J. David Legan

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