Mark has a 20-year career in the food industry that spans from farm to fork. He grew up on a cow/calf and grain crop operation in Kansas and attended Kansas State University. Following graduation, he managed the meat chemistry and color laboratories on campus publishing both applied and basic research. From there he joined the product R&D team at Bob Evans Farms and transitioned into copacker and supply chain FSQA for the food products division. He then joined Cargill where he worked in plant process R&D for both pork harvest and finely textured beef. A switch back to FSQA was in order at Birchwood Foods where he was the Director FSQA and oversaw the food safety efforts from the corporate level for the company and its four processing facilities. Mark instituted robust environmental pathogen monitoring programs realizing that environmental pathogen control principles fit perfectly into foreign material control and were essentially synonymous. Today, Mark has completed his farm to fork journey as a supply chain FSQA Manager for Taco Bell where he takes his industry learnings and applies them to his position protecting the end customer experience. He believes in the structured use of data to predict and prevent issues involving environmental and foreign material control long before an impact is felt on plant operations, company profitability, or negative consumer experiences.