By Jim Massey
Freelance writer
When Jessica Brown joined a meat judging team during her junior year of college, she did so because she was told it would look good on her resume. Little did she know that it would lead to a career in the meat industry.
Brown, a native of Clearwater, Fla., didn’t come from an agricultural background, and what she knew about meat “was what I saw at the grocery store.” She attended the University of Florida for her undergraduate studies with a goal of becoming a veterinarian, but when she “found” the meat industry, that goal changed.
She focused on meat science and food safety during her master’s degree work in Florida, but decided she wasn’t quite ready to move into the workforce upon completion of those studies.
“I thought I still had some more to learn,” Brown says. “Madison had a really good reputation in meat science and the (Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery Building) was only a year old at that point. I had contacted faculty up here and found Dr. (Steven) Ricke’s program. I thought it would be a good opportunity to expand my knowledge.”
Brown began a Ph.D. program in the Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences under Ricke’s tutelage to identify potential sources of contamination and microbial shifts that occur during the manufacture of commercial ready-to-eat meat products. The project doesn’t look for pathogens within the meat product, but rather organisms that can cause the product to spoil more rapidly than it would otherwise.
Brown’s work on this study resulted in her receiving the “J. Mac Goepfert Developing Scientist Award” from the International Association for Food Protection. She says she was “humbled and honored” to receive the award from the international organization.
“They chose 15 abstracts to give oral presentations and be judged at the competition, so to be recognized out of those top 15 from people from across the globe, it was a huge honor,” she says. “It was very, very cool. I’ve been going to the IAFP conference for a few years now and I’ve seen a lot of people honored, so to be considered in that category was really exciting.”
As part of her research project, Brown collected triplicate meat samples at seven stages in the manufacturing process. She saw the biggest changes in the microbial population at the slicer stage, and concluded that slicers can sometimes be a cross-contamination point.
“Slicers are notoriously difficult to clean,” she says. “Biofilms can form on them very easily. There is some pretty robust sanitation that has to happen between products and at the end of a shift so you don’t have carryover from different days.”
Brown is still working on the research project and plans to have it completed in time to receive her Ph.D. in animal sciences this summer.
She says it was a “little bit of a shock” to move to Wisconsin from Florida for her doctorate training, but she’s learned that with the right clothes, a person can adapt to virtually any weather situation.
“The negative degrees I don’t love, but nobody does,” she says. “I’ve had some faculty tell me that (the Wisconsin weather) is taking it easy on me since I moved up here (in 2021).”
Brown says working in the new MASBD building has been special, especially since the facilities where she studied previously at the University of Florida were older and the program was smaller.
“There are not really a lot of meat industry stakeholders within the state of Florida, because the meat industry there isn’t very large,” she says. “Up here it’s really cool to go into the building and run into some relatively big names and big meat processors. A big benefit of coming here is being able to interact more with the meat industry.”
Brown says she has enjoyed working with Ricke, who she says has a “wealth of experience” in the meat industry.
“He has varied interests as far as his research goes,” she says. “He doesn’t stick to the meat science I was used to. It’s been good to be able to diversify my knowledge base a little bit more.”
Ricke says Brown winning the international award is “a real coup for the program.”
“It makes us all look good,” he says.
He describes Brown as a “good independent researcher” who has been able to move the department’s meat program forward.
“She’s going to make some real high-end research that’s going to have a really big impact on food safety,” Ricke says of Brown. “One of the reasons she won the award is because her research is really cutting edge. She represents the program very well.”
Brown says she believes her research will be important for the meat industry moving forward.
“It has allowed us to gain a little more knowledge but also utilize that information in a beneficial way to improve food safety and quality,” she says.
Brown doesn’t know what she’ll do after receiving her Ph.D., but hopes to find a job in the meat or food industry. She says ideally she would find a position in a food safety center where she can work to improve the safety of food.