Meat Industry Rock Star

Alumna Liang Bennett (BCHM ’15, M.S. FST ’16) is putting her Illinois Institute of Technology food safety training to good use, overseeing all regulatory compliance for Chicago Meat Authority, a meat processing company working with hundreds of meat buyers and producers. As technical assurance manager, Bennett supervises quality assurance and food safety, serves as a liaison to the federal government, and oversees research and development.

“I love what I do,” Bennett says. “The meat industry is incredibly fast-paced, and there are so many learning opportunities here. I enjoy seeing a project through from start to finish and being able to walk across all of the processing steps, from examining raw material integrity, determining quality and food safety parameters, and scaling up pilot plant trials to full blown plant runs, to finished product packaging and testing.”

Bennett was recognized in 2019 by the North American Meat Institute and International Production and Processing Expo as one of 30 people under age 30 demonstrating exceptional leadership in the meat industry. She was also named one of 10 Leaders of Tomorrow by the Food Marketing Institute and the North American Meat Institute during their Annual Meat Conference in 2020.