2022 Convention - Day 1: Session 1.4

<< Go back to main Convention page

Jasmine Lacis-Lee

Allergen Bureau - President 
BVAQ - Food Safety Manager

Topic: Risk assessment - back to basics for the future’

About:

Jasmine Lacis-Lee is a specialist in food safety management within the Australian food industry. Jasmine has a Bachelor of Science, with more than 20 years’ experience as a food microbiologist and over 15 years’ working in the food & beverage industries. She holds professional memberships with the ASM (Australian Society of Microbiology), AIFST (Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology), and EHEDG (European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group).

She is the current President and Board Chair of the Allergen Bureau and Board Director since 2018. She is also proud to be the founding Co-chair for the Australian Regional division of the EHEDG.

Jasmine participated in the Allergen Bureau Risk Review Website working group and is the current Project Lead for the Allergen Bureau Agricultural Cross Contact working group. She is a member of the AOAC Gluten and Food Allergen Analysis working group and also participates in the AIFST Scientific & Technical Advisory Committee.

Jasmine joined BVAQ in 2015 and in her role regularly consults both Nationally and Internationally with large global food and beverage manufacturers, regulatory authorities, through to QSR and hospital food services, where she provides strategies for managing microbiological and allergen risks; provides support with equipment installation and validations; as well developing customised training covering microbiology, allergens and food safety risks. Jasmine is also responsible for delivering Allergen Bureau endorsed VITAL® training.

Presentation Overview:

Recent years have highlighted how unexpected external influences can quickly impact the safety and quality of products that are produced. However, during this same period there have been global food safety issues, where the root cause identified was not surprising at all. How a business conducts a risk assessment it key to ensuring businesses and consumers are protected.

This presentation will touch on the basics to consider, and yet how they are sometimes forgotten. And how asking several simple questions can help in evaluating a risk and it's impact to your business.

Contact Details: 

 LinkedIn 

 Twitter 

Tara Cassidy 

Charles River Laboratories - NGS Account Manager

Topic: Application of Next Generation Sequencing for Detection and Identification of Bacteriophages

About:

Tara is a NGS account manager within the Microbial Solutions division at Charles River Laboratories. She is a trained microbiologist with expertise in animal science and next-generation sequencing (NGS). With a background in microbiology and parasitology, Tara has experience with a wide range of technologies including DNA sequence-based assays, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, immunoassays, and NGS. She has been actively involved in the launch of Next Generation Sequencing from research and development studies to a commercial product offering. She works closely with clients to find scientific solutions for industry.

Presentation Overview:

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria, including bacteria important to industry, manufacturing and medical applications. Detection and identification of bacteriophages is mandated by regulators to ensure the quality control of cell lines used in production. Furthermore, with the increasing use of bacteriophages as therapeutic products for human health, rapid detection and identification is of the utmost importance. Current techniques for bacteriophage detection, including double agar overlay assay (DLA) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) can be labour intensive, time consuming and require optimisation for different bacteriophages and hosts. PCR techniques may be sensitive and rapid but due to the lack of universal primers, are limited to specific targets. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) has the potential to revolutionise how we manage bacteriophage identification. NGS is not limited by primers and allows for accurate identification of all sequences in a sample. Here, we present our internal pipeline for bacteriophage detection and identification and provide specific examples of the use of this pipeline in practice. We have worked to overcome many of the limitations of traditional techniques by providing an NGS solution for bacteriophage detection and identification, with detection possible even in cases where a published phage genome is not available.  

Contact Details: 

 LinkedIn 

Jasmine Lacis-Lee

Allergen Bureau - President 
BVAQ - Food Safety Manager

Topic: Assessing Agricultural Allergen Cross Contact - New industry resources available to assist in identifying and managing allergen risks

Presentation Overview:

The Allergen Bureau Sampling and Testing sub-group of Agricultural Cross Contact working group have recently finalised the development a new industry resource. This new resource will assist food businesses to identify and assess the allergen risk which may exist in certain types of raw materials and ingredients. “Assessing Agricultural Cross Contact” helps to provide guidance on sampling, the number of samples required based on a risk matrix questionnaire, along with how analytical results can be interpreted and used to inform allergen management and quantitative risk assessments, such as VITAL® 3.0.

Contact Details: 

 LinkedIn 

 Twitter 

Andrew Stone  

Rentokil Initial - Managing Director

Topic: coming soon. 

About: 

Andrew Stone is the Managing Director of the Pacific region at Rentokil Initial. Prior to this, Andrew was the Finance Director with the company and has worked at Rentokil Initial for over 9 years.

Andrew also has a strong cross functional background in FMCG having previously held senior sales and finance leadership roles with Unilever. A finance graduate of the University of Sydney and with a Masters of Management from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Andrew has a strong passion for how we can leverage technology and the IoT to drive seismic change in the pest and hygiene industry to bring about sustainable, proactive and intelligent strategies to enhance our approach to food safety to protect brands and more importantly, protect human health.

Presentation Overview:

Coming soon.