jurors Think?
Listen to federal prosecutors as they argue why Lynn White, V.P. of Food Safety for a company that caused a Listeria outbreak, should be criminally convicted.
Learn about the scope of potential criminal exposure you may face if your products are associated with an outbreak.
Learn about the different types of evidence and arguments federal prosecutors will use to convict food company executives.
Identify strategies that you can implement in your organization today to protect yourself and your company from criminal exposure.
Deliberate the evidence as jurors in the trial and vote whether to convict or acquit Ms. White.
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