Article Out Loud - Looking Back to Look Ahead to Protect the Food Supply

Benjamin Lieb is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Coastal Carolina University, where he earned a B.A. in Intelligence and National Security Studies with minors in Anthropology and Criminology. While at Coastal Carolina, he was named to the President’s and Dean’s lists. Since graduating in May 2022, he has started his career in the Intelligence Community as an officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Transportation and Security Administration. He would like to thank Dr. Smith, the Members of the Food Defense Consortium, the ASIS Food Defense, and Ag Security Community for supporting his throughout this research.

Jason Bashura has been working within the food defense arena since 2002, when he began working with the Connecticut Department of Public Health’s Food Protection Program as a food biosecurity (now known as food defense) environmental health sanitarian. After transitioning to the U.S. federal government, he was a food defense policy analyst with the U.S. FDA’s Food Defense team where he oversaw the development and utilization of the Food Related Emergency Exercise Bundle (FREE-B) among other critical food defense initiatives. Currently working in industry, he has been leading the informal Food Defense Consortium – in order to bring together those parties with a vested interest in global food defense issues. He is proud of the countless relationships he’s dedicated global government, industry, and academic leaders, in an attempt to connect the innumerable dots within the food defense arena. He has a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Connecticut (UCONN) and an undergraduate degree in Public Health from Southern Connecticut State University. He currently resides in Maryland with his family and serves on the Board of Health in the county where he resides.