Then, Now, and the New Frontier: Raising the Livestock Bar since ’88

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Event: Thursday, October 22, 2026 | 10:00 AM CT (time unconfirmed with Tommy) | 45 minutes
Host: Tommy Jackson, CEO, Prelude
Guest: Kelly F. Lechtenberg, DVM, PhD, MBA, President, MVS, Inc. (Midwest Veterinary Services)

Every livestock study starts with the same two questions: what do we have to prove, and to whom? The answers have changed more in four decades than the animals have. The rules changed, sponsors’ expectations changed, and the products under study went from big, obvious effects to small ones that take a better study to see.

Kelly Lechtenberg founded Midwest Veterinary Services in 1987, published his first livestock study in 1988, and has spent the years since building the research organizations that carried cattle and swine products through FDA and USDA review, from a 5,000-head feedlot that doubles as a research site to biosecure facilities in three states. He has run the studies on both sides of the shift: the antibiotic era, the food safety era, and the era of proving that subtler products work.

He joins Prelude’s Tommy Jackson for 45 minutes of conversation and live audience questions. Bring one. The best part of these sessions is always the audience.

What we will get into

• What livestock research looked like when Kelly started, and how a CRO actually runs a study at commercial scale
• How the bar for proving a livestock product works kept rising, and what raised it
• How antimicrobial resistance changed what livestock studies have to measure
• Why sponsors want faster and tighter at the same time, and what actually breaks when a study has to deliver both
• What’s next: AI, genomics-informed design, decentralized capture, and what a study will have to prove ten years from now
• The one skill that matters more now than it did in 1988

Can’t make it live? Register anyway and we’ll send the recording.