On-farm safety a top priority for Saskatchewan researcher

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

Dr. Sarah Parker's primary goal is identifying practical on-farm food safety practices for Saskatchewan producers. Raised and educated in Prince Albert and Saskatoon, she has always been happy to call the province her home.

"I chose research and to start my career in Saskatchewan because I like it here. I like the fact that the countryside is wide, and enjoy both the summer and the winter," she said.

"Saskatchewan is a province that has a nice casual feel to it, yet people are generally practical and like to get things done."

Parker received her post-secondary education at the University of Saskatchewan. There, she completed her undergraduate degree in biology with honours, then went on to complete her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM), as well as her Master's of Veterinary Science in Epidemiology.

Parker has always been interested in both biology and numbers. She went through her undergraduate degree looking at plants and animals, then moved to veterinary medicine because it was a problem-solving field that also involved biology. She went back to university after her DVM to study epidemiology, since her interests included looking at why and how events happen in populations.

She began her career at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) Centre for Animal Parasitology, a diagnostic test and research laboratory, and expanded from animal health diagnostic issues into food safety diagnostic issues. Then her career took off in a different direction.

Two years ago, Parker was hired as the Saskatchewan Research Chair in On-Farm and Food Safety under the Strategic Research Program (SRP), an initiative funded and administered by Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food.

Parker now works at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine to increase the understanding of pathogen biology and control points, as well as to provide an increased understanding of potential controls for biological and chemical hazards, both on-farm and post-slaughter.

Parker says that a key part of her research is focused on developing control systems that will achieve food safety standards.

"In food safety, for example, there are lots of [intervention points at which] the current food safety practices [could be enhanced]", she stated. "Some of those [enhancements] might include testing and helping the public deal with food properly in order to avoid cross-contamination problems, or managing control systems in the slaughter or processing plants to improve the product."

Although there are standards that all products made available to the public must meet, Parker notes that consumers are continually seeking increased assurance of food safety. "Every-day producers are under pressure to enhance their operations and to communicate their efforts. Making sure food is produced safely is always a top priority," she observed.

"Since producers are being asked this, I think it's important that I research where there is an actual need for updated practices, and try to find ways in which implementation would be successful. Hopefully, this research will help them find the most practical approaches to make improvements."

As a researcher in on-farm and food safety, Parker says that producers are never far removed from her work. "Producers should expect that researchers are available both to help interpret the work that is being done, and also to look at what producers might want done, who might do it and what research might need to be done in order to put the initiative into place."

For more information, contact:

Dr. Sarah Parker, SAF Research Chair on Farm Food Safety
Large Animal Clinical Sciences, University of Saskatchewan
Phone: (306) 966-1994
E-mail: sarah.parker@usask.ca