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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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Matt Regusci: And that really showed exactly what Francine was talking about, that every single state and municipality and county government has different expectations for food safety on the retail side of things. One of the things that we said in our talk was, it only takes one line. Congress has to pass a law that says one thing, and that would change everything.
And that is, Congress says all states, counties, and municipalities have to abide by the most recent food code as a minimum. And then you wouldn't have different states still utilizing the food code from 1995, for instance, or 97, or whatever it is.
intro: Everybody's got to 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 L. Shaw and Matt Ragucci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule.
Don't. Eat poop. Don't eat poop.
Matt Regusci: This is our first time doing the LinkedIn live, and this is really exciting. Francine and I were like, I wonder what type of questions we would get if we just asked people live. to shoot us questions and then just answer them like that. So this is not scripted at all. This is just for Francine and I to go through the questions that you may have about food safety, food safety culture, whatever it is, and we'll do our best to answer it.
So we are recording this. So just to let everybody know housekeeping. We are recording this. And if you ask a question and you don't want it to be recorded and put into a podcast, just let us know. We'll make sure that the editors edit that out.
Francine Shaw: And if you could just so that we know you're here, if you could just pop in, say, hi, let us know where you're from.
That would be absolutely amazing. A lot of people signed up. We don't know how many actually are going to be able to attend. So we can say, hi, Bruce. Hi, it's nice to see you, Michelle. Thank you for coming. That's amazing that you're here as well. So that's, we're ready to get started. If you have a question,
Matt Regusci: you guys have, but again, if you want the questions to be answered live, awesome.
If you don't want it to be in the podcast, just let us know and we will have that edited out. Oh, anybody have questions? Go ahead and post them into the chats. And then Francine and I will answer away.
Francine Shaw: We presented at an FDA conference a week or so ago in Chicago, had a great time. And we were asked a few questions while we were there.
One of the questions that we asked was, if you are a consultant, how do you engage in social media? What are the best ways to engage in social media? And the response to that is that. You can't engage in all social media platforms the same way. You have to use different methods for LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, because you don't have the same audiences on each of those platforms.
So, you would address each of those platforms differently. That is something that's really important. If you're using all those methods of social media. So, for example, obviously, the audience that you have on linked in is different than the audience that you have on Facebook and so you would want to and we have audiences on all those platforms.
I was when we first started posting things on tick tock. I was thinking TikTok is not our fan base. And we do have a fan base on TikTok. I was shocked. But we actually have a fan base on all those platforms. And if you're trying to grow your business as a consultant, and we do have a lot of consultants that follow us, you can grow your business by using all of those platforms.
And it's very important that you know that you can't just For example, create one message or one basically content post and post it across all those platforms because it's not going to work. You have very different personalities, very different types of individuals that are looking at all those. So you have to post different content on each of those platforms.
Matt Regusci: Well, I just posted that up there. So Eleanor had a great question. What new regulations do you see coming from the most recent outbreaks? Yeah, Francine and I also got this question and we were talking about this at the FDA conference that we just went to a couple weeks ago. And the boar heads one is going to be really interesting because it affects everybody.
And what do I mean by everybody? A lot of times when we see outbreaks happen, we see them isolated in a restaurant like norovirus or something that was hepatitis or something that was caught at the restaurant or the grocery store food service thing. Or we find it as a supplier issue, right? So salmonella, E.
coli, listeria as a supplier that comes in and was spread throughout the retailer and the retail. Yeah. And retail, but it didn't start there. The boar head thing is going to be very interesting because it's going to affect, it is a supply chain issue. The liverwurst with Listeria was a supply chain issue, but it also is a retail issue because of this product is in a case it's utilized and cut on a machine that will cut other products as well.
So there's a lot of carryover and a lot of things. And we really saw FSIS get beat up, right? Where was the regulatory Ability to shut this down given all the issues that they had found the government had found not just a private in third party inspector, the government found this and they couldn't or they wouldn't shut this plant down.
So I don't know if we'll see more regulation. I think there'll be a lot of push from consumers to their regulators and to their legislators to put in more laws. But Francine are talking about there's a lot of laws that are already on the books that if we just enforce them. Then this probably wouldn't have happened this outbreak.
And so I can see the enforcement side of things becoming stricter. The FDA looking at this and going, well, we don't want to be like F. S. I. S. When we do inspections, we better be make sure that we're able to shut these places down. And then on the flip side, USDA with F. S. I. S. Going, Hey, where do we go wrong?
And how do we shut these plants down when there are so many infractions? So that was the conversation that we're having.
Francine Shaw: So, one of the other things that we discovered, not only on the supply chain side, but on the retail side is that when inspectors and auditors go into facilities, and again, keep in mind that the rules and regulations on the retail side of things, I feel are much more complicated than they are on manufacturing and processing.
I think Darren Detweiler was speaking a couple weeks ago, and he said that there's 3, 000 different sets of rules and regulations because they're different from not just federal. They start at the federal level that and those are suggestions. That isn't. Well, and then it goes to the state level and then the county level and then jurisdictional level.
So it's just a conglomerated mess. And so they vary from area to area. So what we discovered is that the inspectors and auditors don't always have the authority, even on the retail side, to shut down restaurants and retail outlets. And so you might go in and find 70 violations and not be able to shut a facility down, depending on what jurisdiction you're in.
I find that Mind boggling. When I was an inspector, I was able to do that. I didn't realize until just recently that if there were things that were imminent danger, that they didn't always have, the inspector didn't always have the authority to close a restaurant or a retail outlet. I just don't get that.
And I think that supposedly they do have that authority, but there are some jurisdictions that are saying, no, you don't, you can't do that on your own. So think like Matt said, there are regulations out there that are on the books. We're just not enforcing them. They're not being enforced.
Matt Regusci: And the conference you get to was the FDA was like it was an FDA and health inspector conference.
It was really interesting because the health inspectors, there's regional and they were able to talk from Illinois point of view versus Michigan point of view versus Indiana, Ohio, et cetera. And that really showed exactly what Francine was talking about that every single state and municipality and county government has different expectations for food safety on the retail side of things.
One of the things that we said in our talk was, It only takes one line. Congress has to pass a law with, that says one thing, and that would change everything. And that is, Congress says all states, counties, and municipalities have to abide by the most recent food code as a minimum. And then you wouldn't have different states still utilizing the food code from 1995, for instance, or 97 or whatever it is, which is what's happening right now.
So they're not all up to par. Now, the problem with that is because you have ordinances that still have food code that are super low in the expectations, that means that if you jump all the way up to 2023 food code, now, all of a sudden, there's a big gap. So there has to be some sort of training and education to fix that gap.
Francine Shaw: I hope we answered that question sufficiently. Michelle, this is another great question. Do you think retailers hold enough responsibility in ensuring consumers don't get a hold of contaminated products? Retailers are the last line of defense before a product is in the hands of the consumer. Is it written that way?
Sure it is. They're supposed to use, make sure that they use approved suppliers. So that's how the regulatory authorities have written that. Is that what they're doing? I can answer that with the utmost certainty and I'm sure that this as well. No, they're not. They're not. When's the last time that a lot of these retailers have gone out and literally walked into their suppliers?
And looked at the manufacturing or processing facility. Some of them don't even do the third party inspections. They rely on the paperwork that they're handed, which is done by a certification body in some cases that the. manufacturing facility is paying somebody to do. So my answer to that question is no.
It's written that they do, but nobody's holding them accountable. So I think the word we're looking for is accountability.
Matt Regusci: You and I are going to agree on this at some points, disagree on some points. I think it depends on the retailer. There are some retailers that have amazing,
Francine Shaw: but wait a minute, we're talking about two different things.
We don't always agree. You're going to hear that. Isn't the question. We're not asking. Do some retailers do a great job and do some retailers. That is the question. Do some retailers do an amazing job? And do some retailers not do an amazing job? There's no question. It's some of the retailers out there do a fantastic job.
Some retailers that do an absolutely amazing job of making sure that this gets done correctly. The question is, do they hold enough? responsibility or accountability and making sure that they don't get ahold of contaminated product. And the answer to that question now,
Matt Regusci: I think the question on the answer to that question is it depends.
It depends on the retailer. I do agree with you. I think we could compare the difference between US retailers and European retailers. And there's a huge difference between those two because in the United States, you have a lot less branded products. When I see branded products, if you go to Europe, for instance, Tesco has their own brand.
Mark and Spencer has their own brand. That is the high end brand. That is the Costco Kirkland brand type of stuff or Trader Joe's products, which Trader Joe's and all these, all these European brands. The European retailers, are very strict with their supply chain because it affects their own brands, right?
So they really do hold a lot more responsibility for the products because it is their own brands. In the United States, most of the high end are branded by the supplier. So Nestle, for instance, or Pepsi Cola or Coca Cola, like those are all the brands that everybody recognizes and knows in Europe, they have much more strict rules for suppliers because it affects the retailers brand in the United States.
They have a lot of rules for suppliers. They're not as worried about it because it doesn't affect their brand. So that's why I think we're holding them responsible. I think that you could see a big difference in responsibility in Europe versus United States from the retailers because of that.
Francine Shaw: I also believe that sometimes there's a complete misunderstanding about what an approved supplier is.
When it comes to the retail world, and I believe that is because it isn't always explained at the ground level what an approved supplier is, for example, if you walk into a restaurant or even sometimes a grocery store or a market that sells prepared food, and let's say they run out of a product and their truck doesn't come for another few days.
Are they going to go without selling that product or are they going to run to the market and pick up that product? I know for a fact that many of them run to the market and pick up that product or they'll run out to the sales floor and pick up that product.
Matt Regusci: And when she says market, by the way, she's talking about like terminal markets and stuff like that.
So every major city or
Francine Shaw: even the grocery store, they may run to the grocery store. They might run to the local, I don't want to throw a brand out there, but they might run to the local grocery store and grab that product. Are they an approved supplier? Well, we can eat that food at home and be reasonably sure that it's safe, but is it okay to buy?
And feel free to answer this question. Is it okay to take that back to the restaurant and use that to prepare your products? The answer is no, it is no, because they're not an approved supplier for your restaurant or in the back of the house at your grocery store or wherever you happen to be preparing this product.
But they don't always understand that that's not the case. And this is something that when I was training, I used to talk about a lot because people don't understand that that's, that that is not okay. And they don't understand that why it's not. Okay, and it's a huge misconception. So, I think that is a problem that we face on the retail side of things as well.
And it's just a lack of education that people not, it's not intentional. They just don't understand. And that sometimes causes, I know many stories where that's caused foodborne illnesses and problems on the retail side of things.
Matt Regusci: Elena has another question and I'm really excited to go to Michelle's question after this one too.
With the differences between the EU food standards and the U. S. standards, do you ever see the U. S. catching up to the level of regulations? No, I don't. I don't see it. Not in a lifetime. I don't see it happening because The way the U. S. government is too decentralized. We talk about the centralization of government and there's a lot of things that is very centralized in the United States, but we are very decentralized when it comes to regulations.
And the retailers are different in the EU versus the United States. And supply chain is different. So you have to think that the, like most of the supply chain for the United States comes from South America, Mexico, and the United States. We grow a lot of our own products in the EU. That's not the case.
Most of their products are coming from Africa, South America, United States, all over the place. I think we have a little bit more trust in our supply chain in the United States. The EU does in their supply chain. And so they create a lot more stricter standards because of that. And so then because they have stricter standards and everybody's following them.
Way better than we do in the United States. They actually have more trust in their food supply jade because of all that. And so in the United States, it's just Francine and I were in a conference at this, at this FDA health inspector conference. And I didn't realize just how crazy it is to get a state.
to all have the same expectations.
Francine Shaw: It's not just food, it's cosmetics. It's just, it's across the board in the EU.
Matt Regusci: Supplements. It's just
Francine Shaw: everything.
Matt Regusci: Cannabis is a fantastic example of that. In Colorado, where I live, Colorado Springs has different rules than Denver, and everybody thinks that the cannabis world is crazy.
The cannabis world is just a bigger microscope on what our food system is, our food regulations are like. Okay, this got asked a lot, Michelle. If I'm working for a retailer and I had hundreds of suppliers that I need to visit, I would visit the small mom and pop suppliers before I visit Boarhead because we assume Boarhead has all the resources like the FDA.
Retailers don't have the resources to visit all their suppliers. So this is 100 percent true. accurate and it's what most companies do. They go and they look at their smaller suppliers first. When I'm doing risk plans, risk assessments with retailers and food service companies. I look at risk in two different ways or a few different ways, but one is who are the top 20 percent of my suppliers that are providing me 80 percent of the product and the 80 20 rule works really well with suppliers.
I found 20 years of working with supply chain. Those are my highest risk. Those top 20 percent of suppliers that provide me 80 percent of my product. That is the highest risk if something goes wrong on a large scale, it's going to most likely be with one of those suppliers. Regionally, it could be one of the smaller suppliers, right?
A big outbreak, it's going to be one of those that are in the top 20 percent that provide me 80 percent of the product. That is where we focus a lot of our time in quality and food safety, is making sure that those companies are really good. And they're not just saying that they're good. They don't just send me a third party audit and say they're good.
I should be putting boots on the ground and checking to make sure that they're good. That's one. Number two is if I'm looking at this regionally, then what are my biggest risks regionally and in terms of the product, et cetera, et cetera, right? So if I have a mom and pop company that's sending me pumpkins, that's a really low risk.
If I have a mom and pop company that's sending me sprouts and they send to a region of a hundred stores, Yeah, that's a risk. That's a high risk. I need to go check that out. And so we can look at risk differently, but boar's head to me would have been a massive risk. If I'm a retailer and I have them at every single one of my delis.
and I'm promoting that product, then that affects me if something goes wrong with that. What are your thoughts on that, Francine?
Francine Shaw: No, I agree with you 100%. And I think that sometimes the perception is skewed. I agree with everything you said. See, so sometimes we agree completely. Sometimes we disagree completely.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. So Brent asked, what technologies, innovations do you see making the biggest impact in food safety over the next year? Brent, great. You're an RN just like my wife. Yeah. Francine, go ahead. You take this one first.
Francine Shaw: Yeah. We talked about this a lot when we were at the conference as well. I feel like you guys were there.
Matt Regusci: I know. We haven't even posted that yet. That's coming out next week, I think. That's the next one.
Francine Shaw: So we talked a lot about AI. I think AI is going to play a huge factor in the future, whether we want it to or not. You may as well stop fighting it. AI is going to be heavily involved. Yeah. And the way we approach things and I think that the government is so slow and catching up with things and that's going to be a problem because I don't even know if they're looking at it yet, but it's going to change things from the way our inspection forms are written South Dakota still working on the nineteen ninety five FDA food code.
And we have other states that are working on the current FDA food code. So how are we going to implement AI into those inspection forms? And how are we going to address that whenever we do the food safety inspections, whether it's in manufacturing and processing or whether it's in retail? That's something that we need to look at because it's happening now.
We're struggling to keep up with e commerce and what's happening in e commerce right now. And the technology that is involved in that. E commerce is a nightmare. It is just I could sit here and talk the next 30 minutes about what is happening with the e commerce situation and food fraud and the people that are preparing food in their kitchens at home and delivering it to people's houses.
And so we've got the e commerce situation that's happening. We've got, what else did we talk about, Matt?
Matt Regusci: Well, FISPA 204 is going to change a lot of things technologically as well. So with Food Safety Modernization Act Rule 204, the new FDA's traceability rule. So basically the FDA is asking all retailers and food service companies to make sure that they are able to trace back All the products they've served within their facilities all the way back to the lot code.
Not just the skew. So everything is right now in all the E. R. P. S. and W. M. S. is or most of the E. R. P. S. and W. M. S. is throughout the supply chain are tracking by skew the product, not by lots. The actual lot of the product. So you could have Driscoll, you could have Nature Ripe, like looking at strawberries, all one pound strawberries, right?
That would be the skew, one pound strawberry, clamshell, that would be the skew. And you could have a bunch of different companies within that skew, but now they're saying, now you need to trace it back to that lot. To that manufacturer once that's fully implemented, supposedly in 2026, but it'll probably end up being 2027 2028 as they soft launch this moving forward.
That will change recall significantly. So the FDA with their epidemiology should be able to get products off the shelf a lot faster once they know by lot, not by skew with the products that are in their epidemiology surveys that could have huge effects in terms of minimizing recalls in the future. and other types of technologies that we were talking about.
I think there's going to be a lot of technologies wrapped around food safety culture and expectations in food safety culture. Right now food safety culture is this, the sky like rainbows and unicorns and clouds type of, how do I get to food safety culture? Nobody really understands What that looks like.
Francine and I are working on a project now that will make that a little bit easier to wrap around and train towards and so technologies that can see not just being technologies wrapped around a checklist or SQF or inspections or whatever it is, but technology wrapped around. What are expectations for food safety culture?
I could see in the future, too.
Francine Shaw: I'm sorry. I read a question that's a little bit lower down. I'm sure that is. But
Matt Regusci: so this is another one that technology wise that Francine and I had talked about, too. Do you see audits being performed by robots utilizing AI with our known shortage of auditors? Literally, I feel like you guys were at this conference that Francine and I did this talk, too.
It's crazy. So Francine and I see robots in a couple ways. Frenzy, you want to talk about robots like Flippy? I think there's going to be some food safety stuff that we need to work out with robots there, and then I'll talk about robots where I think for food safety and inspections.
Francine Shaw: We've got Flippy that's out there flipping burgers and we've got the fry dropping AI situation that's happening.
And there are a couple that have failed and aren't going to actually be released. So there's a lot of, when we were, I was in a restaurant in, I think it was Georgia last year. And there were a group of us sitting there and Darren Dettweiler is one of the people that was there and we're sitting there waiting on our food and this robot's literally delivering food to the tables.
It was like Rosie on the Jetsons, if any of you are old enough to remember that. And we were totally excited about this robot that was delivering. If everything stopped so we could watch this robot deliver the food to the table. So there are some of these things that are very cool and I can see are going to be a lot.
Of a problem like fries being dropped into the fryer. Okay, I have some concerns about flippy a couple and then there are kiosks. That are being put out into the middle of these random places that are making blended drinks that are might have some dairy and exit there by themselves. And they might have some potentially hazardous products in them.
And who's monitoring these? And who's making sure that the temperature is right? And who's washing and cleaning and sanitizing these? And don't know that we're set up for AI to do these audits? Can AI do some of it? Maybe, but I really believe that we need human interaction for some of these audits and inspections.
This is what I see. There are some audits out there that the criteria is ridiculous for Matt and I've talked about this ourselves. There's some particular audits out there that you've got to have a science degree in order to perform the audit. We don't believe that's possible. Necessary. There are some very qualified people out there that could go out there and do these audits.
It's not necessary to have a science degree. Quite frankly, there are people out there with science degrees that aren't qualified to do the audits or said people that did those audits. Sure as hell weren't qualified to do those audits. Because we've seen things come out of that. We've probably seen more in those audits that the majority of people that have seen and what happened there should have never happened.
So, my answer to that question is, I hope not. There's a definite shortage of audit. We need to find a way to make sure that the auditors that are doing these audits are actually qualified to do the audits. And we're not just sending people out there to mark off a checklist and be paid to mark off that checklist.
Matt Regusci: I agree. We have to adopt technology based upon its ability to get the job done, and get the job done right, and get the job done safely, versus just adopting technology for technology's sake, which I think sometimes we end up doing. One of the things that Francine and I talked about recently was, like, I'm seeing a lot of, During COVID, for instance, we were seeing companies adopting the Google glasses or the Microsoft glasses, lenses, for instance, and utilizing teams.
This is before AI really came out, utilizing teams so that as an inspector, four or five inspectors were going out and inspecting things. You had one person who was the expert. Watching all five of those inspections happening simultaneously and then through teams having the ability to interact with those people utilizing the glasses.
So you didn't have to have your most expensive auditor, most technical auditor at every single place you had inspectors that were that have been around the block for a long time, but I not know all the science or anything around that or may they have questions coming up to something or they can respond back.
Where I see AI interacting with that is those same glasses happening. Everything is being recorded. I think we will see a lot more recording of inspections and audits in the future. Not now, just because nobody wants to do it, but I can see this being forced in the future. And through those recordings, through those walking around, The auditor or inspector will be able to interact with the glasses and find the appropriate answers to the questions while they're going and checking it out.
Like for instance, AI is really good at bringing back past stuff and helping create an expectation moving forward, but not great all the time with all that. So if for instance, somebody is trying to figure out how does this question react with what I'm seeing on the floor right now, there could be a whole lot of contextual information and knowledge that can be brought up to the inspector or the auditor that then could go, Oh, this has been done multiple times by other people.
Something similar happened here. Okay. Now I know how to respond to this particular thing because we're asking our inspectors and auditors to do a lot when they're there for four hours for an inspection or up to five days for an audit. Some of these audits and Having that context could be very helpful moving forward as well.
Do I see robots doing in the future? I think that every, I said this at conferences before, when I owned my audit company, that if there were robot auditors, I would place an order for a hundred of them. But do I see robot auditors in the future? Yes. In the near future? No. I don't see it in the near future.
There's too much context. Really, truly, it would be more of something that a plant would have, ongoing, moving around and helping people as they're making, as they're making errors. Because, Errors happen in a play, it's constantly because it's people oriented. And so I could see more of that technology being bought by play.
It's to make sure that when somebody does something wrong, corrective actions are done really fast. I don't know, but in the future, possibly. But not in the next 20 years. Probably not within my lifetime.
Francine Shaw: So well, let's put future into perspective. Yeah, I'm talking more. Yeah, I do see that the technology
Matt Regusci: is going.
Francine Shaw: That's talking 30 10.
Matt Regusci: Technology is gonna help auditors inspectors within our lifetime very soon.
Francine Shaw: So, yeah, I think there's a time and a place for specific things and you can never say all or nothing. And there's gray area for everything. And so, yeah, there's a time and a place for everything. And it can't be all or nothing.
During COVID, we made a lot of gray area. There were a lot of things that were being done because we just didn't have any other choice. And I think what has happened is that some people never moved back out of that gray area and it's okay. Well, we did this Ben, so it's still okay. What's not, we need to get back to doing things the way they're supposed to be done.
And we all need to move back into, let's do things properly. So, yeah,
Matt Regusci: anyway, I want to put robot QA manager light bulb. Yeah. I don't know about manager, maybe robot QA inspector.
Like a really, truly a lot of the QA inspections, we're seeing technology for QA inspections with AI happening right now. I'm sure. Some of you guys have already seen this QA inspections. AI is like fit perfectly for right tons and tons of data inspections coming in. Some of you guys in your plants have Ends of thousands or hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, depending upon how long you've been doing this and how many plans you have of QA inspections, but you're doing them every single day, multiple times a day.
What does AI need in order for it to function appropriately and make the appropriate decisions? It needs. A lot of data to feed that machine so I can see AI replacing a QA function much sooner than a food safety function. There's a lot more variables in food safety than there are QA within a plant.
Great questions. Any more questions? You guys have had amazing
Francine Shaw: questions.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, amazing questions. Literally, it's like the talk we just did. Oh, and we're going to be at food safety consortium as well
Francine Shaw: in D. C. In october. I think it's the 20th to the 22nd.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. So if you go to church, you'll have to miss church because it's a sunday or you can go to church and then head over to D.
C.
Francine Shaw: I think Sunday's primarily workshops, and then the consortium is Monday and Tuesday.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, and they've scheduled for 2025 already too. So we don't have to have conversations about that. We did 2023. There was a long conversation about whether we were going to do 2024. We're doing 2024 and 2025. Which
Francine Shaw: is very exciting.
Show us the tiara. Okay. I'll get it.
Matt Regusci: Oh my gosh. All right, Eleanor. Well, we can answer this one too. Do you see cannabis adopting the audit schemes used in food safety or are they currently being audited by SQF, BRC and GFSI? GFSI is the benchmarking that SQF and BRC are underneath. In the future? Yeah, I do.
So cannabis safety and quality. I was on the board of. I am on the board of and that is designed to be a GFSI standard. So do I see other standards adopting it? Yes, because for most products, particularly edible ones, cannabis is an ingredient. So that's what they think of it as is as an ingredient. So I do see in the future more and more of the schemes adopting The ability to use cannabis just like some of them are already adopting CBD and hemp.
So there are like Global Gap, for instance, has, I believe hemp falls under the pulse crop side of things. So I totally see that being more and more adopted. Where's your tiara, Francine?
Francine Shaw: Well, wait a minute before I do that, Michelle and Elena are giving away a book. They've started, I believe six months out of the year.
They're giving away a book for people that are basically new. I'm Elena. You can correct me, Michelle, to the food service industry and trying to learn what they can about the industry. So you can learn about this on LinkedIn. You have to write a paragraph about, it's about food safety, up and coming leaders in the food industry.
It's on LinkedIn. You can go to her. Page Elena Montoya and learn more about that, but it's great that they're doing this on their own. It's very encouraging for up and coming leaders in the food industry. I've never seen anybody do anything like this before. So, Elena Michelle, I think that's amazing that you're doing that and I was very honored and humbled that they chose my book to give away 1st.
the tiara. Matt makes so much fun of me, but
Matt Regusci: I like how you just said, Matt makes so much fun of me in general, which is
Francine Shaw: what Matt does. Anyway, so Deja awarded me goddess of food safety and they sent me this amazing tiara. I love it. It's beautiful. They did such a nice job. Saudija, Jim Miller, thank you so much.
Write a paragraph to tell us about their food safety and what drew them to the industry. Thank you. Anyway, this month, it is a free copy of my book, Is What You'll Win.
Matt Regusci: All right. I think that's, is that it for questions? Great. Do you have anything else to add, Francine, before
Francine Shaw: we sign off? I don't think so.
This is, we weren't sure what to expect. This has been fun. You guys asked some amazing questions.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Amazing questions. Well, great. Well, thank you.
Francine Shaw: Yes, thank you very much.
Matt Regusci: This was
Francine Shaw: a lot of fun. We'll have to do this again. Yeah, we'll do it again. Bye. Thank you.