Food Safety Risk Management and the Role of an Often Overlooked Stakeholder: Your Insurance Company!
July 31, 2025
In recent years, there has been a surge of challenges in the U.S. food industry, with high-profile pathogen outbreaks, recalls, public safety failures and tragic outcomes. While the headlines seem to be on repeat, new digital innovations from Neogen, such as Neogen Analytics, are helping industry stakeholders shift from reactive to proactive risk management. This technology empowers forward-thinking food suppliers to gain command of their food safety testing data, allowing them to discover trends and issues as they emerge, before they escalate into costly problems.
However, the food industry remains one of the lowest-margin sectors, making it difficult for many companies to invest in advanced technologies, tools, and talent. This is where insurance providers, a new partner in our Neogen Analytics strategy, are emerging.
Risk mitigation benefits everyone involved, including underwriters, brokers, crisis management firms, and forensic accountants who support the food industry through recall, liability, business continuity, and other critical services. Increasingly, insurance companies are stepping up to help food businesses invest in digital capabilities that can help reduce risk and prevent future claims.
In a recent Food Safety Tech webinar titled “Food Safety Risk Management and the Role of an Often Overlooked Stakeholder: Your Insurance Company!”, Dave Hatch of Neogen and Melanie Neumann, food industry attorney and consultant, explored how insurance providers are becoming allies in food safety advancement.
This insightful discussion highlighted how digitized food safety testing programs are fueling modern risk assessments and helping to drive better outcomes. Through real-world examples, Dave and Melanie demonstrate how advanced testing methods, data management, analytics, and workflow automation can help significantly reduce a variety of risks, and how insurers are increasingly becoming involved in supporting and advancing these capabilities.
Key takeaways for webinar attendees include:
- How different stakeholders perceive and manage food safety risk
- Ways to connect food safety risk mitigation with measurable business benefits
- Strategies for partnering with insurers to support advanced testing and analytics in your facility
To explore how Neogen Analytics can support your digital transformation, visit our webpage to learn more.
Watch the full webinar below:
Melanie Neumann is the principal attorney and founder of NAS. Ms. Neumann has invested over 25 years in providing the food and beverage industry with actionable and practical legal and regulatory insights through the lens of enterprise risk management. Topics include without limit: food laws and regulatory compliance, advertising and labeling compliance, intellectual property, corporate contracting, data management, pre and post-acquisition due diligence, supplier and co-manufacturing contracting and risk assessment, recall and incident management, and other operational and brand reputation risk management solutions.
NAS interacts with various stakeholders on behalf of her clients –from production line operators to CEO’s and CFO’s, regulators to academics, the CDC, and the media--in response to outbreaks, recalls, inspection findings, enforcement actions, complaint management, and alleged illness claims to help resolve incidents by facilitating robust root cause analyses and helping companies identify appropriate corrective actions and other risk mitigations to protect public health and business reputation.
David Hatch is Vice President, Digital Solutions Marketing, at Neogen. He was formerly Chief Commercial Officer at Corvium (acquired by Neogen in February 2023) where he led the introduction of an advanced food safety automation software platform, now called Neogen Analytics. David is a passionate evangelist for digital automation and analytical advancements of business processes. For over 30 years, David has led organizations focused on data analytics technologies, market research and consulting services. He has authored dozens of research studies, blogs, articles and white papers covering a broad range of data analytics topics, including predictive analytics, performance management, workflow automation, and operational analytics. David holds a B.A. in Communication from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMASS), and was the inaugural Chair of the Alumni Board of Advisors for the Dept. of Communication at The School of Behavioral Sciences at UMASS.
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Category: Food Safety, Food & Beverage, Environmental Monitoring, Neogen® Analytics