Committe Work
Member, STEC CAP Stakeholder Advisory Board
STEC CAP is a USDA -National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP) grant, titled Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) in the Beef Chain: Assessing and Mitigating the Risk by Translational Science, Education and Outreach, seeks to significantly advance evidence- and action-based beef food safety knowledge to protect public health.
This project is targeting the seven most important STEC serotypes that cause human illness in the U.S. The three Core Pillars of this project are pre-harvest, post-harvest and consumer research, and all three of these initiatives feed directly into the framework of our project, that being a Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) across the beef chain continuum.
The QMRA is the STEC CAP's centerpiece and is what drives all research, education and extension activities. This USDA-NIFA grant focusing on STEC in beef was awarded to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and includes 15 participating institutions and 51 collaborators.
Member, Strategic Planning Committee – Conference for Food Protection
Though Federal, State, and local governments are primarily responsible for setting food safety standards, many other organizations share a stake in carrying out enforcement of the standards. The Conference for Food Protection brings together representatives from the food industry, government, academia, and consumer organizations to identify and address emerging problems of food safety and to formulate recommendations. The Conference seeks to balance the interests of regulatory and industry people while providing an open forum for the consideration of ideas from any source. The Conference meets at least biennially to provide this forum. Though the Conference has no formal regulatory authority, it is a powerful organization that profoundly influences model laws and regulations among all government agencies and minimizes disparate interpretations and implementation.
Member, CFA Food and Nutrition Policy Resolution subcommittee
Member, Safe Food Coalition
Consumer Federation of America - Food Policy Institute. The Institute coordinates the activities of the Safe Food Coalition, which consists of consumer groups, public health groups, groups representing victims of foodborne illness, and labor organizations dedicated to reducing the burden of foodborne illness in the United States by improving government food inspection programs.
Member, Food Laboratory Alliance
The Food Laboratory Alliance represents a coalition of organizations devoted to the safety of the nation’s food supply and the quality of food laboratory testing. It is the mission of the Food Laboratory Alliance to:
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Promote food safety and quality of food laboratory testing;
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Provide information, education and guidance on regulatory and legislative issues pertaining to food laboratories; and
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Advocate for food laboratory testing to help ensure a safe food supply.