The first major food safety address of the New Year is scheduled to take place Wednesday, Jan. 4, when microbiologist Linda Harris recaps food poisoning outbreaks of 2011 and explores the most sweeping changes made to food safety legislation in three decades.
Harris is associate director of the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security and the Western Center for Food Safety at University of Califoria-Davis. With an aim to increase the safety and confidence of the food supply, she leads a team of researchers who focus on better understanding foodborne pathogen risks and mitigation strategies within the fresh produce and nut industries.
The major foodborne illness outbreaks of 2011 included E. coli O157:H7 in shelled hazelnuts and Salmonella Enteritidis in pine nuts. Other multi-state outbreaks investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) involved ground turkey, chicken Liver, cantaloupe, lettuce and sprouts.
The speech by Harris is the 2012 kickoff to the Distinctive Voices program, a series of lectures created in 2006 as a campaign by the National Academy of Sciences Communication Initiative to increase science literacy in the general public. Events are held in Irvine, California and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Next week’s program is scheduled for 7 p.m. Pacific Time at the Beckman Center in Irvine on January 4.
