Food Safety for the 21st Century

Food Safety for the 21st Century

Lawrence Goodridge, McGill University

Despite great progress in protecting the food supply, food poisoning still accounts for more than four million infections, almost 12,000 hospitalizations and 238 deaths in Canada every year. Each outbreak and recall also carries a significant economic and reputational cost to the food industry. With the increasing complexity of food production and the growth of global distribution chains, the industry now counts on science to guarantee that the food that arrives on your table is safe to eat. Dr. Goodridge will introduce us to a new early-warning concept in food safety -- “precision food safety”. The equivalent of precision medicine in human health, it integrates advanced data from food and environmental samples with the genomics and metadata on different strains of pathogens to enable rapid identification of the contaminant and its associated risks. He will walk us through the development of these innovative genomic tools and explain how they support evidence-decision making to head off foodborne outbreaks.

Dr. Goodridge sits on the editorial boards of two international scientific journals and serves as advisor to, among others, Canadian and U.S. government agencies, the US National Academies and the International Association for Food Protection. His research has been presented at conferences around the world and in numerous peer reviewed articles and book chapters. Following his Ph.D. studies (University of Guelph) and faculty positions at the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University, he returned to Canada to hold the Ian and Jayne Munro Chair in Food Safety at McGill, where he also directs the food safety and quality program.

The presentation will be in English.