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Potential food attacks the focus of NCFPD Alum's software tools

 (Nov. 1, 2006)

    September 11th, 2001, served as a national security wake-up call in many areas, including food and agricultural production. For Jeff Sholl, a student alumnus of the DHS National Center for Food Protection and Defense, 9/11 made him consider terrorism directed at our food supply. At the time, Jeff (In the center of the photo at left, with Ted Labuza, advisor, and NCFPD Director Frank Busta) owned a fresh vegetable distribution company.

    "I became interested in the consequences of an intentional contamination of one of our product lines and what interventions were available to minimize the impact of this contamination," says Jeff.

    Based on interest from the FDA and DHS, Jeff envisaged and led a team that developed two software systems, the Consequence Management System (CMS) and the Containment and Remediation System (CRS). The CMS is a PC-based simulation of the time-dependent, geospatial movement from farm through retail / foodservice outlets to the consumer’s home of selected food products possibly contaminated with conventional foodborne contaminants (e.g., pathogens, allergens, chemicals, etc.) or bioterrorism agents.

    After product consumption by the general population and/or at-risk subpopulations, the model estimates the rate at which contaminant-specific illness occurs, the likelihood and timing of medical care, and the timing of public health response to the incident.

    The CMS quantifies the consequences of intentional and unintentional food contamination events, such as the timing and extent of morbidity and/or mortality; estimated costs to individual consumers, the food industry, the U.S. economy, and the public health system; and the impact of various interventions (e.g., announcements, containment or recall, etc.) on the evolution and consequences of events.

    The CRS system aids event response, including how to remediate contaminated sites linked to a food product event based upon expert-generated procedures.

    Jeff earned his PhD in Food Science from the University of Minnesota in 2004 and is the Chief Executive Officer of BT Safety LLC.