FDSN Spring 2025 Seminar Series: Lacey Guillen

The Department of Food Science and Nutrition presents its spring 2025 seminar series featuring Lacey Guillen, a food scientist at Tyson’s research and development department, who will give a presentation on “Navigating Food Safety in the Age of Convenience.” This seminar will take place on Thursday, February 20, from 12:45–1:45 p.m. over Zoom.

Abstract

In today’s fast-paced world, ready-to-eat food options are becoming more and more prevalent. We now have a variety of fully cooked food options in the form of single components, full meals kits, and everything in between. While these can be a super tasty, quick meal or snack, they can also lead to food safety hazards if not properly formulated or processed. Listeria monocytogenes is a ubiquitous, pathogenic bacteria that can survive in many different environments and even grow at refrigerated temperatures. Ready-to-eat (RTE) food items can become contaminated with L. monocytogenes and pose a food safety risk. Luckily, there are a variety of antimicrobial and processing strategies to mitigate this risk. The challenge lies in creating a robust food safety system to proactively monitor for this pathogen as well as validate the food safety shelf life of these types of foods. This presentation will walk through RTE food safety approaches with some examples of strategies to formulate these food items for safety.

Biography

Lacey Guillen is food scientist in Tyson’s research and development (R&D) department. She is part of a team referred to as Central Research with a focus on food safety and shelf life for the diverse portfolio of Tyson products. These products range anywhere from tortilla chips, fresh poultry, RTE meal kits, lunch meat, value-added beef/pork, and many other product types. The Central Research team is a shared service within R&D to help product developers formulate their products to meet the desired shelf life and to meet food safety requirements. The team conducts shelf life studies, evaluates antimicrobial efficacy, conducts research on novel ingredients/processes, provides data to support products, and many other functions. The team also works cross-functionally with Food Safety and Quality Assurance (FSQA), regulatory, plant operations, live poultry production, and many more groups to help produce safe, quality products for all of our customers.

Guillen holds a B.S. degree in food science from Texas Tech University, as well as a master’s and Ph.D. in food science from Oklahoma State University. Throughout her education, there was a focus on pre- and post-harvest food safety and food microbiology. Prior to joining Tyson Foods, Guillen was employed at the Institute for Food Safety and Health for three years as a scientist/food microbiologist. In this role she worked on the Proficiency Testing team on a joint grant with the FDA and USDA to support the Food Emergency Response Network. Following this, she returned to Texas Tech University as a post-doctoral research associate for research on the carriage and mitigation of Salmonella spp. in bovine lymph nodes. In this role she also was able to teach courses on food microbiology and quality assurance.

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