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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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Francine: [00:00:00] This does say, and the president should have said something, anything. It costs nothing, and it is most of the job. Twenty thousand nine hundred twenty-seven Americans are sick. Hundreds have been hospitalized, and people have been sick for weeks at a time with an illness that comes back in waves after you think it has ended.
He could have said, "This is real. My people are working on it. Here's what we know today, and here is where to find tomorrow's update." The joke about the lettuce is not the offense. Not having thought about it is the offense
Intro: Everybody's gotta eat, and nobody 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 Elshaw and Matt Regusci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule: don't eat poop.
[00:01:00] Don't eat poop.
Matt: Hello, hello Francine.
Francine: Good morning, good afternoon. I don't know. I have no idea what time of day it is anymore.
Matt: I know, we lose track of time together. It's hilarious. It's funny, if you and I had a reality TV show of all the conversations and all the stuff that we did before we actually recorded and after we recorded, I think that would be unhinged.
Francine: I don't know that they'd be able to air it. There'd be, like, disclaimers all over the place. There'd be, like, the starburst over here and the starburst over there, and a disclaimer up there and a disclaimer up there, and it would just be...
Matt: Uh, I think they could record it. Maybe it would only be aired on, like, X or on YouTube.
But even on YouTube, you probably couldn't have the... There were, like, no sponsors. Oh my gosh. Okay. So Francine found this article this morning and was like, "Oh my gosh, we have to talk [00:02:00] about this." Oh, man. Do you wanna open this up, Francine?
Francine: Yeah, sure. I'm sorry, I was-
Matt: Put your phone down, Francine.
Francine: That was an important message we just received there.
Matt: We both just received this, yes.
Francine: What outbreaks do to our, our lives is a little crazy.
Matt: It is crazy.
Francine: So, yeah. So you know, first of all, we just finished recording a session that covered three blog posts from Bill Marler, and this Cyclospora outbreak, which has now reached 20,927 individuals that we're aware of.
Matt: That we're aware of.
Francine: That we're aware of. We all know- A-
Matt: as of this recording, which could end up being 30, 40,000 by the time you listen to this. I mean,
Francine: that number was, you know, when this article was written sometime during the middle of the night. That number could, you know, who knows, 25,000 now. We don't know.
That number could be anything as quickly as it's [00:03:00] rising. And state Cyclospora count is 20,927 this morning. The president has said one thing about it. The secretary says it's under control. Here is what they should have said instead. And there's a picture of Trump and Kennedy over top of all these heads of lettuce.
Matt: Is that, that... I mean, that may be-
Francine: I think it is the right picture.
Matt: Yeah. '
Francine: Cause the article talks about both of them, and-
Matt: I'm thinking the lettuce itself. I, I-
Francine: Oh, that's the wrong picture- ... worry about that ... of the lettuce. Yeah, that's not the right kind of lettuce. That's
Matt: not the right kind of lettuce.
Francine: No.
That's us, our personalities.
Matt: Was it, like, Trump and RFK were at a lettuce field when this was done? It's just circles of their heads- Now it's a- ... on top of a lettuce picture ... for
Francine: them over pictures of... It, it is the wrong type of lettuce, but here we are analyzing the picture that they put their faces over.
Yes, somebody, they used the wrong type of lettuce. We digress.
Matt: You know what's crazy, though? So as a kid, I would go to work with my grandpa from, like, the time I was eight to the time I [00:04:00] was, I don't know, 22 years old. And we would drive up and down the Salinas Valley and the San Joaquin Valley, going and meeting with different dairies and stuff like that.
And while we're driving, my grandpa would make me name the crop that was in that field. And so as I went my career in food safety for produce, started my career in food safety and produce, I would do that with my team, too. We were driving up and down, I would have them name that crop, just so we didn't look like complete idiots when we're talking to farmers.
So, like, when I look at pictures now I'm like, "Is that
Francine: the right one?" The mistakes that I find in pictures that people post all the time are-
Matt: Oh, yeah ...
Francine: insane. I mean, it's- Yeah,
Matt: you're the same way, but with food safety, not having gloves, not having-
Francine: Yeah ...
Matt: yeah, proper PPE, not having the right equipment. Yes.
Francine: They need to teach those courses in marketing classes for people that ever want into this business. But anyway, that's a different class. That's a different conversation Anyway, [00:05:00] off topic
Matt: No, so in this article, which we'll have linked down below, he, 'cause Bill Marler is the author of this article, was like, "Hey, the federal government should have said something completely different about what is going on with the Cyclospora outbreak."
And he lists, like, a whole bunch of things that they should have said, which as we were reading this, we were like, "This would be awesome. Like, if this really happened, this would be awesome." And they still have time, because this outbreak is gonna keep going. So if anybody in the White House is listening to our show- You know
Francine: what?
You laugh, but there's quite a few members, people in the FDA and other members of-
Matt: Of government ... government A lot of government,
Francine: actually. A lot of the g- Yeah, probably a lot of government officials is what I'm looking to say, that listen to our podcast, which I think surprises both of us.
Matt: Probably not Donald Trump.
Probably not the, uh, I... RFK may, 'cause he's kind of a nerd on this type of stuff. But I'm guessing the press [00:06:00] secretary, maybe not. I, yeah, I don't know.
Francine: Probably not.
Matt: But if you are, this is a great article, and we're gonna go through some of these points. But he says that they shouldn't have said, so RFK said, "We have the outbreak under control."
He said, "Investigators have done extensive epidemiological forensics, that the source has been identified, and the companies involved had impacted a recall. On that day, CDC's outbreak page counted 1,644 illnesses in five states. 10 days later, that same page count jumped up to 1,947 illnesses in nine states, and it has not been updated since July 24th.
CDC's own surveillance page has a different page on the same website that counts 6,707 cases across 45 states, and the state's counts alone are 20,907- uh, 27 as on this recording. [00:07:00] So it's not under control.
Francine: People are- Well, I know, well, the CDC wants to say that it is, or, which isn't the CDC's fault Because why do they have a different number?
Matt: Because they're not tracking it.
Francine: Because they stopped tracking it. And we said over a year ago when they stopped tracking foodborne illnesses at the pace and the number of foodborne illnesses that they used to track, the specific foodborne illnesses, the number was gonna decrease. The actual number of foodborne illnesses that they come up this year compared to what they actually are, this is a perfect example.
They're counting 6,700. The states are reporting 20,927. That's a big difference. If we don't report them, then by God, they're not there. They don't exist.
Matt: Yep. And you called this out, like, a year ago, the second they stopped recording this.
Francine: It's like we're just gonna say that they don't exist. We don't have [00:08:00] them.
We have done a... Damn it, we've done a good job. Foodborne illnesses have gone down. We are doing a fantastic job.
Matt: Until the number becomes so high they, that they are like, "Ah, crap. We have to actually report this." And
Francine: as glad as I am that this is happening, I'm very grateful that it's not something that's killing people, thank God.
But on the other side of that, if it took something this astronomical to point out that this is what happens when we make these kind of stupid decisions-
Matt: So in this article, too, he says that the White House press secretary spoke on July 16th when the count was about 400 cases in four states. She said the administration had a handle on it, that the CDC and FDA had resources that they needed, and that the Americans should wash and cook their produce.
The White House later told CNN it was aggressively coordinating response efforts. Take washing advice on its own terms for a minute. FDA's [00:09:00] own guidance document says chlorine and other common antimicrobial treatments are not effective against this parasite. The CDC's own health advisory says disinfecting or sanitizing produce might not eliminate it.
Telling people to rinse it off is not advice. She should have been given a better briefing. She is the White House, uh, press secretary. She should have been given a little bit of a better
Francine: briefing on- She should have been given a better briefing about a lot of things, but-
Matt: So yeah, cooking iceberg lettuce would possibly get rid of this, but you don't cook iceberg lettuce.
At least we don't cook iceberg lettuce.
Francine: We don't. I mean, maybe some other cultures do that I'm not aware of. I don't know. I am not aware of anybody cooking lettuce, so, you know, if you are and it's something you do, I apologize. However, I am not aware of anybody cooking iceberg lettuce.
Matt: Since then, the administration has spoken mostly through spokespeople.
The HHS senior press secretary, Emily Hillard, has described a robust response in work with 50 state departments. [00:10:00] On July 27th, after the ranking member of House Oversight Committee sent a document demand to Taylor Farms' chief executive, a White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, said that the notion that this administration would compromise on health and safety was absolutely false.
This is the most recent thing anybody at the White House has said during the outbreak, and it was said about a subpoena-adjacent letter rather than about the sick. There is, like, a funny quote here, though, that I wanna get to. Is this the one where they were like, "We should tariff Mexico because of this"?
Or was that a different article?
Francine: I think that's this one. This does say, "And the president should have said something, anything. It costs nothing, and it is most of the job. 20,927 Americans are sick. Hundreds have been hospitalized, and people have been sick for weeks at a time with an illness that comes back in waves after you think it has ended."
He could have said, "This is [00:11:00] real. My people are working on it. Here's what we know today, and here is where to find tomorrow's update." The joke about the lettuce is not the offense. Not having thought about it is the offense And he said that part himself
Matt: The statistics, so you brought up to me this morning, we were looking at this, in this article, it talks about that there's a fourth number and it's one that nobody in the administration has been willing to go near.
In 2011, CDC's own scientists published what is still the standard estimate of foodborne illness burden on this country. The cyclospora line, it carries an underdiagnosive multiplier of 83.1. For every laboratory confirmed case, the model assumes about 83 people actually get sick. Applied to this figure, it can honestly be applied to the CDC's 6,707 [00:12:00] laboratory confirmed cases.
That's something in the order of 557,000 people got sick. Okay, but if we were to extrapolate this and we were to say all of the state department's tests, 21,000.
Francine: Right. Which again, as he says, we don't want this number thrown back at us, but just playing the devil's advocate, if we were to-
Matt: That would be like 1.7 million people.
Francine: If we were to use that number of 20,927 That is a lot of people
Matt: That's a lot of people. That, that just said, "Oh, I got the stomach flu," and-
Francine: It's based on
Matt: the numbers the
Francine: states are turning in, and which we don't know what the situations are with those numbers. But-
Matt: If it's 21,000 people confirmed cases, and we extrapolate using the CDC's number of 83 unconfirmed cases per every one that is confirmed, that's 1.7 million people.
That's a lot of people. Yeah. [00:13:00] So let's just round out and say like, okay, there are 300 to 400 million people in the United States. So even if we do the high numbers, say 400 million people in the United States, and we round it up to two million people are sick using this, that is .5% of the population. That is...
So if this number gets to, say, 40,000 cases that are confirmed, and it comes up to somewhere around four million extrapolated number, that's a percent, 1% of the whole entire population.
Francine: If they are-
Matt: That's
Francine: huge ... confirmed cases. If they are confirmed cases, yes.
Matt: If they are confirmed cases, yes. That's crazy.
Okay, so here's what they should have done and still could do today, and this is what we talk about all the time. So one, restore require cyclospora reporting in Food Net. Yeah. Why'd they get rid of that? [00:14:00] If they had had this up and going, cyclospora outbreak on Food Net, there'd be much more confirmed cases.
It would be a lot faster. Number two, make cyclosporiasis- Cyclosporiasis Cyclospo- sor-
Francine: pr- Cyclos- Say that again ... poriasis
Matt: Reportable in every state, not merely nationally notifiable. There are two different things. Notifiable means CDC asks for the case. Reportable means the state law requires it. The parasite does not observe the difference, then neither should the count.
Francine: I'm gonna head on over to Pennsylvania because they don't require recording.
Matt: Yeah.
Francine: You guys stay back here because they require reporting here. Die on off here, but we're gonna go over to Pennsylvania 'cause they don't require us to report over there.
Matt: Number three, publish one national number and update it.
CDC currently maintains an outbreak page frozen at 1,947 [00:15:00] since July 24th, and a surveillance page reading 6,707, while the states themselves report 20,927. Pick a number to find exactly what the count is, include the probable cases, and refresh it on a schedule the public can rely on. An agency that will not publish the size of a problem cannot expect it to be believed about the solution.
Francine: So this is something we talked about a couple weeks ago. I used to go to the FDA and the CDC websites regularly to get information for both our podcast and for articles that I wrote and other things. I don't do that anymore because I don't trust the information. That's sad. That is really sad-
Matt: Right ...
Francine: to say that.
Right.
Matt: And like I've said multiple times, I am a federalist. I do believe the states should be able to make their own laws and do stuff, but I do think that the federal government should also have laws pertaining to food safety, and those laws should be statistics. And, like, linking all the states [00:16:00] together to figure out a national outbreak would be very, very helpful, not just for consumers, but for the states themselves, and for whoever is implicated in the outbreak to figure- Yeah
it out faster.
Francine: The information there should be legitimate, and it should be accurate.
Matt: Yes. And fast.
Francine: Yeah.
Matt: Here, we are literally in the AI world now. Like, you could get information super, super fast. Why the federal government cannot do this, it means that they just don't want to do it. They're
Francine: choosing not to.
They can do it. They are choosing not to. There's a difference. It's not that they can't, they're making a choice.
Matt: Yes. And then they wonder why consumers don't trust the government or their food sources or anything
Francine: like that. It's like, you know, having a child and they didn't do something. No, you chose not to do that.
Matt: God, you sound like 1,400 conversations I have on a daily basis .
Francine: You know? You could have, but you made the choice not to do that.
Matt: Yeah. Number four, [00:17:00] grant the citizen petition that has been sitting at the FDA since February 4th. Stop Foodborne Illness asked the agency to adopt a policy naming every company associated with a foodborne illness outbreak, recall or no recall.
It requires no rulemaking. The commissioner could just grant it this week with a memorandum. My one amendment stands. Disclosure has to reach the processor and the grower, because in a produce outbreak, there is very often no brand or bag at all. Truth. Truth. That would speed this up super fast. You'd get things off the shelf a lot faster, less people would be sick.
If this... Okay, so this is cyclospora. Thank the good Lord that this is cyclospora and not E. coli or listeria or salmonella or something like that, because we would be having a lot of deaths, particularly if this was listeria. If this was listeriosis-
Francine: And we, and you know, that brings another question. If people were dying, [00:18:00] if people were dying- Yes
would they be taking it more seriously? Yeah. Would the government be taking it more seriously?
Matt: Okay, if there were 21,000, let's just assume that number, okay? Wait. L- let's- 1%
Francine: of those people were dying.
Matt: 25 to 30% of those people would die if it was listeria
Francine: Okay. Well, you said listeria. I was back at a different illness you mentioned, but okay.
Agreed. We're just hypothetically speaking here, 10% of those people were dying, and then you moved on to- Serious. True ... listeria, which would be a higher number. If it was 21,000 people got sick from listeria or listeriosis,
Matt: then it would be 5,000 to 6,000 people's death.
Francine: Potentially. Right. Right.
Matt: Yeah. That would be a national crisis.
Francine: Right. How would we be handling that? Because the CDC's not gonna say that 20,000 people are sick. They're gonna only have the 6,000 people were sick, and only 100 people died.
Matt: Okay, so 6,000 people.
It'd be 1,500 to 2,000 [00:19:00] people sick.
Francine: Right. My point- Yeah ... is their numbers are gonna be marked differently.
Matt: Yes. But even then- Yes. Right ... there's still a lot of people dying if it was listeria. It would be-
Francine: Nobody's accepting accountability.
Matt: Right.
Francine: Nobody's, hypothetically speaking, nobody's accepting accountability.
The government really isn't doing much about it one way or another. People are dying in every state. Every state's been affected. How, at that point, are we gonna handle this situation if that were the case?
Matt: Right. Right. Right now they're handling it like, ah, it's, it's six-
Francine: Everybody's got the flu ...
Matt: 6,700.
Francine: It's just diarrhea.
They're just crapping out- Yeah ... worms. I mean-
Matt: It's just a shitty day, yeah, for a bunch of people, as opposed to if this was
Francine: listeria. Not legitimate worms, but y- you know what I mean. Yeah.
Matt: I mean, it is, it's a little worm. It's this little parasitic.
Francine: Yeah.
Matt: Good analogy. All right. Number five Bring back the microbiological data program, and this time give it a [00:20:00] parasite target.
MDP, microbiological database, everything has to have a fricking acronym in, in the government, was created under President Bush in 2001, Food Safety Initiative, and tested about 15,000 produce samples a year, bagged lettuce and spinach, cilantro, hot peppers, tomatoes, sprouts, melons, for roughly $4.5 million a year.
And it accounted for something like 80% of all federal produce pathogens tested until it zeroed out and shut down in December 2012. I have been asking for it back since 2024.
Yeah. That would be cool. Like, if they were actually testing for... The, the amount of data that would be there would be so beneficial to the industry as well if they tested this. $4.5 million for testing 15,000 produce samples? Okay, let me see. I'm gonna do the math because I wanna see how much that costs per sample.
[00:21:00] And since I own a lab, let's see if I'm, like, in the right zone here. That's 300 bucks. Okay, the federal government can do a better job than that. If you're doing PCR tests, okay, this is 2001 to 2000. PCR tests now for, uh, it might be higher if you added cyclospora, but... So cyclospora, if it's processed in Mexico and they tested it in the United States, they would be able to see if, if it was there.
Okay, so let's say PCR tests for a fecal coliform is somewhere around 40, the government's $40,000, $50,000, 40 to $50. That's the high end. If you added cyclospora, maybe 100-something dollars. So there's definitely a lot of margin there, when they're, when they're talking 15,000 samples for $4.5 million. But whatever.
Okay. Let's just... The government can't do any program without making it more expensive than it actually [00:22:00] is. Still, at 300 bucks a pop, if they're catching a bunch of potential outbreaks before they ever happen, that would be good. I don't like spending money, the government spending money, but I- that's a good place to put that $4.5 million.
Francine: Right. Humberto- I'm not, there's things I wanna say that I'm just not... I agree with you.
Matt: No, say them. Okay, so you guys can't see this because Fran- th- th- this is a podcast, but there's a lot of times where Francine is looking at me, and I'm like, "I know you have, like, there's so many wheels turning in your head right now
Francine: How wasted money our government, we go and eliminate jobs, some of them necessarily, some of them unnecessarily because we're trying to cut spending.
But then we do this crap and spend way more on testing or way more for toilet seats or way more for tools or way more because, you know, we have to wrap up a budget. We need to spend this money now because if we don't, we're gonna lose it, so we need to blow it on something. [00:23:00] Or it is just insanity to me.
We have this extra money here, but it has to be used on this budget. We can't move it over here where they need money because good God, our budget doesn't allow for that. It is mind-boggling to me. Mind-boggling. Can we run it just a little bit like you would run a business if it made some sense and not waste people's money?
Why spend more than it's actually gonna cost I mean, take out the kickbacks, whatever. I don't know
Matt: Yeah. Or give the kickback and just keep the money there. It's like, whatever.
Francine: Whatever. Whatever it takes, you know? If Frank is a legitimate businessperson and can really do the work, whatever. I don't care.
But let's quit wasting the money.
Matt: Yeah, and put it to where, like, consumers- it'll actually save consumers.
Francine: But, y- you know, there's just so much crap. Qu- quit pretending.
Matt: Yes.
Francine: Stop [00:24:00] pretending.
Matt: Yes. Amen, Francine. Thank you for letting it out. I knew that was in your head. Okay, number six
Francine: Food safety's not political.
It isn't political. We're talking about people's well-being, and we're talking about their health, and it just pisses me off. Be political wherever you wanna be political, but not with people's lives. Amen.
Matt: 100%. 100%. And again, for those of you who this is the first time listening to this show, one of us is center right, one of us is center left.
We don't say which one it is. And we, we talk about this all the time. Like, i- if there was a party, a food safety party in the United States, I would vote for them regardless of where their political ideology stand. Geez. Okay. Put the, uh... Number six, put FSMA 204 traceability rule back on its original schedule instead of 2028.
Amen. You and I keep talking about this [00:25:00] over and over again. If this was there, this would've made it much more easier to find this, theoretically, if the FDA wanted to use it and find it. And we can put this, putting FSMA 204 back on track, to number four statement, which grants the citizen petition that has been sitting on the FDA's desk since February 4th, that says they won't disclose the processor and grower in the outbreak.
With the FSMA 204 rule, they would be able to do that I mean, this is kind of personal to me, the FSMA 204 rule thing, since I spent like a year of my life consulting and another year of my life before that working with the guy, Andy Kennedy, who helped write this rule on putting together how this could be implemented.
So yeah, I- it's totally doable and should be done. Number seven, name cyclospora in the pre-harvest [00:26:00] agricultural water rule. The only numeric microbial criterion is Subpart E, which is generic E. coli. And that's, I... Yeah, that is... You're taking a, a five-sample matrix of this as well. So you're testing for generic E.
coli five times and then summing them together, you know, dividing it by five to find out what the E. coli amount is, and you have to be under a certain rate in order for it to go. Cyclospora isn't even on there. But even if cyclospora was on here, this would be hard. So even though I agree with Bill Marler, had they been testing in s- cyclospora in Mexico, would they have found it?
I'm not quite sure, actually, 'cause it's really hard to test until you can actually see it in the bagged lettuce when it came over or whatever the produce is when it comes over to the States like four or five days later. That one would be hard to see. Although if they're testing the water, never mind. If they're [00:27:00] testing the water, they'd be able to see it in the water.
Francine: I, I would-
Matt: Yeah ...
Francine: think so.
Matt: Yeah. They'd be able to see it in the water. That's a good point. Okay. So never mind. Just kidding. I do agree
Francine: He apologizes though
Matt: Number eight, stand up the independent board Frank Yiannas has been asking for since 2025, an NTSB for foodborne outbreaks investigating across multiple agency lines, publishing root cause for lessons, and no stakes in the reputation of the agency who works on reviewing.
He has said again this month that the federal response here is approaching a catastrophic level of mismanagement, and he is a former deputy commissioner of FDA and a past president of the professional society that met with New Orleans this week at IFPA. His framing is the right one. At this point, is, the point is not to find a fault, it's to find facts.[00:28:00]
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb made a version of the same point on Face the Nation on Sunday when he said the breakdown wasn't identifying the initial cluster, and that Michigan State health officials led that work rather than Atlanta, which is where the CDC is. So yeah.
Francine: Which again, thank God for Michigan, and I don't know if it was MSU that was doing this or the health department.
I'm not sure. But thank God for Michigan, because initially, that's where all the information was coming from. Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. And Michigan's always kind of been on the forefront of food safety stuff.
Francine: And thank God it's a state that had the ability to do it.
Matt: Yes. Yeah. Michigan is crazy. Food safety chemists, that's, that's where they, like congregate because of like NSF and all this stuff are in Michigan.
It's, yeah. So it- thank God it happened in Michigan actually, 'cause if it had happened in some other state, who knows wh- whether we'd be really having this conversation. [00:29:00] All right. So there is the list. I agree.
Francine: So in this text that we got, this societal loss. It's talking about the societal loss from the 2018 romaine outbreak, $276 to $343 million, and that wasn't near as big as this is.
Matt: No. That wasn't nearly as big as this is.
Francine: And then in 2006, the spinach retail It says that 2006 spinach USDA's retail scanner work found 60.6 million in lost consumer grocery spending over fresh leafy greens over the following 15 months, and packed spinach sales were still off about 20% a year later. So in essence, what he's saying is the episode demonstrates the economic benefit of adopting [00:30:00] mandatory food safety standards and improved traceability.
We're not just talking, I said this in the last episode, about people getting sick, which is important enough. It affects industries. You know, it affects, it affects the produce industry, it affects the restaurant industry, it affects the people that support the restaurant industry, it affects the retailers that sell the product.
It, it affects the whole country.
Matt: Why this isn't being implemented is because it's being lobbied against by the industry, and literally these things would help protect the industry as well as, more importantly, consumers. But also it would help protect the industry.
Francine: There's a ripple effect that people don't think about or do- they don't see.
They only see the immediate. It's very reactionary. They see the immediate effect, and they don't think about, like, the ripple effect and how it affects the country as a whole. Nobody [00:31:00] looks that far out, and they're s- affected so much by what they see in the media and on social media, and nobody bothers...
Most people don't bother to do the research to dig any further, and the number of people that just believe the headline or what they read is just mind-boggling to me.
Matt: Yes.
Francine: Just mind-boggling.
Matt: Yeah. Yes. And we did ask Bill Marler for a comment, particularly about this article with the White House. Bill Marler says that Trump should adopt MANTA.
Maybe we could put this on hats, and I think it would be fantastic with our poop emoji as well, the-
Francine: Or our little part of the logo, the Noro-
Matt: Yeah, NoroMan.
Francine: The bomb maybe.
Matt: Yes. 100%. It could be on top of the red hat, and it says, "MANTA, Make America Not Shit Again." I love it. Uh, that would be great. We, we should make up a hat.[00:32:00]
We should have these hats sent to the White House. It would be great. I would love it if Donald Trump wore this hat. With NoroMan and a poop emoji that says, "Make America Not Shit Again." That would be awesome. MANTA right across the top.
Francine: Oh. Maybe we can sell them to Taylor Farms. Maybe Bill could make them and send them.
Matt: I do wear that shirt that says, "Get the F out of the FDA"
Francine: all the time. Oh, my God.
Matt: Oh, that's great. Okay. Well, on that note, don't eat poop