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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!
Francine Shaw (00:00.482)
Hmm
Matt Regusci (00:01.369)
Hello, alo, Francie.
Francine Shaw (00:03.131)
Good morning, We are.
Matt Regusci (00:04.835)
Why? We are doing something a little new today.
Yeah, we're recording on a new software for our podcast. So this will be fun.
Francine Shaw (00:16.078)
It will be.
Matt Regusci (00:19.181)
Yeah. What does D.
Francine Shaw (00:21.954)
bit of an adjustment, but we'll see what happens. We'll acclimate.
Matt Regusci (00:25.057)
Yeah. Theoretically three theoretically this should be easier to edit.
Francine Shaw (00:30.592)
And that's what we're told.
Matt Regusci (00:33.421)
Hopefully clearer? I don't know. We'll be find out. All right. But that is not the conversation of today. The conversation of today is the CDC finally came out with the outbreak information on the two infant formulas that had sickened kiddos with botulism.
Francine Shaw (00:57.71)
Babies with botulism is not good.
Matt Regusci (01:01.657)
Botulism isn't good in general. Babies with botulism is not good at all. It's really, really bad. and it's really sad too because these both of these brands that are implicated in this this outbreak are f really amazing brands. And we we have this conversation all the time. Like anybody who's been listening to our show for the last is it three years now? Is it three years?
Francine Shaw (01:05.614)
It's really bad.
Francine Shaw (01:30.51)
It is three years.
Matt Regusci (01:32.505)
Holy cow.
Francine Shaw (01:34.99)
Three and a half, right? Is it three and a half?
Matt Regusci (01:36.345)
Three and a half years. Three and a half. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Yeah, it's three and a half years. Wow. This commitment. okay, so anybody who's listened to this show for like three and a half years has listened. We are not a brand bashing show. Sometimes we can be, but really they have to like really mess up and then continually mess up and then and then not show that they're trying to get themselves fixed or anything like that. Yeah. What are we gonna say?
Francine Shaw (02:14.573)
And it's not necessarily the brand per se, it's the policies, the procedures that, maybe it is the brand, I don't know.
Matt Regusci (02:25.154)
Well, it's for these two, I don't for these two, I don't believe so. I know both of these brands very, very well. both of these brands are my clients, were my clients, and they really, really believe and in in their products. They really, really believe in creating amazing innovative things to make products to make babies healthier and live better lives.
This is a whoops. And this is a whoops that I wouldn't have even guessed it. Like with so many years in food safety, I I wouldn't have even thought of this problem. And now it's now it's on everybody's radar. and this is this is one of those that we talk about a lot. It's a supplier issue. It was it's it's a fantastic brand. Both of these are fantastic brands.
That happened to be using the same supplier, and the same supplier had the same issue. And so both of them were implicated in this. And now, now, are all of the infant formula companies looking at this now? 100%. Were they before? No. They were not. I don't think so. Like, like, because I've been talking to
Francine Shaw (03:44.844)
Great.
Matt Regusci (03:49.742)
Different companies and the the test for botulism is really, really hard. It's like the like we're talking about the the test for cyclospora. It's it's not easy. And it it's when you're looking at pathogens, E. coli, salmonella, listeria, et cetera, et cetera, right? You can there's really easy, inexpensive tests to test for those things. then there are more complicated things like botulism, like cyclospora, et cetera.
Should they be testing it? Well now they are. But but were they before? No, because it's complicated, it's hard, it's it's it's it's it's very expensive. They didn't there was never really a big issue in it. So they they they they weren't, you know?
Francine Shaw (04:35.733)
You know, it's one of those things it's like, you know, well, we never really tested it for this because it wasn't that big of a deal. But oops, we just made 30,000 people sick. Maybe we should start testing for it now with the cyclospora.
Matt Regusci (04:47.201)
Yeah, yeah, you're combining outbreaks. Yeah.
Francine Shaw (04:49.901)
Right, right. No, no, no. You mentioned cyclospora a minute ago. So it's like with botulism, it's like, oops, you know, we put babies in the hospital or, you know, fortunately none of those babies died or, you know, a couple hundred, I don't know, this says sick and 48 babies across 98, across 19 states, 98 states, I'm adding states there.
Matt Regusci (05:11.341)
Ninety eight states. Okay, Trump, we're adding Canada, we're adding Mexico, we're adding South America, we're adding Central America. Then we can get to about ninety-eight states.
Francine Shaw (05:14.411)
just acquired another country. Look, you know...
Francine Shaw (05:22.591)
It's in the news, it could happen.
Matt Regusci (05:29.739)
I forgot Iceland or Greenland.
Francine Shaw (05:29.966)
Being dyslexic today, I'm transposing numbers.
Francine Shaw (05:36.589)
Anyway, the 48 and the 19, I don't know, I mixed them together. you know, at that point you have to start.
looking at things and thinking, we test this? Well, probably. Test for this, probably.
Matt Regusci (05:57.924)
Yeah, okay, so here's here here's what I find interesting though. Like this this outbreak this outbreak started way early this year. And the CDC and the FDA are just coming out right now, naming the supplier. Like
Francine Shaw (06:15.575)
Why do you sound surprised?
Matt Regusci (06:20.319)
I'm not surprised. I'm just sad. I'm like, seriously, come on.
Francine Shaw (06:27.981)
I mean, you know, on the upside, they are naming a supplier.
Matt Regusci (06:31.577)
Ha ha ha ha.
Matt Regusci (06:38.681)
I guess we should celebrate small wins, huh?
Francine Shaw (06:42.477)
Mm-hmm.
Francine Shaw (06:46.177)
Hey, I'm just happy to know that after the morning I've had, still have it.
Francine Shaw (06:54.197)
sarcasm is still there.
Matt Regusci (06:58.467)
So this is this was on food food safety news and on Marlar blog talking about the supplier. So on on Marler blog, he he he he writes this intro very, very well. So I'm just gonna read it. Two different infant formula brands made by different companies on different continents, sickened infants with botulism, seven months apart. What
The two products had in common was not a factory. It was an ingredient. FDA's traceback determined that the Biharts formula implicated in November 2025 outbreak and the Nora organic formula implicated in the 2026 outbreak were both made by an organic whole milk supplier supplied by organic west milk.
And spray-dried into a powder by dairy farmers of America. On August 27th, 2026, the laboratory work caught up to the paperwork. Whole genome sequencing showed that C botulism isolated from an infant sickened by Nora formula is a gener genetic match to the C botulism isolated from the infant sickened by the Biheart formula.
To a powdered infant formula base sampled and collected by in the Bihart investigation, and to four samples of unopened cans of BiHeart formula. The same organism reached babies through two brands, only one place to supply to the only place the two supply chains overlapped is upstream of both formula plants at the milk and at the dryer.
So this is this is what's absolutely fascinating, by the way. My whole entire career has been in supply chain food safety. And it's rarely, it's rarely the packing house and the processing plant. It can be the pro the packing house and processing processing plant and the packing house, like for the actual CPG products, like the commands or their their actual plants.
Matt Regusci (09:18.509)
Or like the marketing companies and produce, the packing houses, the processing plants, they can cr make the problem worse. Okay. So how would they make the problem worse? Okay, so you like put the you put the you create the product, say a whole milk product, and then you don't sanitize correctly and you create another infant formula product that isn't whole milk.
And all of a sudden now you could have contaminated the line or whatever. You can make it worse. But rarely is it the plant that is doing it. It a lot of times is the supplier. So you're getting product that is contaminated in a lot of different ways. It could be contaminated by a pathogen, it could be contaminated by a chemical, it could be contaminated by heavy metals, it could be contaminated by glass and shards and stuff like that. And you're you're throwing it in.
Now the plant could also be the one that's adding like metal shards and glass and that type of stuff too, which is why there's metal detectors and stuff. But a lot of times when it's when it's pathogenic and it's it's systemic, a lot of times it's introduced by the if it's not listeria, it's introduced by or it could be listeria too, but it's introduced by a supplier. And that's exactly what we're seeing here. Now, when I say listeria,
Listeria could be in the plant, right? Listeria most likely is in the plant. Your job is to figure out in food safety professionals where that is constantly and kill it. seek and destroy. But with the botulism side, this this this came directly from a supplier. Now, with the botulism, it could be, you know, a problem with your packaging or whatever as well. But this particular thing came directly from a supplier. So it's fascinating.
like figuring out where the outbreak started. Was it the plant? Was it the supplier? What supplier? How far back did it go? Because a lot of times, like this supplier,
Matt Regusci (11:25.215)
Organic West Milk supplied their milk to dairy farmers of America. Dairy Farmers of America spray-dried that product and sold it to Nora and to Bihart. So like Nora and Byhart may not even know who the subsupplier is. They just know they got their product from Dairy Farmers of America. Well, Dairy Farmers of America is one of the largest dairy companies in the world.
So why wouldn't that be a good product? You are getting your product from a very reputable organization. Like as a kid, I did work for my grandpa, who was a dairy consultant, and he did work directly for Dairy Farmers of America. they're they're massive. so it's it's hard, it's really sad.
Francine Shaw (12:06.317)
you
Matt Regusci (12:23.831)
It's really sad on every single level. It's sad for the families and the babies. It's sad for the brands, sad for Nora and for Bihart. And it's it's a complete and total misstep by the supply chain. So Dairy Farmers America wasn't testing this for botulism, which we could all say they should have, but they didn't.
Francine Shaw (12:30.103)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Regusci (12:50.783)
Organic West Milk wasn't testing it for botulism. We could say they should have. They didn't. and then okay, so at the CBG side, the, you know, they're doing supplier checks, but botulism wasn't part of those supplier checks because they didn't think about it. but it this is where we talk about a lot of times, Francine, that new food safety practices get implemented based upon outbreaks and recalls.
Francine Shaw (13:15.959)
Thank
Matt Regusci (13:19.895)
Like the lettuce industry wasn't testing for E. coli prior to all the issues with E. coli. The tomato industry wasn't testing for salmonella until all the issues with salmonella. The whole industry itself wasn't really testing for listeria other than use for sanitization practices up until there was issues with listeria. So like this just it just sucks it hit these he hit these two brands and and that the kids got sick.
Francine Shaw (13:47.283)
Right. Well, again, and it's another situation where is.
Are most people even gonna know about this? They're gonna remember the brands, not the supplier, right? These brands made babies sick.
Matt Regusci (13:58.894)
The brands. Yeah.
Matt Regusci (14:04.483)
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's like yeah.
Francine Shaw (14:07.679)
We know about it. People that listen to us know about it. People that read this type of information know about it. But the general public, consumers, all they know is these brands made babies sick.
Matt Regusci (14:21.827)
Yep. Yep.
Francine Shaw (14:25.259)
And ultimately they chose their supplier. And yes, you would have assumed that these would be reputable suppliers and they are, but that's what made the baby so.
Matt Regusci (14:41.785)
I think they're gonna be the brands are gonna come out fine the end because the the because they've built a lot of consumer trust and they have a really good way of of explaining everything and they're they're they're gonna be just fine. But the the downstream side of things, you know, what's gonna happen with with these suppliers? Are they gonna are they gonna like fix this problem? Are they gonna or or is this are they completely blacklisted? yeah.
It's
Francine Shaw (15:11.991)
So I would think that the brands could find a way to force them to fix this problem.
Matt Regusci (15:19.917)
Uh-huh.
Matt Regusci (15:23.715)
Yeah. Yeah.
Francine Shaw (15:25.065)
directly or indirectly.
Matt Regusci (15:27.693)
Yeah. Yeah. And they're going to they're gonna have way checks. Yes.
Francine Shaw (15:29.005)
I would think they would want to fix this problem.
You know?
Matt Regusci (15:44.537)
It's it's crazy. It's like when
You d you know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of remember when we were talking about Wanabana? The
Francine Shaw (15:56.422)
You know, it's funny you're saying that because I thought about that just a few minutes ago. Yes.
Matt Regusci (16:02.347)
It's the same thing. Like, it's not like Wanabana was like, hey, you know what? Let's get a whole bunch of kids sickened with lead poisoning. No, quite the opposite. They were trying to give the kids a fantastic product. And they had it wasn't even their supplier. It was their sub sub supplier that was adding iron stuff to like doing food fraud.
Francine Shaw (16:18.155)
Right.
Matt Regusci (16:30.711)
to the it in in adding like yes, it was lead. It was huge amounts of lead.
Francine Shaw (16:34.071)
Was it lead?
It was led to the, it was the cinnamon, right?
Matt Regusci (16:39.341)
Yeah, it was a cinnamon. They were adding lead and stuff to the cinnamon as food fraud. Yeah. Yeah.
Francine Shaw (16:44.311)
to make weights, right?
Yeah.
Matt Regusci (16:50.411)
Okay, that is evil. This this is not evil. This is a this is a complete and total misstep. and just not like this is this is basically ignorance. Like nobody knew that this was in there, and then now they found out. The other one with Wanabana with the the the supplier from Ecuador, that that supplier of the cinnamon was that was evil. They they were completely doing food fraud. They were
And and and how somebody adds a bunch of lead to cinnamon and doesn't think they're gonna get caught is fascinating to me.
Francine Shaw (17:28.522)
Well...
Francine Shaw (17:32.427)
guess it would depend on where the product was going, right?
Matt Regusci (17:39.834)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, listen, we're just gonna get a bunch of people in in Central America, South America, and Mexico sick by just selling it into those countries, then who cares? Nobody's checking it, right? Like, my gosh, that's even also evil.
Francine Shaw (17:41.345)
Think about that.
Francine Shaw (17:56.718)
Well, I mean, think about it. Well, yes, it's evil, but what's the likelihood? What countries are you more likely to be caught in?
Matt Regusci (18:09.387)
Europe, America, Asian like East Asian countries.
Like Singapore, Japan, Korea, you wanna talk about really strict food safety expectations? Holy cow. They make our FDA look like a joke.
Francine Shaw (18:28.503)
So.
Francine Shaw (18:33.121)
Mac.
Matt Regusci (18:33.995)
that's a bad example. Sorry. We're gonna get on YouTube. I can't wait 'cause people get to see our facial features. It's gonna be great.
Francine Shaw (18:49.323)
My facial expressions will be memes before we know it.
Matt Regusci (18:52.921)
Like this makes FDA look like a joke and Francis' face is like, duh.
Matt Regusci (19:03.961)
my gosh. Okay, so solution for this. Okay, so if you're a CPG brand and you're like the food safety regulatory compliance side of CPG, and you're looking at, I'm just thinking about food safety culture. Like, how could somebody have figured this out beforehand? Right? Like, could they have? Yes.
But you know, like, okay, so right like in supply chain, when you're creating risk assessments, okay. And you're creating risk assessments on, you know, supplier profiles, you're supp you're creating risk assessments based on products, you're creating risk assessments based on region, like all these different types of things. Okay. And so you're trying to figure out what what things should we be testing.
randomly testing from our suppliers, right? you tend to look at what the past was. Okay. So like lettuce and E. coli is a perfect example. Should we do random checks for lettuce and E. coli? yes, we should because that that's there. cyclospora wasn't on that list, really. I mean it should have been because there have been outbreaks in the past, but it's not like it wasn't prevalent. Is that going to be on there now?
Potentially. Depends on the the the company and what it is that they're that you know, how big of a risk profile their brand wants to take, you know? But so you but but I think Taylor Farms is gonna test for it. I think one hundred percent.
Francine Shaw (20:41.119)
Taylor Farms is going to test for it?
Francine Shaw (20:48.115)
Be foolish not to
Matt Regusci (20:49.943)
I I I I think in the future Taylor Farms is gonna test for this.
I think I let me let me rephrase this. Is Taylor Farms gonna test for Cyclospora in their pl in their plants in Salinas? This is a perfect example. In Salinas and Yuma? Probably not. Okay. But are they gonna test for it in Mexico? I'm guessing they will in the future. This one was so big that it was such a big whoops. I think they are. So that goes back to
Francine Shaw (21:14.067)
Right.
Matt Regusci (21:26.423)
You know, you look at the product and then you look at the risk and you look at the region of that product and you also look at the risk. So on this
Matt Regusci (21:38.422)
What would happen, say, if a food safety professional regulatory person said, listen, here are all the different potential problems. And they just list out every single pathogen, virus, poison that could be in the product. And it's like, we need to test, do random tests for all of these, regardless of expecting that we're gonna see it. How many
Companies would put a budget together to do that. my guess is very few. It would be awesome if it was done, but my guess is very few.
Francine Shaw (22:14.375)
Right.
I would agree with you.
Matt Regusci (22:21.783)
Because if they had done that, then they would have found this in a random check.
Matt Regusci (22:29.005)
But like I said, like this botulism test, cyclospora test, there's they're they're really expensive. They're not normal tests yet. Now the testing the testing instrument companies that create like PCR tests and all this different type of stuff, I bet they're gonna create some sort of kit to do this, but the kit's gonna be expensive.
I don't know.
Francine Shaw (22:58.705)
It'll be interesting to see what we see next year at the Food Safety Summit as a result.
Francine Shaw (23:10.619)
As far as products that might be available. Even what might happen at the consortium. As far as what's been developed, what people are developing, products that are being developed as a result of this outbreak, like to make testing easier or less expensive, or you understand what I'm saying?
Matt Regusci (23:15.991)
Matt Regusci (23:19.957)
I see what you're saying.
Matt Regusci (23:33.786)
I know exactly. I totally get what you're saying. So for context, because I can I can I cannot read Francine's mind. We have established this in the 10 years that we've known each other. But I've gotten pretty good at understanding what you say sometimes. So when we go to these conferences, not listening to the talks about what brands are saying or what all this like professionals are saying at the talks, but actually at the testing.
booths because every t testing company that's selling whatever testing kit or blah blah blah blah is always featuring something new at food safety consortium at food safety summit. What are they? Do are they gonna have kits for this? That is that is great. We will have to ask when we're at food safety consortium, we'll have to talk to those testing companies and see like, do they have kits for this?
Francine Shaw (24:24.999)
people will even come up to us and share that information. So we don't necessarily have to seek it out or look for it. People will come to us and share that information.
Matt Regusci (24:27.702)
Yeah. Yes.
Matt Regusci (24:37.228)
Yeah.
Francine Shaw (24:39.506)
about what they're developing or what's been developed or at these various conferences. U I get emails all the time.
emails and LinkedIn messages and
Francine Shaw (24:55.707)
Not soliciting that, by the way.
Matt Regusci (25:00.505)
Okay, and this is, I mean, this is a real, this is a real ponderable question. Like, this is a real question. Because when I was working with companies and helping companies to do like risk assessments, and you know, my teams are I was working with consultants that would do this type of stuff and they would call me up and ask me questions, like what is the right thing to do? Blah, blah, blah. Always in the past, it was like,
Francine Shaw (25:02.321)
Matt Regusci (25:28.813)
When I would consult with companies on this, it was look at the risk by product and by region, right? Go research what is found by product and by region, all risks. you know, chemical heavy metals, pathogens, viruses, et cetera, et cetera. Look at all that and then add then do your random sampling based upon random testing based upon that.
Francine Shaw (25:44.681)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Regusci (25:57.368)
I would say too, but if you want like an over encompassing thing, you know, occasionally test for everything. Just see. Nobody would do that. Nobody nobody got a budget to do that. So like you
Francine Shaw (26:13.561)
Well,
What do we know about food safety budgets?
Matt Regusci (26:20.077)
They're v very they're they're very small.
Francine Shaw (26:23.856)
And whenever they do need to pull for food safety because something has happened, where do they typically pull that from? That money because they haven't allocated. They end up pulling it from marketing or somewhere because you know, marketing budgets are huge. So they don't have the budgets for I don't know why they that they don't see food safety as an investment. They see it as an expense until they have some kind of major outbreak. And then suddenly it's important for a while.
Matt Regusci (26:54.958)
Yes.
Yeah, and it's interesting because most of the time food safety budgets kind of fall under operation budget, right? So it's not part of marketing. It w marketing budget's very different. It's not sales. It tends to fall under operations. And the best operators I know don't want to spend any money, right? Because operations is tied to ebita, profitability. So the like the two things that
Francine Shaw (27:09.041)
No, it's not.
Francine Shaw (27:17.021)
But sometimes
Francine Shaw (27:26.697)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Regusci (27:26.905)
You know, how do you increase your profitability? People go, we sell more. Well, that doesn't mean you increase your profitability. Revenue doesn't increase profitability. operations increases profitability. so sometimes operations goes and does caps, cap X, and buys a piece of equipment. Does that increase your profitability? Depends on how you put it on the balance sheet and how you pay it off. But it may be worth the investment short term.
To decrease profitability in order to over the long term increase profitability, right? So you get a new piece of equipment, lowers labor, or creates makes things faster, makes things more efficient, and then over a period of time you you increase profitability. So with operations, they never want to spend money ever. and and I know this because I like
Every company I have, like I've either been the the chief operating officer or I've been the chief revenue officer or been the chief executive officer, right? but like when I'm the CEO or CRO, I'm looking to my my COO to figure out how to increase profitability. And so so pitting food safety to a budget where they literally
Want don't want to spend money. And their job is not to spend money. Their job is to spend as little money as possible to increase profitability. Then yeah, they're never gonna do with they're gonna look at it and go, why are we doing all this testing? Because there might be a problem with the product somewhere, but we don't know. So that's where we're just testing this. And they're gonna be like, yeah, no. What are you what are you talking about?
Matt Regusci (29:18.723)
So this is where food safety culture.
This is where this changes if the whole company is 100% backed that we're going to protect, we're going to do no harm, we're going to like brand value above all else. And so we're going to go and we're just going to test for everything, not all the time. Like we're going to test for what the potential risks are.
For that product in that region pretty frequently, but occasionally, a few times a year, you know, like once every other month, once a month, whatever, we're just gonna randomly pull and test for everything. that would be where the differences between and in when I say food safety culture, like a lot of these companies do have a food safety culture, do have a good food safety culture, but they just don't.
There there hasn't been really defined expectations on what that means. And this is where this is one of those few times where we can really say, like, this would be something that would be good for companies to do. And it would protect the brand from something that they don't even know, and that the industry doesn't even know is a problem.
Francine Shaw (30:44.734)
Right.
Francine Shaw (30:53.385)
I wonder like insurance companies, because this costs insurance companies a fortune when they have an outbreak. Like what kind of incentives do they offer? Do they offer incentives for testing and for things of that nature? Because
might be to their benefit if they did.
Matt Regusci (31:19.073)
Yeah. So I I think I've told you this before. I've actually gone into I don't know, a handful of conversations with a handful of different insurance companies over the 25 years of doing this. And there's there's a few different key departments in insurance companies. Okay. So you have the product people that create products. You ha and they're really tied to they're like kind of the in between.
Between the actuaries and the salespeople, and you have the product people, right? So I always end up having these conversations with the, with the the people who are who run the team that sells these products out to farmers, packing houses, processors, et cetera, et cetera. The insurance. And the product people, right? So okay, how can we provide a discount to companies that are doing food safety? So we end up down this long rabbit hole.
Okay. And we we I I help them define what it would look like, you know, risk for testing, risk like how to minimize risk based on testing, how to minimize risk based on audits, how to minimize risk, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Every single time now, like I literally will not talk to an insurance company now without the actuaries on board. Okay. So the eggheads are the actuaries, and they're the ones that build up all the numbers, right? And so blah, blah, blah, blah.
Francine Shaw (32:40.637)
Right.
Francine Shaw (32:44.049)
The A cats.
Matt Regusci (32:47.811)
Well, they start going in and they're like, well, how do we define that that lab is actually doing the right thing? How do we define whether that auditing company is doing the right thing? Like this auditor, what happens if this auditor is just giving 100%? What happens if this if there's an issue with the tests in here and we give a discount and then that laboratory, there's so many other variables that end up coming up that that mess up the actuary, and every single time it's done.
Now, are there food safety discounts? I think some insurance companies are, but I'm not quite sure like like like how it works because every single insurance company that I've done these projects with completely dies when it gets to the actuaries.
Francine Shaw (33:31.961)
So years ago on the retail side, I used to do audits for insurance companies that were providing discounts to various facilities.
that fell within the audit standards or on on the retail side. But you know, how how they managed that I can't I can't tell you. They hired me to do their third party audits. The insurance companies.
Matt Regusci (34:02.84)
Yeah.
Matt Regusci (34:06.403)
Huh. I I wonder if the retail side is just less complex than the than the supplier side. What what are they looking for in the
Francine Shaw (34:14.174)
I so
Francine Shaw (34:18.557)
I'm gonna tell you that I in some ways I think I think so.
Matt Regusci (34:29.655)
Because if okay, so if you're like on the retail side and you're like at a restaurant or you're at a
Or if you're at a like a like a grocery store or something like that, a deli, right? You're insuring that individual restaurant, that individual deli. And making sure that, you know, are they washing their hands, are they doing all this different type of stuff? If there's a supplier issue, it's going to be contained, it's it's it's it's going it's not gonna be contained to that individual store, right?
There'll be a bunch of different retail outlets that get people sick, like we saw with the Cyclosporo, like we saw with this. Two brands implicated in one supplier issue. So I think ensuring that individual restaurant or retail outlet.
Francine Shaw (35:10.205)
Right. Right.
Francine Shaw (35:23.729)
It not just a restaurant though. You're looking at just like for don't. So for if let's say it was a corporate entity or something. You know what I mean? Because these weren't I wasn't doing these audits for like a single restaurant. It'd be for like a
Matt Regusci (35:40.663)
No, no, you're doing it for like a big chain. Yeah.
Francine Shaw (35:45.329)
Right, or for let's say casinos or for right
Matt Regusci (35:53.166)
Right. So then you're like, but if there's a supplier issue, it rolls downhill. So like if something goes if some if if if a supplier if it's a supplier issue, is is Walmart gonna get sued? Yes. Is the restaurant gonna get sued? Yes. But then they just suit countersue their suppliers, right? And so it goes down the line, or the insurance companies do.
Francine Shaw (35:58.823)
Right. A hundred percent.
Francine Shaw (36:07.197)
Yes.
Francine Shaw (36:14.237)
Well, and the from the inspection auditing standpoint, you're looking at everything from the point where that product was delivered forward.
Matt Regusci (36:27.065)
Mm-hmm.
Francine Shaw (36:29.149)
From right.
Francine Shaw (36:35.498)
For example, they just delivered seafood and it's been sitting in the warehouse now for three hours and nobody's put it in the refrigerator or freezer because l you know, it was lunchtime and everybody got off their forklift and went to lunch.
Matt Regusci (36:42.753)
Never happens, Francine.
Matt Regusci (36:51.373)
That never happens.
Francine Shaw (36:52.689)
Mm.
Matt Regusci (36:56.408)
Yeah.
Francine Shaw (36:57.019)
It indeed did.
Matt Regusci (37:02.649)
Mm.
Man, you know what, you know what makes our job interesting, I think, well, at least I think for us, what makes it interesting is how complex and complicated it really is. And how there's always something new that comes up. like I tell my team all the time: if you're bored in food safety, you're really doing something wrong.
You need to find a different career because there's no way you could be bored. There's always something.
Francine Shaw (37:39.683)
And there's just so many different aspects of what we what we do. You know, there's so many different realms in the industry that if you get tired of one, you can do something different if you really want to, you know. because like I I've at this point worked in every single area of food safety. You know, lately I've been thinking like.
Matt Regusci (37:57.688)
Yes.
Francine Shaw (38:08.359)
I haven't written anything for a while. I'd really like to start writing again. Cause I haven't written anything for quite a while that I've, you know, for this been published. I mean, I write all the time, but post on LinkedIn. But so you mean if you if if if you want to, you can a podcast, you can I mean you can move from one
part of the industry from it just it's not complicated if it's something that you really want to do. You just need to cr create a strategy and make it happen.
Matt Regusci (38:53.623)
You have to make a strategy. Sometimes things just fall into your lap. Like you and I meeting on LinkedIn. That's been a ten year evolution.
Francine Shaw (38:59.699)
Right.
It's been longer now, probably.
Matt Regusci (39:05.197)
Yeah.
Matt Regusci (39:08.717)
Yeah. Okay. This this is probably I don't know if this is this is this is one of our more unique podcasts, I think that we've done because this is like a lot of ponderabilities in this. There's just like a a lot of things that can be learned from this.
And
I I but I I'm I'm not sure how long it's gonna take the industry to learn this. and and who's who who's going to who's going to do it.
Francine Shaw (39:40.905)
That was another YouTube moment. how long does it take to learn anything? I mean, I just I'm not being negative, but just be realistic. I it takes so long for anything to happen and it's so difficult. It just seems so difficult.
To get people to understand the value. Like how many different ways can you say food safety is important?
Matt Regusci (40:07.852)
Yeah.
Matt Regusci (40:12.941)
A lot. And it like yeah. You know what you know what I think is
is interesting is because my degree is in change management and my whole entire career has been in food compliance and change management, sometimes I could be
A little philosophical, because it's my degree, philosophical in what change looks like. Like change does not happen overnight unless it has to happen overnight, right? So in just in life as well. Like you and I have had a conversation about my alcoholism. When did I stop drinking? when did that change happen? It happened overnight. Why? Because I knew I had to make a change and it was like instant, like
I was in basically a crisis mode. Went from not being in crisis mode to all of a sudden instantly crisis mode. And then, okay, well, I have to make drastic changes in my life. and but that doesn't happen unless there is an outbreak for most companies, right? Unless all of a sudden there is an an an crap moment, things don't instantly change.
Matt Regusci (41:36.835)
But man, it would be awesome if it did. Like 'cause one of my
Francine Shaw (41:40.893)
Right. Well, and I mean
We didn't even start talking about food safety in the food industry till what nineteen ninety three.
Matt Regusci (41:51.297)
Yeah, well I mean the FDA's good agricultural good manufacturing practices guidelines came out in nineteen ninety eight.
Francine Shaw (41:58.791)
And that was after the Jack in the Box outbreak. And I vividly remember when that happened because I was working, I was working specifically in a quick service restaurant. And we had fax machines and faxes and we didn't even have thermometers prior to that.
Matt Regusci (42:03.907)
That you too.
Matt Regusci (42:22.477)
Yeah. The Jungle was written in nineteen six, and that book was actually written to inspire communism. Upman Sinclair literally said, I went for people's hearts and ended up hitting their stomach.
The book was supposed to be about how do we change worker practices and and and and communism. And no, but it scared the living crap out of people. And like, wait, I'm eating what? yeah. Yeah. One of my mentors when I first started my career said, How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And he was he was meaning like Matt.
Francine Shaw (42:58.279)
It's become a food safety mantra.
Matt Regusci (43:15.447)
You need to slow down. Not everybody's gonna change super fast. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And my degree again changed management. I was like, okay. That just that is it was like it was a simple quote to help me understand what my role was, which was not to change everything overnight because it's not gonna happen. It's to change things slowly over a period of time, which is probably why I've been able to stay doing this for 25 years instead of going freaking insane. but man.
Sometimes I'm like
Francine Shaw (43:45.875)
And you have to learn to accept to change what you can and accept the small victories where they are.
Matt Regusci (43:50.839)
Yeah, it's yeah.
Francine Shaw (43:54.109)
I mean you really you really, really do. And then, you know, one day you look back and you see that, you know, there really were victories and they have accumulated over time, but because they were smaller victories, you didn't necessarily know how much was accomplished over that period of time.
Matt Regusci (44:16.141)
Yeah. That is that is 100% true. Food safety now compared to where we were in the beginning of our careers is a night and day difference. Night and day difference. Still cloudy during the daytime, but it's still daytime.
Francine Shaw (44:27.517)
a hundred percent.
It's marky. But yeah. We're still doing our part to try to make a difference.
Matt Regusci (44:38.283)
Yes. That is that is true.
Yeah. You know what w I'm gonna end this with with with a p piece of advice.
Francine Shaw (44:43.954)
We've made a difference. We've made a difference.
Matt Regusci (44:54.313)
If you are food safety in a particular category of food, and you have a particular spot in your supply chain that you are in, everybody is there. Everybody has a commodity or commodities that they're working with to build a product that they're marketing and selling, either to B2B or B2C, business to business or business to cust consumers. And
It is so easy to get siloed into your one product that you become the master of that one product, food safety-wise, risk-wise, all this different type stuff. That you don't look out into the broader world of all the other products and all the other problems and all those products. And then you get blindsided when something from another category all of a sudden creeps into yours.
And you don't you weren't prepared for it. I would say look out into the broader food safety world and see what is going on out there. And also what are other businesses doing for safety and all this different type of stuff? Because one of the greatest books I've ever read is The Power of Habits. And one of the greatest stories in the power of habits is about Al Koa and how he changed his whole entire co culture of
of his company by focusing on safety. It wasn't food safety. He was making aluminum products. It was safety. It was human safety. It was OSHA safety. But that one, that one story inspired me to understand what food safety culture could be like. And so that but that was a complete that was a business book, right? I think, I think we are just we we live in an industry
Francine Shaw (46:47.528)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Regusci (46:52.857)
Of very technical people that want to be the best at what they are doing now, that sometimes they forget that I can learn things from outside of my silo by branching out a little bit. Like, how many people in the CPG and the food industry are looking at what's going on with botulism this thing with with botulism in in infant formula? I don't know.
I'm guessing not much.
Francine Shaw (47:24.467)
Well, and th there are some people that are perfectly happy staying within their boundaries.
Matt Regusci (47:32.939)
Yes. But then you don't learn the risks of everything. Like we saw listeria creep up. Yeah. Man, but it's such good case studies for why they to add more checks.
Francine Shaw (47:34.717)
That's their comfort zone.
Francine Shaw (47:39.667)
Think do they want to?
That that's I mean
Francine Shaw (47:51.059)
What no I I'm not disagreeing with you. I I I'm way I've stepped way outside of my boundaries in a lot of I mean
Matt Regusci (47:52.93)
No, I I yeah.
Ha ha ha.
Francine Shaw (48:00.563)
Do I have boundaries? I don't know. I mean
Francine Shaw (48:09.103)
Yeah, I I I would think that they they would want to know, but I also know that I I'm smart enough to know that most people are comfortable staying in their lane and not making waves and doing what they need to do to
Matt Regusci (48:27.223)
Yeah.
Francine Shaw (48:34.865)
survive to do their jobs, to
Matt Regusci (48:39.641)
To stay hired.
Francine Shaw (48:39.722)
to collect a paycheck to it and not only that, but the industry has gotten so difficult that, you know, the a lot of people they're just simply working short staffed. And it's all they can do sometimes to just which anyway, it's a whole nother episode, but it it's just all they can do to get through the day sometimes, let alone, you know.
Think beyond that.
Matt Regusci (49:11.885)
Yep.
Francine Shaw (49:12.509)
And the people that do are the people that end up being the ones that we do see it at at seminars and at conferences that are trying to get out there, learn more, do more, understand more.
Matt Regusci (49:25.175)
Yeah. Yeah. Those are the ones we talked to at Food Safety Cassorium, Food Safety Summit, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we definitely beat this one to death. This is actually one of our longest podcasts.
Francine Shaw (49:39.297)
I want to say one more thing. Sometimes it takes somebody, maybe like you or I, or like, you know, Darren, the Hals, the the Bills, just saying, just stopping and talking to those people and letting them know that there are things outside their their walls. Because, you know, I've said this before, talking to Darren and Hal that day at the Food Safety Summit.
Matt Regusci (50:08.471)
Hmm. Right.
Francine Shaw (50:08.483)
change the trajectory of my career. Just simply just a simple conversation with them made me think, you know, hey, I can do I can do more at a higher level than what I'm doing now if I just change the way I'm doing things. Ultimately s you know, i it there's more there's more to this than simply, even though I was training a lot of people and, you know, we were doing a lot of we were doing a lot of training, we were doing a lot of in inspections and
consulting and things like that at the time. This was right before COVID. but I could reach more people at a different level by doing different things. So sometimes it just takes somebody that does what we do or what those individuals do, stopping and having a conversation with with people to let them know that
It is possible to reach people on another level. And that was just that wasn't them persuading me in any way. It was just conversation.
Hal and I talked about food allergens.
Matt Regusci (51:16.537)
How how many years ago was that? That was like what, fifteen years ago?
Francine Shaw (51:19.839)
my God. Well it was the last year that we they were at the the summit was in Baltimore, so God.
I don't know, it's been a while ago.
Matt Regusci (51:29.975)
Yeah. It's it's just amazing how influential people are.
Francine Shaw (51:32.317)
But that day, well, you know how I am. When I make up a decision, it's like
Matt Regusci (51:37.991)
I know. I know.
Matt Regusci (51:44.184)
Yeah.
Francine Shaw (51:44.579)
it's happening now. usually those decisions aren't made overnight, but once I make it so yeah, I mean once I made that decision, it I changed my trajectory pretty quickly.
Matt Regusci (52:04.183)
Yeah, so remember I was talking about like how to eat an elephant one bite at a time? Francine will look at an elephant at every single angle and then figure out what is the best way to consume that elephant one bite at a time, and then frickin' consume that elephant one bite at a time. One bite, just one bite.
Matt Regusci (52:29.817)
I I like I just
Francine Shaw (52:34.121)
Geometrically, what is the best angle?
Matt Regusci (52:38.253)
To get that in one bite. And then it's done. And then yeah.
Francine Shaw (52:43.402)
What's the best way to make this happen as quickly as possible?
Matt Regusci (52:51.673)
And it's so funny. You and I are similar in so many ways and we are different in so many more. I'm like, you did what, Fritzine? okay. I guess that's done. Okay.
Francine Shaw (52:59.124)
Yeah.
Francine Shaw (53:04.957)
So when when like yesterday
Matt Regusci (53:14.775)
Alright, well on that note, don't eat poop.