Featured Speaker

Bob is a classically trained meat scientist having earned degrees from Purdue, Kansas State and Iowa State Universities (BS, MS, PhD), respectively. His research interests have focused on the shelf-life and food safety aspects of both fresh and processed meat along with sensory and nutritional properties. He is an industry veteran dating back to 1980 where he began combining practical aspects of industry and academia. He has held leadership positions in R&D, Technical Service and Food Safety at the time when HACCP and Zero Pathogen Tolerance came into being. Further, he has honed a sense of best practices from observations globally and shares, appropriately, with customers to drive the production of safe food products, consistently and efficiently. He was a pioneer in alternative curing ingredients (clean label and led efforts for vendors to pre convert nitrate to nitrite for mathematical standardization and was transformative in the origination of vinegar as an alternative to lactate and diacetate for inhibition of Listeria m. to meet compliance and clean label mandates. He also has an extensive background in smoke and grill flavor technology and applications. He serves WTI, inc. In a Technical Business Development capacity to drive subject matter expertise for customers to elevate the protection of people and brands.