Senior Vice President of Technical Services for Simmons Prepared Foods

Oct. 10-11, 2018

Craig Bacon is the Senior Vice President of Technical Services for Simmons Prepared Foods. Simmons Prepared Foods is a farm to fork poultry producer based in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, primarily serving customer brands as a supplier of premium chicken products for the foodservice industry.

Prior to Simmons, Craig was Senior Vice President of Research and Development for Tyson Foods. In this role Craig leads the development of all products for Tyson Foods located in the Discovery Center in Springdale, Arkansas and Downers Grove, Illinois. Tyson is the second-largest food production company in the Fortune 500 and produces one out of every five pounds of meat consumed in the U.S.

He received his BS from University of Missouri in 1984 and then attended graduate school at University of Tennessee in Food Science and Technology. He received his MS in 1987 and his PhD in 1990. He began his career at Oscar Mayer in Madison, WI.

Craig is a member of IFT and AMSA. He has been American Meat Science Association President, Executive Board Member of Muscle Food Section of IFT, speaker at IFT, New Product Conference, AMI and many times invited speaker at Reciprocation session for Reciprocal Meat Conference.

Craig is also an adjunct professor at University of Tennessee and at University of Arkansas.