As a passionate yet practical food safety scientist, Dr. Ruth Petran is also the Principal and Founder of Ruth Petran Consulting, LLC in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota. Prior to starting her business, Ruth held technical food safety and public health leadership roles at Ecolab, Pillsbury, and General Mills. She is skilled at tactical application of technical food safety risk management strategies spanning the global supply chain and has focused on managing safety and quality concerns of microbiologically sensitive foods and systems. She has led food safety assessments at food manufacturing facilities worldwide, focusing on applied food safety systems and regulatory compliance. 

Her current focus involves translating technical information to identify actionable insights that can help clients more effectively understand what they need to do for compliance and to better satisfy their consumers. She provides expertise about relevant food safety and public health related microbial and viral hazards to assist clients in developing optimal risk management strategies via means such as HACCP and food safety plans appropriate to their operation and risk tolerance. In addition, she conducts gap analyses, assessing current and recommending relevant preventive controls and implementation, and various verification and validation activities such as the development of environmental monitoring programs.  

Ruth is a past president of the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) and served two terms on the US National Advisory Committee for Microbiological Criteria for Foods. She is a Certified Food Scientist and member of the Institute of Food Technologists and chaired the Minnesota Food Safety and Defense Task Force. Her bachelor’s degree is in Consumer Food Science from Cornell University. She holds an MS in Food Science and a PhD in Public Health both from the University of Minnesota, where her thesis focused on leveraging data from health department inspections to improve food safety. 

In her spare time, Ruth enjoys time with her large family, cooking and traveling.