NACS Food Safety Forum

Betsy Craig is the CEO and founder of MenuTrinfo®, LLC, a recognized leader in food allergen safety, nutrition transparency, and clean label certification. Under her direction, the Certified Free From™ (CFF) program, which is ISO 17065 accredited, has evolved into a widely trusted benchmark for verifying that consumer packaged goods and foodservice operations are free from the Top 9 allergens, gluten, and artificial colors or additives.

Her work has earned the confidence of major retailers and brands including Walmart’s Bettergoods, Sam’s Club’s Members Mark, and Costco, all of whom rely on CFF certification to strengthen consumer trust and validate clean label commitments. Betsy’s philosophy, “Grow Trust Through Transparency™,” guides her efforts to help companies substantiate claims with rigorous third party assessment rather than self declaration.

As a respected industry contributor, she has partnered with leading organizations such as FARE, NACUFS, the Conference for Food Protection, and the International Association for Food Protection. Through these collaborations, she plays an active role in advancing allergen management standards, elevating industry education, and promoting safer, more transparent food systems.

With more than a decade of leadership in this space, Betsy continues to position MenuTrinfo® and CFF as trusted, mission driven partners for brands committed to delivering products consumers can rely on with confidence.

Frank Gleeson became NACS president and CEO on January 1, 2026. He has deep experience in foodservice and convenience retailing. As president & CEO of Aramark Northern Europe from 2017–2024, he oversaw a team of over 20,000 employees across 2,800-plus locations in the United Kingdom, Ireland and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), which served an estimated 1 million meals a day. Before Aramark, Gleeson was retail director at Topaz Energy Group and vice president retail of Statoil Ireland (now Equinor), where he led the development of the first American-style convenience store in Ireland. Most recently, he served as chairman of the National Oil Reserve Agency in Ireland.

Gleeson was on the NACS Board of Directors for 11 years, including his term as 2018-19 NACS Chairman. In addition, he was a board member and chairman of Retail Ireland, a board member and president of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation and a board member of the Irish Transport Authority.

Margaret Mannion is the director of government relations for NACS and leads federal advocacy on SNAP, food traceability, retail crime and public safety.

She joined NACS in 2019 as grassroots manager, where she led the association’s grassroots and member-engagement efforts, including NACS Day on the Hill and the NACS In-Store Program. Prior to NACS, she served as director of operations for a Washington, D.C.-based political fundraising firm and as a foreign policy and national security fellow for U.S. Sen. David Perdue (R-GA). Margaret holds a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Georgia.

Dr. Donald W. Schaffner is extension specialist in food science and distinguished professor at Rutgers University. He is the current chair of the Department of Food Science. His research includes handwashing, cross-contamination, and quantitative microbial risk assessment. He has authored over 225 peer-reviewed publications and educated thousands of food industry professionals. He is a fellow of the Institute of Food Technologists, the American Academy of Microbiology, the Society for Risk Analysis and International Association for Food Protection (IAFP). He served as president of IAFP in 2013-2014. He was an editor for the ASM journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology from 2005 to 2020. He began serving as a contributing editor for Food Microbiology and as associate editor for Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety (CRFSFS) in 2020 and as scientific editor for CRFSFS in 2023. He has been the editor-in-chief of Microbial Risk Analysis since 2022. In his spare time, he co-hosts the Food Safety Talk and Risky or Not podcasts.

Since Food Industry Counsel was first founded, Jessica has served as a food safety paralegal, food industry risk management specialist, and is an integral part of the food safety team.

In addition to closely monitoring emerging and evolving exposures facing the food industry, such as recalls, recall trends, emerging outbreaks, and Proposition 65 enforcement and exposure, Jessica also consults closely with firm clients on a wide-range of food product label and related compliance issues. In addition to her role as a food safety paralegal, Jessica also speaks to food safety audiences about general food safety compliance, and serves in the acting role of plaintiff lawyer and prosecutor in the firm’s mock food safety trials.

Jessica also manages the firm’s Food Recall Reporter (www.foodrecallreporter.com), which is the only searchable database in the US that has detailed information for every FDA and USDA Class I, II, and III food product, beverage, pet food, animal feed, and dietary supplement recall since the year 2000.

Shawn Stevens is the founding member of Food Industry Counsel LLC, the only law firm in the United States that represents the food industry exclusively.

As a food industry consultant and lawyer, Shawn works with food industry clients (including the world’s largest growers, processors, restaurant chains, distributors and grocers) helping them protect their brand by complying with FDA and USDA regulations, reducing risk, managing recalls, and defending high-profile foodborne illness claims.

Shawn also speaks regularly to national and international audiences on a wide variety of emerging scientific, regulatory and food safety legal trends.