Mindy Brashears, director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University, can speak about issues involving beef safety and E. coli O157:H7.
Brashears is involved in a number of endeavors to eliminate harmful bacteria like salmonella and E. coli in cattle and poultry before they are slaughtered or to eliminate the pathogens altogether before meat reaches the kitchen table.
For example, she recently developed a mixture of lactic acid bacteria shown to reduce foodborne pathogens in processed beef and poultry by as much as 99.99 percent. As head of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence, Brashears has helped attract more than $6 million in funding for its innovations in food safety.