July 25, 2024 0 comment

Shaping Food Safety Policy with Jennifer McEntire, Ph.D., Founder of Food Safety Strategy (#94)

Last Updated on August 23, 2024

Table of Contents

About Jennifer McEntire

On today’s episode, we discuss what it is like to work in food policy, the skills that are important for food safety professionals, and technology’s role in the future of food safety.

Our guest today is Jennifer McEntire, Ph. D., founder of Food Safety Strategy and former Chief Food Safety and regulatory Officer at the International Fresh Produce Association. She is a food microbiologist by background and has worked in the Washington, D.C. area for over 20 years, bringing the scientific perspective to food safety leadership positions within the grocery manufacturers’ association. She held previous food safety leadership positions with the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Institute of Food Technologists, where she led the FDA FSMA traceability pilots.

Things mentioned in this episode:

This week’s episode is sponsored by:

- CareersNow! is Food and Beverage Ontario’s multi-year workforce development initiative that is connecting students and job seekers with employers in Ontario’s food and beverage processing industry for exciting career opportunities. Check out CareersNow.ca for more information on exciting jobs, career information, industry mentors and training opportunities for professional development.

Other things we mentioned in this episode:

Timestamps

(0:00) Introduction

(1:30) Jennifer introduces herself

(5:20) Jobs in food safety policy

(10:44) Science and government policy

(14:10) How to practice communicating science

(16:25) Understanding people’s points of view

(19:48) SPONSOR: CareersNow!

(20:13) Food produce food safety

(24:31) Food safety of sprouts

(28:15) Technology’s role on food safety for the future

(33:00) How to learn about data science

(37:22) Soft skills needed by food safety professionals

(44:34) Outro

Jennifer McEntire Quotes

Being trained as a scientist, you rely on facts and data. The world is presented as black and white, right or wrong, with clear distinctions between truth and fiction. But then you get to DC, and you start to learn about policy and how decisions and negotiations are made. You see that there are other perspectives. – Jennifer McEntire

There are multiple ways that people can start to fold these concepts into their own thinking and toolbox. You may not be an expert. If you’re not going to take solid coursework, you probably won’t become the world’s expert on this topic. But maybe by doing a little bit of reading, you realize you do want to be the world’s expert. You might shift gears, change your major, or what have you. It starts with that awareness and curiosity and just being open to new things and new ideas. – Jennifer McEntire

Can you get your message across? For me, I start by thinking, what is the message I’m trying to get across? What action do I want someone to take? Something I heard recently that resonated with me was to use inductive reasoning instead of deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is presenting all the facts and figures, and then concluding what should be done. But if you flip it and start with what you want someone to do, you lead with the punch line.” – Jennifer McEntire