Personal Statement
Dr Dragan Antic is a Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Public Health at the Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences, University of Liverpool. He is a veterinarian by training with a background in food safety, and Diplomate of European College of Veterinary Public Health (subspecialty Food Science) where he serves as Chair of the Education Committee and sits in the College's Council. His main research interests are in policy-led food science and food microbiology topics, mainly in the epidemiology of main foodborne pathogens (STEC, Campylobacter, Yersinia and ESBL-producing E. coli) and developing interventions to control them in meat chain.

His expertise in food science and food microbiology is utilised in many international collaborations, most recently in developing the framework for the risk-based meat safety assurance system, where official meat inspection is incorporated with producers’ food safety management systems into a coherent whole. He has published in excess of 30 papers in a wide range of veterinary and food science peer reviewed journals as well as many other publications. Dr Antic is a Member of Food Standards Agency’s Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF).

Keywords: veterinary public health, food safety, food microbiology, foodborne pathogens, meat safety assurance systems

Research Overview
Dragan received his veterinary degree from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 2003. He received his PhD in Food Safety from the University of Novi Sad in 2011. He pursued a career in Academia, and has been a Diplomat of the European College of Veterinary Public Health (ECVPH), subspecialty Food Science, since 2013.

Dragan's research activities are mostly impact/policy led, particularly from the aspects of integrated control of food-borne pathogens in the meat chain including modernisation of meat inspection. He has worked extensively in the development of interventions for cattle hides (novel microbial immobilisation treatment, "shellac hide coating") and beef (use of lactic and other organic acids for decontamination of meat trimmings intended for fermented sausages production).

Dragan developed an innovative microbial immobilisation treatment for cattle hides ("shellac hide coating"), as a part of EU funded FP6 project "ProSafeBeef" and his PhD work. Furthermore, another food technology project commissioned by the FSA on skin-on sheep meat production was looking into requirements for policy changes and legalisation of this product meat which can benefit some ethnic groups, consumers of this product, but also open export market. All this policy-based work is highly beneficial for stakeholders, public and food industry. Dragan published his research outputs in high impact journals (Meat Science, Food control and similar).

More recent research efforts have been focused on the use of integrated controls in the meat chain to modernise meat inspection into the risk-based one. This effort has been supported within the COST Action CA18105 on (Risk-based meat inspection and integrated meat safety assurance) where Dragan leads WG 3 on abattoir level controls. It is expected that these efforts within the COST action would lead to the strengthening European wide effort into developing modern integrated meat safety assurance system in Europe and the UK.