Margit Andreasen

Margit Andreasen is a DVM with a PhD in Epidemiology and Immunology from 1998.

Since 2021 she has been part of the Group Sustainability at Danish Crown, where her focus is on Animal Welfare – from birth to slaughter – across all relevant species and markets. This includes improving the quality of data collected, reporting, gap analysis and strategic development.

She has held various positions within the Agricultural and Pharmaceutical Animal Health Sector. For several years she served as a researcher and clinical trial manager at the Pig Research Centre within the Danish Agriculture and Food Council, with a focus on antibiotic consumption, – resistance and risk mitigation. She worked for the Danish Veterinary Pharmaceutical Association as a technical advisor and has been part of Animal Health Europe’s technical work party, focusing on the prudent use of veterinary pharmaceuticals. She has been part of a specialist group supporting the Danish authority on developing treatment guidelines, and other tools to control the use of antibiotics in the Danish pig production.

She is a diplomate of the European College of Porcine Health Management and was for several years part of the Board.

 

 

Jan Dahl

Jan Dahl is a DVM, graduated from the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen in 1984. Diploma in International Business Management and Economics from Copenhagen Business School in 2005. He has worked for 30 years as an epidemiologist for the Danish Agriculture and Food Council. He has been involved in research in animal diseases and zoonosis in pigs, broilers, cattle, mink, and sheep. His focus of research has been on the spread and control of animal diseases and zoonotic infections in the animal production, including the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance. He has been part of several industry and governmental committees in Denmark and the EU. Currently he is a member of the technical committee for the control of salmonella in pigs and pork, the Danish expert committee on the control of foot and mouth-disease and the Danish expert committee on the control of African and classical swine fever.

 

Dr. Diana Meemken

Prof. Dr. Diana Meemken studied veterinary medicine in Budapest, Hungary, and Leipzig, Germany.
She did her doctorate in 2006 at the Field Station for Epidemiology of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany on “Evaluation systems for food chain information being used in the risk-based ante- and post-mortem meat inspection of slaughter pigs”.

In the position of a research associate she graduated as specialist for porcine medicine in Germany and became a Diplomate of the European College of Porcine Health Management in 2010.

Since 2017, she is a full professor of Meat Hygiene at the Institute of Food Safety and Food Hygiene at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

The core elements of her research activities are investigating the ecology and the epidemiology of zoonotic pathogens in food producing animals and food products as well as designing intervention strategies along the food chain. In her research activities, she furthermore focuses on the continuous enhancement of the effectiveness of the risk-based meat inspection by developing and verifying evaluation systems for food safety, herd health and animal welfare.

Mindy Brashears, PhD

Mindy Brashears is the former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety where she served as the highest-ranking food safety official in the United States at the USDA from 2019-2021. She currently is the Associate Vice President of Research at Texas Tech University. She is a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor in Food Safety and Public Health and holds the Roth and Letch family Endowed Chair of Food Safety at Texas Tech University. She also serves as the Director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at TTU. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors as her work has resulted in the commercialization of various pathogen mitigation strategies with 27 patents/patents pending. She holds a B.S. in Food Technology from Texas Tech University (magna cum laude) and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Food Science from Oklahoma State University. She is well-published and cited with an H-Index of 41. She is married to Dr. Todd Brashears who is a professor of agricultural education at Texas Tech and has three daughters, Bailey, Reagan and Presley and one son-in-law, Eli Jimenez (married to Reagan). Her research focuses on mitigation strategies in pre-harvest production and post-harvest processing environments to improve food safety and public health. She also studies the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance in food and animal systems. Her interests are primarily in meat, poultry and vegetable products. She also has a passion for food security and leads international research teams to South and Central America and the Caribbean to improve food safety and security in those sectors and to set up sustainable agriculture systems in developing areas. She teaches courses in food microbiology and food safety and offers industry training in HACCP, food sanitation, GMPs and food security. Recently she was named outstanding Graduate of Distinction by Oklahoma State University College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. She has received multiple awards including the IAFP Laboratorian Award, The AMSA Research and Industry/Extension Award and was named as a Future Icon in the Meat Industry by the National Provisioner Magazine. She serves on multiple national boards including the American Meat Science Association and International Livestock Congress Board of Directors. She will be the Chair of the Reciprocal Meat Conference in 2022 which will be held in St. Paul, Minnesota