Edited February 2025

This public meeting/webinar, held February 24, 2015, was recorded live and real-time closed captioning was provided. Viewers of the recorded webcast will notice some errors in the closed captioning of the presentations, which is to be expected during a live event. The written transcript is the official record of the public meeting. Errors have been corrected.

Speaker Biographies

Christopher Alvares, MS, BA (USDA Food Safety and Inspection Services (FSIS))
Mr. Christopher Alvares is the Director of the Data Analysis and Integration Staff (DAIS) in the Office of Data Integration and Food Protection (ODIFP) at the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). Mr. Alvares leads a staff of analysts who provide data analysis and reporting support to FSIS. Prior to joining FSIS in 2008, Mr. Alvares worked for over 10 years in the generation and analysis of genetic data for a biotech company. Mr. Alvares holds a BA in biology and a Masters degree in biotechnology from the Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Alvares is the current Chair of the IFSAC Steering Committee.

Michael Bazaco, PhD, MS (U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA))
Dr. Michael Bazaco is currently an epidemiologist working in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Office of Analytics and Outreach (CFSAN‐OAO). Michael spent time as a researcher and teaching fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health before coming to the FDA. He received a Bachelor of Science in 2001 and a Master of Science in Food Science and Technology in 2004 from Virginia Tech and his Doctorate in Epidemiology in 2012 from the University of Pittsburgh.

Cary Chen Parker, MPH (FDA)
Ms. Cary Chen Parker is currently an epidemiologist working in FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), Office of Analytics and Outreach (OAO). Prior to coming to FDA, Cary completed a fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where she worked on surveillance of foodborne disease outbreaks. At FDA, she has previously worked on consumer studies research at CFSAN and also on post‐marketing pharmacoepidemiological reviews of adverse events related to new drug products at FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). She received a Bachelor of Science from Duke University and a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from The George Washington University – Milken Institute School of Public Health.

Dana Cole, DVM, PhD (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC))
Dr. Dana Cole is a large animal veterinarian and doctoral epidemiologist responsible for the direction of the Analytics Team within the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dana leads efforts to attribute enteric illnesses to their sources. Dana worked in the Georgia Division of Public Health and the University of Georgia, College of Veterinary Medicine before coming to CDC.

David Goldman, MD, MPH (FSIS)
Dr. David Goldman is currently the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Public Health Science (OPHS) at FSIS, in that position since 2004. He is a family medicine and preventive medicine/public health physician, and a Captain in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, assigned to FSIS since February 2002. He also is a tri‐lead for USDA’s One Health Joint Working Group, as well as Acting Chief Medical Officer of USDA.

He received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in 1979, a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Virginia in 1988, and his Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Washington in 1996.

He spent 10 years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, in both family practice and preventive medicine. He then spent 3 ½ years at the Virginia Department of Health, first as a District Health Director, then briefly as the Deputy State Epidemiologist, before joining the Public Health Service and FSIS.

Patricia M. Griffin, MD (CDC)
Dr. Patricia Griffin received an MD degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, trained in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, in gastroenterology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in mucosal immunology at the University of Pennsylvania,
and in epidemiology at CDC.

She is Chief of the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch at the CDC. The branch tracks changes in incidence and antibiotic resistance of gut infections and assesses the food and other sources of these infections.

Dr. Griffin has authored or co‐authored over 200 journal articles, book chapters, and other publications. She holds an adjunct appointment in the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health.

Kristin G. Holt, DVM, MPH (FSIS)
Dr. Kristin Holt serves as the FSIS liaison to the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. While serving in this position, she facilitates communication between FSIS and CDC and provides scientific and technical input on public health and food safety issues related to FSIS‐regulated products. Kristin sits on the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR) and the FoodNet and EHS‐Net Steering Committees. Before reporting to her current position in 2001, Kristin served in the FSIS Field Operations program area in Georgia in various roles, from Inspector‐in‐Charge at a poultry slaughter plant to Deputy District Manager. She holds a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Louisiana State University and a MPH degree with a focus in epidemiology from Emory University.

Sherri McGarry, MS (FDA)
Ms. Sherri McGarry is a Senior Advisor in FDA’s Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine in the Office of the Commissioner. She’s dedicated to policy development and implementation of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, including serving as the Agency Lead for Product Tracing, and is involved in risk informed prioritization and strategic planning across FDA’s Foods and Veterinary Medicine program. Previously, Ms. McGarry served as Senior Advisor to the Director of the Coordination Outbreak Response and Evaluation Network in FDA. In this role, Ms. McGarry provided strategic direction, leadership, and policy guidance on preparedness, surveillance, response, and post‐response activities in national foodborne outbreaks and other major food contamination events. She has 20 years of experience working in the foods arena at FDA with more than half of those actively involved in emergency preparedness and response, and preventive produce safety activities.

Joanna Zablotsky Kufel, PhD, MPH (FSIS)
Dr. Joanna Zablotsky Kufel received her Masters in Public Health (MPH) in Environmental Public Health and Health Policy and Management from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) in 2003 and her PhD from the JHSPH Department of Health Policy and Management in 2009. She also earned a Risk Sciences and Public Policy Certificate. Joanna started her career at FSIS as a Food Safety Fellow where she helped develop performance measures for FSIS' strategic planning activities and evaluate the effectiveness of Agency policy. After her fellowship ended, Joanna continued her strategic planning and policy evaluation work for the Agency, in addition to serving as the FSIS Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) technical lead; working with our federal food safety partners to advance foodborne illness attribution efforts.

Panelist Biographies

Sandra Eskin, Esq. 
Sandra Eskin is the Director of Food Safety at The Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, D.C. Before joining Pew, she spent nearly 20 years as a public-policy consultant to numerous consumer and public-interest organizations, providing strategic and policy advice on a broad range of consumer-protection issues, in particular, food and drug safety, labeling, and advertising. She has served as a member of numerous federal advisory committees, including the USDA National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection and CDC’s FSMA Working Group. Before joining Pew, Ms. Eskin was the Deputy Director of the Produce Safety Project (PSP), a Pew-funded initiative at Georgetown University. While at PSP, Ms. Eskin was a senior scholar with the O’Neil Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. She has written numerous reports and articles on food-safety topics. Ms. Eskin received her JD from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and her B.A. from Brown University.

Dr. Arie Hendrik Havelaar
Dr. Arie Hendrik Havelaar is as a professor in the Animal Sciences Department and the Emerging Pathogens Institute of the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA. Before moving to the United States in 2014, Arie Havelaar worked at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands and at the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands to which he still is affiliated.

His research focuses on quantitative approaches to foodborne diseases and prevention. Recent activities on the epidemiology of foodborne diseases include estimating the true incidence of foodborne illness, attribution of human disease to food and other pathways, estimating the disease burden using Disability Adjusted Life Years as a summary metric of public health and estimating cost-of-illness.

Quantitative microbial risk assessment studies include method development with a special interest in dose-response modeling, the impact of acquired immunity and uncertainty analysis. Farm-to-fork modeling of pathogens in animal food chains is a basis for evaluating the public health impact of interventions, cost-benefit and risk-benefit analysis, and decision support modeling.

Arie Havelaar will participate in the UF Institute for Global Food Systems with a special interest in emerging zoonotic risks in relation to (global) food chains and their interaction with drivers of change (globalization, demography, technology, consumer demands, regulations etc.).

Dr. Craig Hedberg
Craig Hedberg is a professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, serves as the Major Chair for the Public Health Practice Major, and is the academic lead for Minnesota’s Integrated Food Safety Center of Excellence; one of five Centers of Excellence established by CDC in response to the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Dr. Hedberg conducted outbreak investigations and supervised the foodborne disease surveillance program at the Minnesota Department of Health for 15 years before joining the faculty at the School of Public Health, where he teaches and conducts research on foodborne disease surveillance. Dr. Hedberg has developed an international reputation for his standing as an expert in the public health surveillance and control of foodborne diseases.

Scott Hood, Ph.D.
Scott is the Director of Global Food Safety at General Mills with responsibility for microbiology, toxicology, thermal processing, sanitation, HACCP and auditing. Over the past 16 years, he has held various roles in quality and food safety at General Mills. Previous experience includes roles in both R&D and Quality at Michael Foods and Land O’Lakes. Scott is active in a number of industry initiatives related to food safety, including; the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety. Scott has a BS in Food Science from the University of Wisconsin and an MS & PhD in Food Science from the University of Minnesota.

Christopher A. Waldrop
Christopher A. Waldrop is the Director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, an association of nearly 280 nonprofit consumer organizations that seeks to advance the consumer interest through research, advocacy and education. Mr. Waldrop oversees the research, analysis, advocacy and media outreach for all food policy activities at the Institute. He regularly monitors food safety activities at USDA, FDA and in Congress where he advocates for strong food safety protections for consumers. He also coordinates the Safe Food Coalition, a group of consumer, trade union, and foodborne illness victim organizations dedicated to reducing foodborne illness by improving government food inspection programs.

Mr. Waldrop is a member of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue, a forum of US and EU consumer organizations which develops and agrees on joint consumer policy recommendations to promote the consumer interest in EU and US policy making. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Partnership for Food Safety Education, a non-profit organization dedicated to informing consumers about safe food handling practices. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, a unique coalition of patient groups, consumer advocates, biomedical research advocates, health professionals and industry that works to increase appropriations for the Food and Drug Administration.

Mr. Waldrop serves on the USDA’s National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection, which advises the Secretary of Agriculture on matters affecting federal and state inspection program activities. From 2010 to 2013, he served on the FDA’s Food Advisory Committee, which advises the Commissioner on emerging food safety, food science, nutrition and other policy-related health issues. In 2009 and 2011, Mr. Waldrop served on two National Academy of Sciences panels charged with reviewing USDA food inspection programs.

Mr. Waldrop has an advertising degree from Texas Tech University and a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, West Africa as a community health educator.

Dr. Shelley Zansky
Dr. Shelley Zansky received her doctoral degree in Biological Anthropology from the Pennsylvania State University. After working for a few years at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, TX, she relocated to Albany NY and became a Research Scientist with the New York State Department of Health in 1990. Between 1992-1998, she oversaw the surveillance unit within the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control, during the period when the incidence, particularly multiple drug resistance, was increasing in NY and throughout the U.S. Working with Dr. Dale Morse, the Principal Investigator for the NYSDOH Emerging Infections Program grant, Dr. Zansky became the Director for the Program in 1998 and is responsible for coordinating all surveillance and research activities, most notably FoodNet. She also holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University at Albany School of Public Health.