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Tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode of Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast. Join Francine L. Shaw, the savvy CEO of Savvy Food Safety, and Matthew Regusci, compliance connoisseur and founder of Fostering Compliance, as they serve up the latest in food safety with a side of laughter.
Explore the ins and outs of food systems, responsible food practices, and food safety regulations. Stay informed about food safety awareness and the not-so-occasional food recall. Delve deep into the complexities of the food supply chain with our dynamic duo, who blend expert insights with a pinch of food safety humor. Whether you're knee-deep in the food safety industry or just passionate about what's on your plate, this podcast promises a fresh take on staying safe while eating well.
Expect candid conversations, personal anecdotes, and occasional guest appearances that spice up the discussion. Shaw and Regusci bring their combined decades of experience to the table, making each episode as informative as it is entertaining. From industry trends to must-know food safety news and regulations, they've got your back (and your lunch).
In essence, Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast is not just about imparting information; it's about fostering a culture of food safety. By shedding light on the intricacies of the food supply chain and the latest food safety news, it aims to promote awareness and encourage responsible food practices among consumers and industry professionals alike.
When it comes to food safety, knowledge is power, and a good laugh is the best seasoning. At the heart of every episode is one golden rule: Don't Eat Poop!
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[00:00:00]
Melody Ge: Food safety professionals or ~like ~consultants, like you are like doctors sometimes, right? I like that. You can, like when you have patient walking, you are like, I don't feel well, but I don't know where to go. And then the doctor will be like, oh, you have a problem here, problem here. Take the medicine.
But you can't control the patient whether they take the medicine or not. And they'll be coming back next visit and be like, I'm still very not feeling well. And did you take the medicine? No. Why? You are a doctor, you can't take the medicine for them, right? You have to influence them and explain the why. You gotta take this routinely.
You can't take it like on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then you stop it for Thursday and Friday. That doesn't work. Sometimes I relay that a lot. Or dentist. How much time dentist tell you, you gotta floss at night and then you gotta floss night. Otherwise something would right.
intro: Everybody's gotta eat. And nobody [00:01:00] likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans, Francine l Shaw and Matt Regusci for a deep dive into food safety. It all wars down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.
Don't eat poop.
Matt Regusci: Hello? Hello all.
We are at the Food Safety Consortium and I'm really excited about this interview because we've been trying to interview you for years, Melody.
Melody Ge: I didn't know that.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, I know, but every single time we see you at the conference, you're like super, super busy.
Francine L Shaw: I actually. Probably two weeks ago wrote down on a Post-it note people that I wanted to interview here. Your name was at the top of that list, and I kept wanting to message you or email you either way, and my schedule's just been crazy and I never got around to it. So when I bumped into you this morning, I was like, God, I need to ask her. I keep forgetting.
So, yes, [00:02:00] I'm very happy to have this opportunity.
Melody Ge: Aw, thank you. It's my pleasure to be on the show. 'cause I've been hearing lots of good things about the show as well, so Yeah. I'm glad this all happened.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. And last year we were like, there's no way we're gonna be able to interview Melody.
Melody Ge: It wasn't a very good timing. I, yeah, this year much better.
Matt Regusci: Okay, so, so Melody, tell us a little bit about yourself, like who you are and who you work for now. And then we'll jump into stories about. Just who you like the past and stuff like that.
Melody Ge: Sure. So I'm Melody. I work for EAGLE Certification Group as the Chief Technical Officer.
I'm also the founder of Women in Food Safety. I've been in the industry for about almost 20 years now, and always in food safety. Although I started my career as a technical director with Beyond Meat, I do R&D and food safety at that position is where I found the passion about food safety. And I wanted to devote more in food safety as of my career.
So I switched to SQF to Lidl to [00:03:00] help out the industry 'cause I believe people should never get sick from the foods they eat. And that's keep me till today with my passion in food safety to doing all the works about food safety. And then now I work for a certification body where we help the clients get SQF, BRC, all that certifications.
It's another angle to make an impact on food safety. 'cause we have auditors now. We have certifications now, we're not directly in the plant, how we make impact in food safety.
Whereas before when I was working for StarKist or TreeHouse, we are more on the auditee side, so I was being audited. I developed all those with the team, develop all the food management system.
So it's different. It's quite a different view. But again, I'm still here with food safety, with full passion, all force about food safety.
Francine L Shaw: I agree with you. I've always said nobody should ever get sick or die from eating food. That is my philosophy. That's, yes, should not happen. Don't poop.
Melody Ge: It's [00:04:00] a mantra. don't eat poop.
Yes, don't eat poop.
Matt Regusci: Wait.. So Women in Food Safety. This has become like from its inception to now is gotten to be so big. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Melody Ge: Well, yeah, thank you for asking that. Today when we were having a picture in front of the booth at the Consortium with the founding committee, it almost like a flashback moment 'cause this year is five year of Women in Food Safety. And it was started at GFSI in Seattle back in 2020 before COVID was hit. We were sitting there, we were like, we gotta need a community for females. There are so many females in food safety, we're doing great jobs. How we can pipeline future female leadership. 'Cause there's never enough seats for females now at the executive level. And that's really the mission.
And another mission is we wanna help students. I was the one being helped in the industry. So I wanna give back to the industry as well. There are so many people in this industry, even in this conference, see me grow from a fresh [00:05:00] start who doesn't know a lot about industry food safety versus just know the book smart.
Till today I know practice all that. I got helped a lot by other people too. So I want to give it back. So that's really the community was and I is. I feel fortunate that we have Jill Hoffman, Jacqueline, Melanie Neumann, and Laura from Target. We are. All the way till today and we, if you asked me five years ago, do I believe I can be today?
I don't know. I never thought about it. I just go for it. And here we are. We are here. It's on the fifth anniversary and we think there are just more things yet to come. Many there will be more.
Matt Regusci: How many people are, how many women are in Women in Food Safety?
Melody Ge: We have about over 4,000 ambassadors. That's all genders.
Like almost 5,000 and exclusively food safety professionals. 1300. Students, 15% are around students. 'cause that's what we wanna do to apply, to tell them with a degree in chemistry, with a degree in food [00:06:00] science, with what you learned from school. There is a career in food safety and quality and you are doing great things for the community, for public health.
So yeah, that's about the ratio of the members. I can't believe it till today either. That's phenomenal.
Matt Regusci: And, and how, like if, uh, a woman is listening out there, she's not part of Women in Food Safety and she wants to be part of Women in Food Safety, how does she join?
Melody Ge: Yes. So look for Women in Food Safety on LinkedIn and then there will be a link to join the community. The membership is free as long as you work in the food safety industry. You have a passion about food safety. We're welcome 'cause we are here to share the practices, to empower each other, lift each other, and also you can go to website. Our website is www.womeninfoods.org.
It will get you more information, how to join, how to get involved. We're so excited this year we just got the nonprofit organization status that also. It takes a long time to get the application approved, so we will get more [00:07:00] excited event to provide the resources to the community. So stay tuned.
Francine L Shaw: And you guys publish an article every month in Food Safety Tech, am I right?
That's right. Yeah.
Yeah.
Melody Ge: Love it. Love it. Yeah, that's right. We also do a monthly gathering, like the virtual gathering event, to help the community members to engage with each other. We also invite guest speakers to give topics like communication, leadership skills, 'cause we believe soft skills are important working in the industry.
That's like coming out whenever it's available. So stay in contact with us on LinkedIn and the website. They'll get the updates on the events.
Matt Regusci: Awesome.
Okay, so 20 years in food safety, and you've worked for, I don't know, every major company in the industry.
Melody Ge: Not every major, no. No. Keep a job. No.
Matt Regusci: But you've worked for a lot in very big jobs and had to deal with a lot of different things, including outbreaks and stuff like that.
Yeah. [00:08:00] What was your biggest challenge as you were growing your career?
Melody Ge: Well, keep myself entertained, not get bored. So I like challenges. I guess that's one of the reasons when I was choosing between R&D and QA, FSQ, I picked the food safety as well. 'cause every day in our life is different. I never walk in office.
Actually, when I was in the industry as a, you have a to-do list, Melody, this is your to-do list and go for it. Never. It's always, Hey Melody, we have a shipping late. I have a boat on the ocean can get here. What shall I do? I have a label is missing. I'm using the wrong ingredients. Like, all those keep me, wanna solve the problems, keep me going.
Yeah. I don't find a challenge. I guess I, that's a good question. I never thought about it. So when I have a challenge, I guess I just find a solution and work through it, if that makes sense.
Francine L Shaw: So I wanna say that I have had a lot of situations that I've needed to solve in my career. [00:09:00] I have never had a boat on the ocean that couldn't get here.
Not one that I, that's never happened to me.
Melody Ge: Yeah. 'cause you don't know what's gonna happen. And then FSQ is just, and we have no control on other department. We can only influence them. I guess that's the challenge.
Matt Regusci: That's true. That's true. Yeah.
Melody Ge: Sorry, I interrupted.
Francine L Shaw: No, you're.
Matt Regusci: No, I mean that is interesting 'cause being in the role that you had a lot of influence on what needed to be done, but a lot of it wasn't really your decision.
Melody Ge: No. That's correct. Yeah. I guess that's one of the challenge. All the food safety professionals here at the Consortium, they will share the same challenge. Yes.
Francine L Shaw: In our role as consultant, that's something that we struggle with as well. We can't make the decisions. You can only go in and make recommendations and these are the things that should be done, or this is what we recommend you do, but you never have the final decision.
Melody Ge: No. And then sometimes I think it's fun. [00:10:00] Fun. It is like. Food safety professionals or like consultants, like you are like doctors sometimes, right? I like that. You can, like when you have patient walk in, you are like, I don't feel well, but I don't know where to go. And then the doctor will be like, oh, you have a problem here.
Problem here. Take medicine. But you can't control the patient whether they take the medicine or not. And they'll be coming back next visit and be like, I'm still very not feeling well and like, did you take the medicine? No. Why? But you are a doctor. You can't take the medicine for them, right? You have to influence them and explain the why.
You gotta take this routinely. You can't take it like on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then you stop it for Thursday and Friday. That doesn't work. Sometimes I relate to that a lot. Or dentist, how much time dentists will tell you, you gotta floss at night and then you gotta floss night. Otherwise something won't right.
And then it's the same thing we just at food safety or consulting, we gotta find the why. Be patient, [00:11:00] explain to them, here's the issue, otherwise you gonna be really sick. Or the systems break down, or you have a product is making people sick. Then okay, now you know you gotta find a doctor. And a doctor will be like.
Okay. Did I tell you to take the medicine 10 months ago and you didn't follow? So yeah, sometimes I relate it a little bit to the doctors.
Francine L Shaw: Are you exercising? Like I told you to I dunno if I'm making sense.
Matt Regusci: You're making making absolute sense. It's a great analogy. It's a fantastic analogy.
Francine L Shaw: She said, are you flossing your teeth?
And I'm like. I use a flosser.
Melody Ge: See, and you are a good patient and we have good food safety professionals. They follow the rules and they never, but then you got challenge from the finance team. It's like, okay, you spend all this money, you are telling me there will be a recall. Where's the recall? And then you got facing the budget cutting.
You just constantly need to tell them, no, here's the ROI, this is why we're doing this or that. All sorts of good fun stuff at the manufacturers.
Matt Regusci: [00:12:00] Right. Right. When they're like, when the CFO is like, well, where's the recall? We didn't have a recall. Yes. Because we spent all day. 'cause we did all these things.
Melody Ge: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The next step is not cutting the budget. It's continuing investment.
Francine L Shaw: We don't need to do this. We don't have any problems.
Melody Ge: Oh my goodness. Exactly. Yes.
Francine L Shaw: We have no problems. We, why are we spending all this money? There are no problems.
Melody Ge: Oh boy. Yeah.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. But does C CFOs like to spend a little bit of money every single month than have to write a massive check unexpectedly, like an outbreak is not in the budget.
Melody Ge: No. Yeah, no offense. It's very hard to budget for that out there.
Francine L Shaw: Yes.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Okay.
So you've worked with auditors, you've had Yeah. Probably what, hundreds of different audits that you've gone through over the 20 years? Yes. Because some of the companies you've worked with, there's multiple audits a year. Yeah.
And now you're the CTO for an one of the largest auditing companies in the [00:13:00] nation. What was some of your biggest frustrations as an auditee, and how are you fixing that as the chief auditor?
Melody Ge: That is a good question. So I currently work for EAGLE Certification Group and we are focusing on GFSI certifications, SQF, BRC, FSSC 22000 and also we do aerospace and automobile.
One of the things I would like to achieve with the EAGLE is we all, like the whole EAGLE team, would like to bring the confidence of each GFSI certification back to the retailers. 'cause one of the things that we started seeing when I was audited is people lose confidence in GFSI certifications and I started getting retail audits.
Even big player like Walmart, Target, they audit you on their own Lidl. They do that. So one of the main thing we wanna bring it back is the auditor competency, the calibration of the certification, make the audits a true value [00:14:00] to our clients, to the food manufacturers.
So I have an, I have a lot of story. Yeah, I will, I'll try. Share safely with the auditor stories. So I'll give you an example. When I was at auditee, we have a site and we experienced an auditor. This site is like we did so hard to train the team on risk assessment, be the owners of the program, find the right approach, explain the why.
And then we got this inspector comes in, auditor comes in, and then he stands under a pipeline, I think for more than 20 minutes. Just wait on the drop of a condensation water. And it's not even in ~food exposure company. Uh, sorry.~ Food exposure areas. It's a hallway. Once it dropped, he is so like a king in the room. See, I told you you have a problem, you should do what I do.
And here's a finding. So he gave us a major. I went off, I fight for that. I was like, my team did a risk assessment. We [00:15:00] have a zones in such area. You didn't even look at it and you would just assume we have a problem because you stand here and it's not even dropping on the food.
So the reason I wanna share with this story is. Auditors play a key role in this whole supply chain to make food safety work. 'cause they don't know the power of their voice. And then there's the picture. When they're in a manufacturing facility, the team gets scared sometimes when they're here. But ultimately, we're all in here for food safety. And they are a check balance for our management system.
So we should help each other. Yes. Will you find stuff? Yes. And that's why we hire you here for, but we are not hiring you here to just because find a finding. Just wanna find a pitfalls that's not a true value to a food management system.
So what we wanna do at EAGLE is we wanna calibrate auditors, how they audit, do they make [00:16:00] sense when, when they auditing, can they assess food safety culture?
Because that's one of the biggest thing, when we have a culture, the system should work. How can they assess the culture? Auditor needs a lot of training on soft skills, and that's where we wanna emphasize on. So we have a lot of initiatives on auditor schools trainings on soft skills, leadership skills.
'cause they're the leaders also in that room for those two days to avoid what I experienced at one of the site. And that's, I guess it in, I can go on and on, but this is one of the main thing that we see, the gap that EAGLE can help and then raise good auditors.
Francine L Shaw: So the points that you're making Yeah. For the advantage of you working both sides?
Yes, I guess, and regardless of the industry that you're in, I think that that experience brings such value to positions, especially people in positions of authority. Yeah. [00:17:00] Because you know and you understand the pitfalls. Yeah. And the strength and the weaknesses and so much can be brought to the table just from basic understanding.
Melody Ge: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. And then also, I don't wanna speak just because one bad apple like impact the whole industry. There are good auditors out there, right? Right. But there are a lot of problems we see. Otherwise, the GFSI certifications confidence level wouldn't be dropping that much. And people started, I have one sight experience, 17 audits a year.
And that's not like. That's not what we want. When we first invented GFSI certification 20 years ago, we wanna see a harmonized 'cause food safety is food safety. There's no different Audit A and audit B. We all look at HACCP plan. So that's really one of the things that we wanna bring back, the confident level of the certification, we wanna help [00:18:00] our clients.
Francine L Shaw: When that starts to happen, it waters down and it weakens the system.
Matt Regusci: You're creating the system for an audit then, as opposed to creating the system for a culture.
Melody Ge: Yeah, and then the audit is always a snapshot. You can't really judge a snapshot, a picture of, oh, this is bad. And then just what you just said.
People at authorities, they didn't realize how powerful when they walk in. And then sometimes you can soften that tension with soft skills.
Francine L Shaw: And you mentioned a while ago that when these auditors are even in retail inspectors, health inspectors, a third party inspector, yes. Come in employees get scared, they get nervous and they do things that they wouldn't normally do.
And sometimes if you have an inspector, an auditor, that's never worked in industry, they don't always understand that. But when I was working in industry, honest to God, sometimes an inspector would walk in the door and I'd look at my employees and think. What just happened. You never do that before. And the inspector's [00:19:00] looking at you like, Hey, okay.
But they didn't. They have never done that. It's like, what are you doing? What are you saying? Exactly. Yes. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And it's an inspector. I understood that. And you can, I just said this to somebody else, you can tell when they're nervous. Yeah. And when it's something that they're doing procedurally Yes.
You know that they just do. Yeah. And I think that sometimes that should be taken into consideration.
Melody Ge: Yes. That's a good point. And then that takes a lot on the experience to inspector and auditors and that what we are trained to train and cultivate those, right?
Francine L Shaw: Yeah. Now it's gonna kill somebody. You No, no.
We absolutely need auditors. We're worried about something different. Different, but yes. Yeah.
Matt Regusci: When Belmy and I are running WQS, we would do things like standard deviation, curves and stuff like that on our auditors. And one of the hard parts of running an auditing company [00:20:00] is when you have an auditor that's an experienced auditor that's been around for a while, you bring them on into your company and they start performing audits.
You don't really know how they're doing until a few auditors audit and sometimes until the next year. So somebody else goes and performs an audit and then they get 100% the first year, and the next year they have 60%. You're like, what just happened? And so we would create like standard deviation curves for auditors and see, okay, this auditor is always scoring like.
In the high nineties, no matter where he's going, or a hundred percent, no matter where he is going. And this auditor is always scoring 60, 70% every single time. And where this auditor walks in and somebody gets like, uh, 98% one day, and the next day it's an automatic fail and the next day it's in the nineties.
The next day it's in the eighties, the next day it's, there's a bunch of different nonconformities. That auditor has a much higher standard [00:21:00] deviation curve. So what we would see is that sometimes auditors would be auditing and then they just get lazy and they just, they don't wanna deal with fighting on the non-conformances.
And so then they just constantly are scoring super, super high 'cause they don't wanna deal with the non-conformances and other auditors. Have a power trip and they like being a cop, like what you're saying, standing underneath the pipe for 20 minutes, waiting for, instead of it being like an actual issue.
And so what I would, what I say to all my auditors all the time is what I'm looking for is a coach. And the cops, cop auditors would always be ticked off at me. And they're like, well, we're not supposed to give advice and we're not supposed to be easy on people. And I said, no, no. If you don't understand what I'm saying, you've probably never been in team sports.
Coaches are not always easy on you. Coaches are. They're trying to strive to make you be better and to find the best out of you, and they're finding the best out of you and the coach type auditors. Were the ones with the highest standard deviation curves, and they weren't [00:22:00] afraid to do non-conformances because the way they explained the non-conformances was like, I'm marking you down on this because you missed it, but you see why you missed this, and they're coaching them through why they missed that, and then they figure out how to do the corrective action to fix the non-conformance.
Those auditors were always my best auditors.
Melody Ge: Yeah, you have a couple really good points there. I absolutely agree. Like the first one, if I use that example again, the auditor is standing under the water and wait for it. He could have done a lot of different things to coach the facility. Is it riskless? How much risks associated to the products?
Is it a systematic issue? Do you just see one time the water leaking or you see it everywhere on the product? He could have explained really well instead of just, okay, I'm waiting on this. It's a finding done.
Another one. I feel for the auditors, you touch on it. It's the calibration and that's something we [00:23:00] wanna do to calibrate all auditors as well is auditor does have a tough life, like they are traveling on the road, they have short amount of time writing the reports.
They will miss things 'cause. If I look at one words, like I use my Chi main language, Chinese, like a character look staring at it longer, like for an hour, I wouldn't recognize it 'cause I'm just so into it. It's in the box. How can we help them to calibrate and then to elevate the audit performance is what we we wanna do at EAGLE.
Like how we can calibrate maybe a mentorship, like a good auditors to mentor the new auditors. Maybe a sharing session like this. To let them know, okay, your problem is not the technical. Your problem is this to help develop because ultimately, again, I think. Regardless, it's either the auditee or the auditor.
We all wanna food safety. This is a common goal and I never doubted that before. It's the [00:24:00] approach and the position we're in is very different. So how can we help each other and make the most value out of it? It's what we can work on together. Yeah.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
And where do you see GFSI going? I started in auditing back when it was Primus Standard Audit.
It was SE S'S audit. It was like AIB audit, and we all had our own audit. We were all talking to the retailers about why they should be using our audit, and the industry had to do a bunch of different audits. Right. If you were big and you sold to a bunch of different retailers and food service companies, you were doing AIB audit.
SES audit, Primus audit, like it was that then. The GFSI logo or motto and then they took this down because they realized it's not accurate. Was audit once accepted everywhere? Was the initial.
Melody Ge: That was the initial, yeah. What was, haha we all can laugh about it. Yes.
Matt Regusci: That was the initial thing. And so then and Primus, and then Azzule, the company that I created with the supply chain management, we ended up having [00:25:00] PrimusGFS.
So PrimusGFS was gonna be audit once accepted everywhere, except it wasn't in Europe. And they all pushed GFSI in Europe. GFSI is European and they don't accept PrimusGFS. And so if you were a grower and you sold in the States and you sold in in Europe, you had to do two audits. So right off the bat, they missed their motto.
But now it seems like GFSI is thinking we need to create the barrier to be so hard that the retailers are going to like us more, but then the barrier becomes so hard we can't get auditors. The expectation from zero to GFSI is so high that there needs to be stepping stones over a couple years to do that.
GFSI then got ticked off at auditing companies for performing what they said to do the base, the gf, like one
Melody Ge: audit, one accept, or like the
Matt Regusci: medium and the basic, and until you get to to there and I'm like, what is GFSI forcing themselves to become [00:26:00] irrelevant or are they going to figure this out? That's one of the reasons why my partner and I sold our company was we were like, there's a bunch of competitors out there that are printing machines and all they're doing is printing certificates and it's making GFSI look bad and we're in that realm and we have integrity.
We're going to audit correctly and do this right. But then that puts us at a disadvantage, uh, compared to competitors that are just printing certificates. Two GFSI is making it harder and harder to actually get auditors and train them up appropriately. And so now the barrier of entry to that is so hard that when we looked at the crystal ball into the future we're like.
GFSI maybe has another decade left and that was five years ago.
Melody Ge: I could, that's a very good question. And then if I could have a crystal ball, I dunno. But I agree. 'cause I don't see, I think I was very disappointed years ago, but now we, [00:27:00] there's a lot of changes happen at the GFSI and hopefully they can put themselves together.
They have a good vision. GFSI has a good vision. One world, one audit accepted by everyone and we do food safety altogether, but the execution was a little bit lacking and that's how I see it. So I don't know if there will be eventually and GFSI anymore, but I think what the food safety will carries regardless.
There might be another GI like a new GI coming up.
Another thing with the auditors. You touch. Another good point is we do have a shortage of auditors right now. 'cause granted, honestly, we all know auditors are like almost now considered as a retirement career, right? Yeah. The people age is very high and then they can't travel anymore.
We will lose all the momentum. How can we pipeline the future? That's where one thing we wanna do together as well. 'cause if you look at the finance auditing. It took them a long time that auditing become a full career. [00:28:00] There's degrees in school, and then they become like a real job. But it's not just yet in food safety.
Well, we started this also not so long ago with the health inspectors and auditor, so I hope I still, I am optimistic, like I still hope we can have auditing as a career to teach the younger food science student, for example, that there is this career path. So to answer your question, I think GFSI always mean they want a degree to tie with them.
Maybe they wanna strengthen this pathway, but they underestimate the reality we're facing right now. We just don't have those many professionals can do that. They could have opened up. I hope they can open up the doors a little bit so we can count those working experience, count those degrees associated with food science, all that.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I, I'm an entrepreneur, Francine's an entrepreneur, and when I talk to my kids, they're like, I have this great idea for [00:29:00] my business. Right? 'cause my kids. They see what it's like to be an entrepreneur, and some of 'em are interested in it. Some of 'em are like, I do not want that lifestyle at all.
That seems absolutely bizarre and crazy. But the ones that want to be entrepreneurs, they'll come to me all the time. They're like, I have this great idea for a business dad. And I'm like, great. Let me listen to it. Let me hear it. And so I'll even teach 'em how to make a pitch deck and all this different type of stuff.
And then at the end of that, I say to say them every single time, this is a fantastic idea. Idea is about 1% and execution is 99%.
Melody Ge: Yeah, I agree. And that's where I felt like we're, that's what's missing with the current GFSI. So I hope they can put the execution part together. Yes.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Because if you're, if we're back to the stage we were 20 years ago.
Yeah. Where now every retailer is auditing on their own or hiring another auditing company to perform their audit on something. Then that was where we were before GFSI.
Melody Ge: Exactly. Yeah. So we lost 20 years [00:30:00] for nothing. Like it's, yeah. Hopefully we can back on track.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Now what it used to be, 'cause I remember like the, the buyer audits never stopped.
If you were really successful, you had buyers come in and, but those buyer's audits used to be tied to a lot of things that were customer centric. So Exactly. There was like cus qua quality, quality conversations, purchasing conversations, contract conversations, and oh yeah, let's go walk around and do like a, just a food safety check just to make sure, but we don't really care because you have your GFSI audit.
Exactly. So we're just double checking. Talk to your quality team and stuff like that. Yeah, so I used to get complaints from my clients. I have 17 audits a year from all these retailers, and I would usually say to them, congratulations, you're successful. It's not .
Melody Ge: That's not the right thing though. It's not, but it was tied to a whole lot of other things.
Matt Regusci: But now I'm hearing that it is, they're coming out, they're sending a team out just to do a food safety audit, like no other conversation about anything else.
Francine L Shaw: Who are they buyers or the GFSI?
Matt Regusci: Some of the, some of the, [00:31:00] uh, my previous clients when I was Oh, okay. Well, now we're going back to what it was before.
Yeah. Where they're just sending out an auditor just to perform a food safety audit because they're not trusting.
Melody Ge: Yeah, that's what I was experiencing. Yeah. Yeah, you are right. And that's why one of the mission, like We hope with the help with currently GFSI's changing the leadership and then they formed a new group.
We can raise the confident of the certification coming back in the industry. Not like what you just said, it becomes commodity, like just printing certification. No, we wanted this audit to be valuable to the client and at least that's what EAGLE does. I hope all other certification bodies, we can all work together.
'cause again, we're all in this pie and we are all working for food safety, so Yeah.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, yeah. So how are you going to grow that auditor pool?
Melody Ge: Good question. So we are looking at industry first of all. 'cause there are people who maybe like me, I've worked for manufacturing [00:32:00] facilities and I am a bit of tiring.
For example, I'm a bit tiring of the twenty four seven on-call type of lifestyle. I wanna be the auditor to help more clients. That could be one government inspectors if they wanna step into the industry, academia. 'cause we really wanna f. Grow students. Think about it. Students could be a potential candidate with the travel, with the learning experience.
How can we get them the industry experiences where the school is gonna focus on? We can pair them with an experience through auditor, all that, and academia, industry, government, and it's through candidates, through regular recruitment. I don't think at least this is a personal opinion, people know too much about.
What does an auditor look like Auditor life look like? What is an auditor? Intel? How much value an auditor can give to the industry? I think there's not that [00:33:00] many of understanding just yet. We will like to keep the position transparent and so. Hopefully there will be more candidates. Apply the auditor position and then we can start from there.
And all the pool will go through this EAGLE school that we are developing a curriculum. We form a working group to train them to become EAGLE auditors. And then you mention another one, the technical reviewer. They play a key role too. Review the audit report, catch the copy and paste. Honestly, here's another areas for improvement.
We do have auditors, copy and paste audit reports. I'm sure you see one When you were aware. I'm sure you probably.
Matt Regusci: Never, never have I ever seen copy and pasting of an audit report. No. Or like, or like, like I know you copy and paste this. What are you saying? I did not copy and paste this. Literally the client's name from the audit you did last week is copied into this report of the different audits.
Yes. The audit. [00:34:00]
Francine L Shaw: Oh, so the technical exactly has been just a mind boggling.
Melody Ge: So we all know that. And how can we help the technical reviewer to know, oh, this is where you wanna check, make an effective, valid technical review. So these are all under this campaign like auditor school campaign to help pipeline the future consistent good auditors.
Francine L Shaw: There's a reason that we started insisting that photos are dated and timestamped. Yes.
Matt Regusci: I had, oh my gosh.
Do you always make good
Melody Ge: comments?
Francine L Shaw: I know. Worked in this world a really long time.
Matt Regusci: I had an auditor, a subcontracted auditor that needed a training for PrimusGFS, and the certificate for PrimusGFS has not changed since WQS. My technical manager for PrimusGFS was with me [00:35:00] at PrimusGFS, and so he and I like helped write the certificate, make the certificate for PrimusGFS many years ago, and for the training, like for the auditor training certificate.
An auditor, a subcontracted auditor, didn't go and do the training for Primus, GFS edited the PrimusGFS certificate so poorly that my technical manager and I were able to see it. Like it was just, you could just see it. And then we asked about it. We're like, so did you actually go to this training that you were supposed to?
Yeah. No, you didn't. You didn't. This certificate is not real and I can't hire you. I can't keep you on here. I have to fi... have to fire you as why are you firing me as an auditor? I just, I just missed the training. You falsified a document and you're an auditor. What? Not only did you falsify a document, you falsified a document where the two people who helped make this document 10 years ago. Like you and you knew that.
Francine L Shaw: So I have let people like just [00:36:00] fabricate the entire thing that they're telling me. Just just the entire story. And sit there and just listen. People can't see me nodding my head. Just listen to all of it, and then I'll be like, so let me tell you how I know that you're not telling me the truth. Let me show you.
Melody Ge: I wanna see or her face the reaction.
Francine L Shaw: Just let me show you how I know that you're not telling me the truth. Yeah. And you pull out all of this information. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you're gonna lie to me. Make sure Yeah. That you know what you're doing.
Melody Ge: Yeah. Yeah. And another thing quite important and we wanna build up is like witness audit. Supervising audit. Yeah. That way you can have good auditors. I don't want the audience think they are living in a world that food is out of control. We still have a lot of heroes. Yes. Behind the scene to make food safe. The good [00:37:00] auditors will hopefully train and mentor the problematic auditors and then so we can have a sustained pipeline.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah. Yeah.
The horror stories are the ones that are easy to remember and they're entertaining. That's right. They're entertaining. True. We share those. We have way more good days than we do bad days. Yes, yes. And there are a lot of people out there doing good things. Yes. So.
Matt Regusci: Yes, that is absolutely and 100% accurate.
Like again, we had 400 subcontractors and two different continents and I can name on my two hands, like really bad auditors that like really messed things up. I might have more than that. Yeah, I agree. There were, I agree. There were a lot of different degrees of good to bad, to absolutely terrible. But the good and the great auditors, yeah, are absolutely amazing.
'cause the life is so tough. I would interview every new full-time and [00:38:00] subcontracted auditor before we brought them on. I would do the initial interview, then they would go through the whole process with my technical team. But I would do that initial interview because I would explain to them what the life is like as an auditor.
Mm-hmm. And I would say like, are you okay flying then working all day? Or if it's a, if it's a multi-day audit, being at the facility multiple days, where most of the time people don't actually want you there because you're slowing things down and you're finding things. So are you able to, to on little sleep, manage people well and then.
Every night you're doing your, you're making your reports. Every break, you're checking corrective actions. Like you never get a break as an auditor because it's not like you go perform an audit. You write a report, you find your non-conformances, you hand it to them. With the GFSI, you have to review those non-conformances.
You have a technical manager that's finding faults in your own report. You're going back and [00:39:00] forth with the auditee about the corrective actions, and so it's not like you do it and then you're done over the next couple few weeks, there's follow up on each of those audits, and you have multiple audits in a week, right?
Depending upon the type of audit you're performing and how big the audit is. Sometimes it's one audit a week, but sometimes it's two or three. Or in agriculture, it could be dozens of audits in a week. Are you okay with that? Are you okay not really having your life? Now, the good thing about this is if you have a little bit of a career and you wanna really grow your career.
As an auditor in three years, you've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, just about faster every business model you could possibly think of in the food industry. And so you could write your ticket in the industry because everybody wants to hire their food safety manager as an auditor.
Melody Ge: It's phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
And just the short, such a short, brief description you just had. See how many skills auditor needs, like all those [00:40:00] multitasking, leadership, manage the conflicts, all that, be able to talk, carry a tough conversation. So all those we are gonna have in the EAGLE Auditor School, we called it Fly Institute, by the way, our President Brad Shield, to give the name fly with the EAGLE. The sky is the limit. We truly wanna reflect this 'cause we have good auditors. How we can influence others is what we really wanna focus on and train auditors. Yeah.
Matt Regusci: That's, that's a lot nicer than see the bunny from really, really high. Go down with your tallons. Kill the bunny and eat it. That's.
Francine L Shaw: On that note, I just wanted to say all the stories that we're telling people need to understand. That's a cumulative, like 70 years experience sitting here. Oh, yeah. That we're telling these stories over. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah.
Matt Regusci: yeah. Well. Melody, I am so glad we finally gotta have you on here. Before we go, I have a couple questions.
You've been to Food Safety [00:41:00] Consortium for many years now. How many years have you gone to Food Safety Consortium?
Melody Ge: Oh gosh, I don't know. More than 10, 10, 12. Don't know. Yeah. Well there was couple. They stopped during the COVID.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. I dunno. Why would they do that?
Melody Ge: I know, right? Somebody. How long is Food Safety Tech?
I started when they were in Chicago and then New Jersey. And then here. Yeah, definitely some 10.
Matt Regusci: So what's your favorite thing about Food Safety Consortium?
Melody Ge: Let me think. Ask if you'd like. Yes, of course. Yes, yes, it's right. It's you guys. It's meeting the friends, making the connection, the networking. 'cause sometimes being a food safety and quality professionals, we do feel lonely.
When you walk in a conference room, everybody is against you. You are your, you are there by yourself. Defend. This is the law, this is the practice. And then when you come to a conference like this, you feel belong. Like you are not alone. Oh, [00:42:00] she, he, and he and what company also have a, a same challenge getting the swab approved.
Right. Oh, he and me also have a challenge getting their frontline worker wearing hair nets. So instantly those connection, almost like a fewer station make you, oh, I'm pumped again tomorrow. I, it will be all good to go back and then do the job daily. I guess that's really the part I like. About the Consortium, and it's a cozy conference too.
You get to talk to the speaker, learn from them, and you engage with vendors, learn the new methods, new research out there. So yeah, that would be my favorite part.
Matt Regusci: We, we, we used you without name last year as a story of just how awesome Food Safety Consortium is because you showed up here in the middle of an emergency within your company.
I, we watched people around you and nobody was like, grilling you for information or whatever. It was just like, [00:43:00] oh, I saw people hugging you. I saw all this different type of stuff. You, then you still showed up to give your talk. Yeah. Then you left tonight. Tonight. Yes. Yes. And you were out because you had to go.
It was memorable. You, the emergency room and not emergency room, but the emergency that you have with your company. And it was actually beautiful to watch 'cause we were over there, right. And so we could see both sides and Oh, I see. Yeah. We were, sorry I'm pointing someplace in a podcast that doesn't work.
We were in a different part of conference where we could see both sides of the conference and I just felt like, oh my gosh, this really truly is home here for food safety professionals at Food Safety Consortium.
Francine L Shaw: Absolutely. Yep. I agree with what he's saying because it's like we understand the tragedy, what was happening, and to feel what you must have been feeling at that moment was just nice to see the people that were supporting you.
Melody Ge: Yeah. And then you learn from here, they're experts in lis, like in Listeria in salmonella. You learn from them, they give you advices. So it's really, [00:44:00] it's home. It is really feeling welcomed here. Yeah.
Matt Regusci: If there was anything you would change or add to Food Safety Consortium, what would it be?
Melody Ge: Oh, that's another good question.
Let me more people get to come here. Yeah, we're in Washington, DC and yeah, more people. Let me, I guess maybe one of the things, let me think. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. It's good. More sessions, more diverse sessions on both the new emerging issues versus the fundamental things might help more younger generation who just started food safety career, might be. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Matt Regusci: Very cool. Yes. Okay. Well Melody, don't eat poop.