J. David Legan, PhD
Director of Science
David earned his Ph.D. in Food Technology from the University of Reading in the UK by modeling the ecology of mixed microbial populations, and then moved to Campden BRI in a variety of microbiological food safety research and client service roles. During that time, he was project lead for the Bacillus component of the UK’s pathogen modeling program. He moved again to Nabisco Research in New Jersey where he ran the corporate microbiology lab and developed a program of preservation technology development and microbial modeling. After the Kraft Foods acquisition, he moved to Chicago to work on Food Safety and Preservation research, and through modeling and validation studies:
- Optimized Oscar Mayer’s use of lactate and diacetate and their naturally cultured alternatives as Listeria-control agents in Ready to Eat meats
- Specified process conditions central to Oscar Mayer’s commercial launch of High Pressure Pasteurization of naturally cured RTE meats
David had responsibility for the Kraft cultures R&D group, developed a partnership to explore microwave sterilization leading to several patents, and led a program that developed an internal proprietary natural antimicrobial commercialized in several Kraft products. Technologies from his group supported approximately $4 billion in annual sales.
After years as a microbiology "client", he is now back in the "provider" role as Director of Science at Eurofins Microbiology Laboratories, Inc., by way of the Covance Food Solutions group based in Madison, WI, which he joined in 2016. In this role, he ensures appropriate method validation, explores new testing technologies, and fields multiple complicated food microbiology questions.
Products that his team has evaluated or developed and launched include:
- The 3M MDS platform in the Madison microbiology laboratory
- Flow cytometry for enumeration of probiotics
- Strain-level confirmation of probiotic identification using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
- Next-generation sequencing using the Oxford Nanopore Technologies GridION sequencing platform for microbial identification and microbiome analysis
Below are resources from David:
As popularity of dietary supplements continues to grow, recent challenges in supply chain have shown an emergent growth in adulteration. Find out more on what the problem with adulteration is, and how is it being addressed.
Botanical reference materials play a critical role in herbal product testing. Learn about the importance of botanical reference materials, and how choosing a lab with a large reference material library impacts analytical outputs.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a favorable environment for increased economically motivated adulteration of ingredients and finished products. Adulterated ingredients entering your product can result in serious risk for your company. How can you reduce your company's risk?
Turmeric has faced authenticity issues as instances of economic-adulterations to reduce the cost. We used carbon-14 and HPLC analyses as complementary methods to verify “all-natural” label claims of commercial dietary supplements containing turmeric ingredients.
This presentation discusses further on adulteration risks in botanicals, reviews various quality control analytical strategies and research advances in analytical sciences for dietary supplements and ingredients.
Food fraud, also known as economically motivated adulteration, is widespread worldwide. Food fraud involves deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging, labeling, product information or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain. Food fraud can adversely impact consumer health, product quality, and brand reputation.
Learn more about the similarities and differences between the terms: fraud, defense, authenticity, and adulteration when it comes to foods, ingredients, and supplements.
We are proud to share the publication of a new scientific article from our team overseas. This article details the optimization of the NMR method, and the validation of the enhancements made. This unique analysis can differentiate agave inulin/syrup/alcohol from cane or corn adulterants.
As Minneola, a hybrid between grapefruit and mandarin, has become more popular it may be susceptible to fraud and/or adulteration. This poster shows the phenolic pattern of this fruit, in relation to other orange, grapefruit and mandarin fruits that may be used to identify its juice or juice concentrate.
Eurofins presents at AOAC 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting & Exposition. Adulteration to fruit juices has been a long-standing problem in food processing. While analytical tests exist to detect cheaper juices in more expensive ones, an ongoing problem arises when lime juice is blended with lemon juice. Due to their chemical similarities, this requires new in-depth methods.
