Drew McDonald, the Senior Vice President of Quality & Food Safety at Taylor Fresh Foods, shared his insights on April 4 in a virtual webinar with the inaugural class of the Western Growers Food Safety Cohort.
The webinar, entitled “A Year of Food Safety Acceleration for Rapid Diagnostics and Prevention Technologies,” focused on McDonald’s “three C’s” that are vital to the industry: “keep it cold, keep it clean – and keep it cold.”
As part of the inaugural AgTechX Food Safety event hosted by the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology, the Center for Produce Safety and the Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture in February, WG introduced the AgTechX Food Safety Cohort. It is a global group of innovators specializing in prevention technologies and rapid diagnostics who will receive exclusive resources to help them launch and scale their projects,
The initial members of the cohort are:
- Javier Atencia, CEO & Founder, Pathotrak
- Alex Athey, CEO, En Solución Inc.
- Rafael Davila, Founder, Priority Sampling
- Dr. Eyal Gerecht, President & CEO, TeraBAT, Inc.
- Mike Hogan PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, PathogenDx
- Tom Jacobs, VP Sales and Marketing, SnapDNA
- Marc Petitpas, Senior Director, North America Sales, ScanTech Sciences, Inc.
- Carl “Skip” Rapp, CEO TeraBAT, Inc.
- Jonathan Sierra, CEO, Yarok Microbio Ltd.
- Chip Starns, Co-Founder, EVP, ScanTech Sciences, Inc.
The next meeting of the cohort will take place at the AgTechX Food Safety event in Modesto, Calif. on July 6-7, 2022. Registration details and an agenda will be available soon.
