April 1, 2020
Food System Spotlight: Managing Public Health Risk in the Food System
A conversation with Dr. Ruth Petran, Ecolab’s Senior Corporate Scientist of Food Safety and Public Health
As a Senior Corporate Scientist of Food Safety and Public Health at Ecolab, Dr. Ruth Petran is well-versed in working across teams and with a variety of industry stakeholders to ensure the customers that Ecolab serves are enabled to successfully make clean and safe food in healthy environments.
Dr. Petran shares her knowledge with future food system leaders as an Industry Advisor in the University of Minnesota’s Integrated Food Systems Leadership (IFSL) Program. We sat down with Dr. Petran to hear her insights on how leaders can mitigate risk and break boundaries within the food system by being curious, proactive and collaborative.
How does your role and responsibilities overseeing food safety and public health advance Ecolab’s main goals, and how does the focus of your role relate broadly to food safety and public health policies within our global food system?
In the world of food safety, there are a lot of hazards. I help to identify and assess the risks, focusing on the aspects that will cause the biggest issues and design the right ways to manage those risks.
There are many complexities, so it requires working with various teams and stakeholders, internally and externally. Like others in my field, I’m continuously staying up to date on policy and regulatory changes and best practices, on technical trends and advancements, and looking around corners for unseen challenges. As a lead technical scientist at Ecolab, my role in mitigating risk means I ask and explore questions that may need more scrutiny and research.
Ecolab’s customers rely on us as experts to work alongside them on proactive and preventive strategies and help them understand regulatory changes. This requires translation of technical language into communication that’s practical for and useable by broader audiences.
With deep knowledge and experience in food safety improvements, I help position Ecolab as an industry leader and business partner. This allows us to continually provide our customers with innovative products and services that drive operational efficiencies and production of safe foods.
How do public health outbreaks such as the Coronavirus impact the food system?
While the novel coronavirus that has emerged is not believed to pose food safety risks, in the traditional sense, it is a serious illness that has currently affected over a million people across the world and needs our attention! We’re seeing the coronavirus disrupt global supply chains and potentially impacting the availability of a consistent labor force. It’s an example we’re witnessing firsthand of the sweeping impacts that an infectious agent can have far beyond the serious health consequences. And this emphasizes the need to remain poised to stay aware of scientific risks and consider their broad consequences. It’s only by collaborating across multiple disciplines that these impacts can be managed and ultimately overcome.
When it comes to managing public health risks, who are the stakeholders, and how do you see these stakeholders evolving in five years?
There are many players involved in our global food system and we all have important roles in managing food safety.
When you step back and think about the food production continuum, good agricultural practices back to the farm level are a necessary first step. Over time, advancements in growth and harvesting practices have improved food safety by helping to mitigate risks.
From the farm, transporters of food play an important role to ensure that accurate temperatures and clean environments are in place.
Moving along to processing, good manufacturing practices including sanitation, equipment design, and maintenance are important factors supporting food safety efforts. The stakeholders within this area are critical. At this stage in the food supply chain continuum, food companies rely on previous supply chain stakeholders to have implemented their food safety practices properly. Food companies are also responsible for designing safety into their products and verifying that production partners meet high standards to create safe products.
Distributors, food service organizations, and retailers are also important stakeholders to provide consumers with the best possible food safe products. They need to ensure the implementation of sound practices and behaviors by their food handling employees.
Leadership within each of the stakeholder groups is essential to make sure employees are knowledgeable, trained, and accountable for adhering to rules and regulations to deliver safe products.
Finally, consumers play a role, too. They must be aware of and practice proper food handling and storage. I see consumers as a source of innovation because what they’re asking for drives demand and urges food companies to continuously improve.
The role of data scientists is a new and critical stakeholder group. We rely on their expertise to effectively dissect the data that’s collected and extract useful insights so the industry can more efficiently identify and mitigate risks. New stakeholders will emerge as machine learning and artificial intelligence provides industry advancements and technologies. When these new groups collaborate with subject matter experts, we’ll likely see even more meaningful impacts from the data.
What do you see as the biggest public health challenges within the food system?
One of the biggest challenges I see are underlying challenges related to labor – from proper training, fair pay, retention, labor shortages, to name a few. Across the industry, professionals’ roles are being stretched to take on many responsibilities and this extends to food safety. We need to ensure that employees are aware of their key roles in food safety and are properly qualified and trained for the many facets of food safety they impact.
Global sourcing is another risk. With food production, transportation, manufacturing, and sales touching all corners of the globe in order to feed billions of people, there may be greater risks with so many players must be involved.
How do you suggest these challenges be addressed?
I think senior leaders within each of their respective areas need to assess and have a deeper knowledge of the challenges facing safe food production. Once awareness is established, leaders will better understand risks in sourcing and transporting food from certain geographies, for example. With this in hand, they can ensure that the right resources are available to manage the risks effectively. Without deep assessment and a willingness to confront these growing and inevitable risks, solutions may not be found.
What advice do you have for industry professionals within food safety and public health for them to continue to grow their leadership skills to rise to the challenges that need to be addressed?
Solutions will require food system leaders to be critical thinkers and open to exploring the science, consumer demand, and practical production and service of safe food.
A necessary leadership skill that’s sometimes overlooked is understanding the many sides to an issue. This means being aware of varying perspectives, which results in more successful risk management and communication.
To seek advice and solutions with different perspectives, leaders will have to proactively collaborate across teams. For example, a technical scientist may have a differing opinion than a plant operations manager, but by working together and having awareness for each other’s perspectives, they can often meet in the middle to problem-solve.
This type of leadership development often doesn’t take place in the classroom, which is why I’m excited about the IFSL program because it’s far from a standard curriculum and it addresses real-life challenges leaders will face.
As an IFSL program advisor, can you share why you’re involved with this program?
I’m at a point in my career where I’m thinking about the challenges and expanded roles of future food system leaders, so I want to use my learnings to help others understand these complexities and be successful.
It’s fulfilling to know that I’ve helped broaden students’ knowledge and opened up new perspectives for them. By working together, and breaking boundaries across the system, we’ll be able to make a meaningful impact.
As Ecolab’s Senior Corporate Scientist of Food Safety and Public Health, Dr. Ruth Petran plays a leading role in the company to advise and consult with customers on food safety and public health issues. She has held food safety and quality management positions at Pillsbury and General Mills, served on the National Advisory Committee for the Microbiological Criteria for Foods, and is an Executive Board member of the International Association for Food Protection.
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For more information about the University of Minnesota’s IFSL Program, visit https://ifsl.umn.edu. IFSL Program applications are accepted on a rolling basis for the next cohort which begins in September 2020. Download a program brochure or schedule a consultation call for more information.