Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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!
DEP E147
===
Matt Regusci: [00:00:00] The processing of baby formula tends to be a wet process, so you are bringing everything in, then you're mixing everything, homogenizing it, and then you're drying it out and creating a powder, assuming that's the type of formula you want to create, is the powder. Well, the facility is wet, right, and you have the perfect blend, carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins in order to make a baby grow.
Which is the exact formula that you need to make a pathogen grow.
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 l Shaw and Matt Reci for a deep dive into food [00:01:00] safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.
Don't eat poop.
Matt Regusci: Hello? Hello? Francine.
Francine L Shaw: Hello, Mr. Matt.
Matt Regusci: I'm tired.
Francine L Shaw: We both look pretty ragged today.
Matt Regusci: Yes. It's been a crazy couple weeks.
Francine L Shaw: It has been.
Matt Regusci: It's been a crazy couple weeks. I thought when I went to Ellipse Analytics. When I started running Ellipse Analytics, I wouldn't have to worry about pathogens anymore.
Francine L Shaw: We live in the world of pathogens. That's what we do.
Matt Regusci: I love talking about 'em. I understand them very well since the majority of my career was dealt around pathogens. Most of what we talk about here are pathogens. But at work, I never deal with pathogens anymore. I deal with.
Francine L Shaw: You might wanna rephrase that.
Matt Regusci: Well, our certification, Clean Label Project does not deal with [00:02:00] pathogens at all. We deal with environmental and industrial chemicals and I guess chemicals and items on the periodical chart like lead, cadmium, and mercury.
Francine L Shaw: That's what you test for.
Matt Regusci: That's what we test for, right? So we test for things that people don't usually test for. Ellipse Analytics and Clean Label Project, the certification, the foundation have been around for a while and it was before anybody talked about it. So the research that we did or we do is category testing of different products and we go out and we, we use like Nelson data, Spins data and Amazon data, and we find out what the top products are in terms of purchases that consumers buy within any given category.
So for instance, baby purees or infant formula, or neonatal supplements, or protein powder, et cetera, et cetera. And then we go out and [00:03:00] we test for heavy metals, pesticides, glyphosate, bisphenols, which would be like BPA, BPS, and phthalates, right? Which is like DEP, DDHP, and acrylamide, which is the chemical that is produced when carbohydrates are cooked at a high temperature, so like fried or baked or whatever creates a chemical called acrylamide.
So we test for those type of things. And then depending upon how a product performs, 'cause it's a product certification. So a brand could have multiple products that are certified in some products that aren't, or vice versa.
Some products that are certified to Clean Label Project and multiple products that aren't. And it's based upon either they want to have their top products or their high risk products or whatever it is. Some of 'em have their whole portfolio certified to Clean Label Projects. Some just have a few, but it's a product based certification, so we're testing all the products that want this certification.
There's multiple different types of certification, Purity Award, Clean Label Project, [00:04:00] First 1000 days, which is based on the EU standards, and we certify to that.
Francine L Shaw: So is arsenic something you would test for?
Matt Regusci: Yes. Arsenic is something we test for. Yeah, I mentioned three of the four, and then we're adding tin as well to our panel for heavy metals.
Looking to add aluminum and some other stuff as well. Every single time you add a new element or chemical to be tested on the types of instrumentation that we have, you have to go through, you have to find the method. You have to go. You have to then create the method to work for whatever products that you are testing.
And because my lab tests for baby purees, infant formula, protein powder, supplements, popcorn, pet food, meal kits, et cetera, et cetera. It is unique because our lab has a lot of different methods for a lot of different types of products for testing of the same types of panels that I mentioned earlier.
Francine L Shaw: [00:05:00] And before we get into what we're actually gonna talk about today, why wouldn't you choose to automatically test for pathogens? I know the answer to this, obviously, and why? Would that be so difficult?
Matt Regusci: So the conversation today, if you'll see the title is talking about ByHeart. ByHeart is a Clean Label Project certified, or was a Clean Label Project certified brand.
So parts of the Clean Label Project certification is asking for a valid food safety certificate. So because we are not a pathogenic food safety certification. We are an environmental and industrial chemical certification to make sure that the products are very low to no of any of those types of things.
When I say very low, it is very hard to get heavy metals 100% down of products 'cause heavy metals are naturally occurring in the soil and plants will suck that up. [00:06:00] So the idea is not to be zero, but as close to zero as possible. And so the certification checks on that, right? To make sure that they're like per serving. It's very, very, very low. Some products don't have anything because they just don't have anything because of the ingredients that are in them.
Why doesn't Clean Label Project and my lab in particular, 'cause Clean Label Project is the foundation, that's the organization that runs Clean Label Project Certification. So they're like SQF and Ellipse Analytics is like the certification body, right? So we're the ones performing the testing. We're like the nerds for Clean Label Project.
Why don't we test for pathogens? That is a great question. That is a question that I am being asked every day for the last two weeks, and the reason why is for a couple reasons.
One is that's on our certification. Clean Label Project Foundation was created to shine a light on the industrial and environmental chemicals [00:07:00] and elements that are in products. When Clean Label Project Foundation started like a decade ago, no one was really looking for it. No one was really finding it right. Well, they weren't finding it 'cause they weren't looking for it. So it, it was shining a light on those types of things that are in the industry.
There are a lot of other organizations out there, laboratories, certification bodies, et cetera, that are focused on pathogens. Very few now. Back then zero. Were focused on the industrial and environmental chemicals. So that was the mission for Clean Label Project, was to minimize and get closer to zero for all those industrial and environmental chemicals. That's the mission.
So the reason why we don't do it is for a few reasons why other people are already doing it, and retailers and food service companies are expecting their companies to provide a valid food safety certificate.
So on Clean Label Project, we were like, okay, [00:08:00] we also are going to require a valid and current passing food safety certificate. And theoretically that should cover pathogens, right? 'cause they should be doing environmental testing. They should be doing all the different stuff needed in order to pass a food safety audit.
Why we won't do it now? 'cause I understand how this world works. And if I were to start testing pathogens now as part of Clean Label Project Certification, it would be more like the Transparency Award. So Clean Label Project has a Transparency Award.
There's only one company that uses this Transparency Award, and that is Puori, which is a fantastic and amazing company. Puori sells protein powders and creatine and different multivitamins. Every single lot is tested mostly by our lab. We don't test for the pathogens and stuff like that, but every [00:09:00] single lot is tested for heavy metals, pesticides, pathogens, et cetera, et cetera, and they have a test and hold program where they will not ship out that product until that lot is cleared. That's part of the Transparency Award.
If Clean Label Project were to. I'm saying this because Molly, the executive director of Clean Label Project, and I have talked about this a lot over the last couple weeks. She and I are both in agreement of this. If we were to start testing for pathogens, we would want to do it for every single lot, and it would be a test and hold program. That's it.
Because you could have a lot with pathogens, one batch as pathogens, and one batch doesn't. So we're not going to certify 'cause this is a product certification. It's not a brand certification, it's not a system certification, it's a product certification. We're not going to certify a product utilizing pathogen saying that it is quote unquote, pathogen free for that [00:10:00] product without testing every single lot. 'Cause there could be listeria in it two months later there could be botulism two months later and that would be disingenuous to certify a product without testing every single lot.
Francine L Shaw: Because essentially just like an inspection, that would be a snapshot in time if you only did it correct. Periodically.
Matt Regusci: Correct.
Yes. And we understand this world too well to know that a snapshot in time and pathogens is ridiculous. It is ridiculous.
Francine L Shaw: It's not there now. Doesn't mean it's not there a week from now even. Yes. Tomorrow.
Matt Regusci: Yep. Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: It just doesn't work like that.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. So, and with this ByHeart outbreak, every single outbreak that I've been in with every single company, by the way, I haven't been in many since Valmir and I started our own company, we literally had zero [00:11:00] outbreaks during our whole entire certification.
Now at Primus Labs, that was not the case. We had outbreaks all the time at Primus Labs, so I was really good with dealing with outbreaks. But at WQS. Zero outbreaks. And it was because we were a hard auditing company. Like companies chose us because they wanted good audits. They wanted good auditors to come in and perform good audits to help them get better with their program.
I can't say that's the case for many other certification bodies 'cause they keep ending up in outbreaks and that's bad for both the industry as a whole, and more importantly for consumers in general.
Francine L Shaw: Like you, I've never been involved personally in outbreak. I've helped with outbreaks, yes. But I've never been involved in an outbreak, thank God.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, yeah. And it's sad 'cause every company that, every company that I worked with at Primus that had an outbreak and I was helping them through the process. Every company that [00:12:00] I've worked with, let me rephrase that. At WQS, none of our certified companies had an outbreak. There were other companies in the middle of outbreaks that were using a different certification body that would come to us to help them figure out why, what was going on.
So the root cause analysis of stuff, and we would go in and help them figure out the root cause analysis of it, and then get their. Talk to them about, yeah, these are all the non-conformances you should have had like in a gap audit type of a thing. A gap audit in the food safety world is not like good agricultural practices.
Gap is used a lot of ways food safety. So GAP is used in good agricultural practices. GAP is used for GlobalG.A.P., and then gap is also used in terms of what are the gaps in my program. So here's where I am. Here's where I should be, say for SQF or for BRC or whatever name the GFSI, global Food [00:13:00] Safety Initiative program, and here are the gaps between those two, right where you are now and where you need to be.
So people, companies, like during an outbreak or after an outbreak, would bring us in to do those gap analysis and we would go in and let them know, yeah, here's some of the things that you're missing.
Francine L Shaw: We would call that the should line. We should be here. We should be, we are here.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, we should be here.
And a lot of times those poor companies and some of 'em may have chosen the certification body because they were quote unquote easy. Some of 'em could have chosen the certification body 'cause they were cheaper. There's a lot of different reasons why companies choose a certification body. But every single time we would do that gap analysis, they were very disappointed with their previous certification body.
Because had they had that appropriate audit to begin with, they wouldn't have been in the mess that they are now. And that is [00:14:00] sad. 'cause very few companies go in and go, I want to kill people. That's not very good for a lot of reasons. No. So when I'm working with these companies, I have empathy for them.
Now, it's also very sad for this particular one because. Everybody who listens here knows I love babies, and this directly affected babies and it's very sad.
Francine L Shaw: And what you're saying is true. Nobody goes into this saying, I wanna kill people. And that when you explain what happened after the fact, they get it.
Mm-hmm. But I also know that when you're in there and they're interviewing these certification bodies and they're talking to who they wanna hire, they're hearing, but they're not necessarily listening all the time at that point.
You know what I mean? That's when they're looking at the numbers and the bottom line and it's, well, we know that we're doing things well, so we need the bare minimum a lot of times. Not everybody, but, and that's where the dis and you, I talk about this a lot. That's where the disconnect is [00:15:00] sometimes, until we hit this point of an outbreak and it's like, we messed up. We should have done something differently. Where did we go wrong?
Matt Regusci: Yeah, yeah.
Francine L Shaw: You know, we should have hired a different certification body.
Maybe we should have used different auditors, maybe. And that's, at that point, it's a little too late. You can move forward doing things differently, but you can't go back.
Matt Regusci: Nope. Nope.
Francine L Shaw: So that being said, outbreak.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: That's where we are. And it's not pretty and it's probably gonna get a lot more ugly than in. It is.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. And so with outbreaks, when you're doing a root cause analysis of an outbreak, and this is good to know if you're doing a root cause analysis of what a potential before you have an outbreak doing a root cause analysis within your facility of what are your potential risks. Okay? So what are your potential risks?[00:16:00]
Whenever you're creating a processed food or any type of food, really you're on the field, your risks are gonna be water. They're going to be inputs. Inputs being like your fertilizer, your pesticides, et cetera, et cetera. So anything you're putting onto the crop, it could be your seed, it could be the surrounding area, right?
Do you have a field next to you that could be a crop? Duster could put chemicals on your product that you don't want on there. Are you next to a feedlot? Are you next to a river? Are you next to a lake or a pond? Any of that overflows and floods. It could flood your field and now all of a sudden you have a problem.
Right? So water inputs, so your fertilizer. I talk to a lot of over my career, a lot of organic companies that believe that their product is safe because it's organic. While it, it doesn't have synthetic chemicals on [00:17:00] there and all this different type of stuff. It's not quote unquote safe from pathogens.
Right? If you're using organic fertilizer, which tends to be fish meal or worm casting, or organic fertilizer, which comes from poop, you're spreading the potential for pathogens across the field systemically.
So that's where it is in the field when we're looking at the facility. Okay. Where's your risk going to come from? It's gonna come from your ingredients, your ingredient suppliers. It's going to come from your facility itself. Is there a leak in the roof? Is there a leak in your water? What type of water are you bringing into the facility? Do you have spouts that have bacteria in them? So it could be the water coming in is perfectly clean, but the water going on to your line is not.
It could come from the equipment itself. Are pathogens hiding in the belts? Are they hiding in the equipment? Are they on the belt, et cetera, et [00:18:00] cetera.
For this particular case, with ByHeart, it most likely is a supplier, and that's the hardest thing. Unless you're testing every single product ingredient from every single supplier on a continual basis, it's gonna be very hard for you to find this stuff. I advise that, but then there's a lot of other things that the reason why the industry doesn't do this is not because the bacteria, the pathogen tests are expensive. It's because the ramifications of finding something is expensive. So when you find salmonella, e coli, listeria, et cetera, or Clostridium botulism in a supplier's product, what are you gonna do with it?
Now you have to have a routine at which you have enough product, raw product in your facility that if you find product that has a bad batch of something, heavy [00:19:00] metals as well. 'cause that's where the world that I live in is heavy metals and industrial and environmental chemicals. If you are testing for that from your suppliers and you find it and you're looking at it for every single lot and you find it, well now you can't use that.
Right? So if you don't have enough product, you can't do your run. Okay, if you're testing the finished product, well, what happens if you find it? If you find it now you have to put that product aside. You have to retest it again, do some confirmations. Now you have a test and hold type of a program, which means you can't ship that out, so that slows down operations.
So the industry itself, if it really wants to stop these foodborne illnesses, they're like 100% confident that they're not going to have foodborne illnesses and they need to do an in, at least an ingredient [00:20:00] supplier check with every single lot.
Francine L Shaw: Another risk is the human element, which that's a big risk as well.
Matt Regusci: That is a big risk as well. It, it is a huge.
Francine L Shaw: It might not be a nest, but it's also because there's a, hepatitis is something that.
Matt Regusci: Hepatitis is big. That's why I like washing your hands, doing all , and that could come from your product as well. So he like the whole hepatitis outbreak where we have an interview with a really good guy that we did at Food Safety Consortium where he talked about his first day of the job or first couple weeks at the job was dealing with the hepatitis outbreak in green onions in Mexico.
Francine L Shaw: And it doesn't happen as frequently, but it.
Matt Regusci: Doesn't happen as frequently. So, and it also is less systemic. So unless it happened in the field and you have a whole bunch of crops with hepatitis, you tend to not get hepatitis as much from the supply chain. You get it a lot and a lot of that [00:21:00] human viruses tend to be more on the food service side.
So Norovirus, hepatitis. Someone with hepatitis served you those products and wasn't hygienic enough. They're out there, but they tend to be smaller, more regionalized outbreaks, unless there's a stomach issue in the field at which there's no five log reduction for fresh produce. So that virus is gonna get out into a lot of people and get people sick.
Francine L Shaw: It usually comes through in like the frozen food.
Matt Regusci: Yep. Yeah. And the berries and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then if you don't have good practices in the facility. You can create a pathogenic or a viral or bacterial pathogenic soup in your dunk tank, and now you are spreading that hepatitis or e coli or salmonella, listeria, whatever it is, into a whole bunch of product lot after lot after lot, right?
And then you're [00:22:00] contaminating a whole bunch of lots, and now you do have a big issue as well.
Francine L Shaw: So that being said.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, on this particular outbreak. What's the saddest thing is, and where you and I have discussed this a lot, product is still on the shelf and that. Yeah. That's not a ByHeart issue. That is what's going on with retailers and stuff, and we have got to get a better message out somehow as an industry to get these products off the shelf.
When there's an outbreak, they have to be off the shelf.
Francine L Shaw: I read that they were still finding this on the shelves, this many days into this I was flabbergasted. If they are, I did look on, on Amazon. Just pulled it.
Matt Regusci: Oh. For sure, but.
Francine L Shaw: That isn't always the case in that.
Matt Regusci: A lot easier. Amazon says product is off and then they just discontinue the link like [00:23:00] it's You can't have product.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah, yeah. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. There was something a couple years ago, I forget what it was, and it took a bit for it to come off Amazon. I can't remember what the product was. It's probably been three years ago or so. But yeah, no, it's 100% off. It's gone. You can't even find, you can't like the whole link.
It's all, it's done.
Matt Regusci: So yeah, that's the hard thing.
That's the hard thing about pathogens is, I'm gonna use an analogy. Okay. I tell my kids all the time 'cause I have a lot of adult and because teenage children, the only way, and most of my children are sons. Okay? So I have 10 sons and two daughters. One daughter is younger, so I'm not having this conversation with her like very young, like 10, but my other daughter is like almost 21, and my sons are ranging between 15 and 26.
The only 100% way that [00:24:00] you were not going to get somebody pregnant or an STD is don't have sex. For the advice for the industry, the only way to be 100% sure that you are not going to have pathogens in your product is to test them all. And if it's not finished products, I get it. Fine. Don't test all your finished products, but at least test all your suppliers because.
And then randomly test for listeria. You should be doing environmental testing across the board with Listeria. 'cause we have Listeria. Listeria's gonna grow, it's gonna continue to be there. But listeria may come from your suppliers, but it may come from your own plant, right? So environmental testing should be at least the minimum for zones, for all of zones.
I recommend to companies to test zone one for pathogens, and they look at me like I'm fricking crazy. [00:25:00] Do they follow me on this? No, most of them don't. Some do, most don't.
Francine L Shaw: That was right up there with my sex education versus sex training.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, just, I think it's just across the board. I'm not saying that my, my children listen to me as much as the industry does either.
So it's fine.
Francine L Shaw: There's always that.
Matt Regusci: But the only way is to at least test all your suppliers and do very good environmental testing and find a certification body. And now I'm completely agnostic when it comes to this 'cause I do not do food safety certifications anymore. Contaminate certifications? Yes.
Bacteria is a contaminant. Industrial and environmental contamination? Yes. Bacterial and pathogenic? No, I'm not in that world anymore. So when I say this, I'm not promoting any company, but find a company who has a certification body for [00:26:00] SQF, BRC, blah, blah, blah. Find one that actually cares about keeping your facility safe, not just performing the motions of filling out a checklist and sending it in so that you can get a complete and free pass to whatever retailer and food service company you want to go to right now.
What the industry is right now for food safety is its insurance policy from retailers and food service companies that allow you to sell your goods. That's it. That shouldn't be it. It should actually be a tool that you use to help your facility and food safety program get better.
Francine L Shaw: The first information I saw on this was like the eighth of this month.
The symptoms can take up to 30 days to develop. Yeah. Which means that right now I think there are 31 cases in 15 states, which means that there are gonna be. More cases [00:27:00] globally. I don't know if you saw this or not, but China at this point banned, which is, which
Matt Regusci: is China.
I saw that article and I just started laughing. I'm like, okay, China, you're banning ByHeart because of botulism. Like you put melanine in pet food and killed a whole bunch of dogs.
Francine L Shaw: I'm like China of all places. Okay. I think we're still putting lead in the toys over paint.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: Okay. Not that they shouldn't, but just China shocked me.
That's, I'm not gonna go there. So there's just so much. Bill Marler has been like... his fingers probably have blisters.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Yeah. And he was talking about Project Stork Speed and was this on their Bingo card, I think was the exact title or something along those lines? And the answer probably was No.
Francine L Shaw: Gonna, guess not.[00:28:00]
Matt Regusci: No. And should it be? Yeah, it should be. All of this stuff should be right. So baby formula. The process for making baby formula, the ingredients are very regimented by the FDA, so it has to have a certain amount of protein, certain amount of carbohydrates, a certain amount of vitamins, all this different type of stuff.
So the formula, the product formulation for baby formula tends to be very, very similar, right? The processing of baby formula tends to be a wet process, so you are bringing everything in. You're mixing everything, homogenizing it, and then you're drying it out and creating a powder, assuming that's the type of formula you want to create, is the powder. Well, the facility is wet, right?
And you have the perfect blend, carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins in order to make a baby grow, which is the [00:29:00] exact formula that you need to make a pathogen grow.
Francine L Shaw: FAT TOM just popped in my head. Do you know what FAT TOM is?
Matt Regusci: No.
Francine L Shaw: Food, Acidity, Time, Temperature, Oxygen and Moisture.
Matt Regusci: Oh yes.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah, that's, yeah.
Matt Regusci: It's the perfect everything. So should this be tested? Yes, should, but also at the same time, everything should be tested because.
Francine L Shaw: So, okay, so this is baby formula is being fed a hundred percent to a highly susceptible population. So should the standards for that be more strict?
Matt Regusci: It should be, and it's also the only food a baby will receive.
So when you're like for like heavy metals, when we're testing and certifying infant formula to Clean Label Project, what we're looking for is it is like the most stringent expectations for heavy metals and all those different types of all the other industrial and environmental chemicals. It is because it's the [00:30:00] only product that baby is consuming.
So when we're talking about heavy metals building up in a baby system or the other chemicals building up in a baby system, that's all there is, right? So they're eating, and I know this very well because I think I've had a baby in my house almost nonstop for 20 years.
Francine L Shaw: Well, and not only that, a healthy baby is enough of a risk. Yes. But now you've got babies, your wife works in the NICU. Not only that, but now you've got babies that are even a higher risk.
Matt Regusci: Yep.
Francine L Shaw: Because they are special needs of, you know, one caliber or another. And special needs doesn't always mean that it's a high risk because they've got an illness that's gonna make them a higher risk.
It could mean something else, but.
Matt Regusci: All babies are a high risk.
Francine L Shaw: In general because of their immune systems, but some are even higher risk.
Matt Regusci: Correct. And those in the new NICU tend to be higher risk. You're basically helping to build their immune system in the NICU. The immune, [00:31:00] a baby's immune system. A breast milk helps build a baby's immune system.
So if there's a multitude of reasons why a baby cannot get breast milk and so then yeah, you're working with, you're literally working with just infant formula, which is supposed to be sterile or as sterile as could possibly be. And so you're not providing any probiotics or anything like that.
Francine L Shaw: So whenever we give them something like, and This isn't the only case. Right now, this is the case of the day. Yes, for the month or whatever. There have been other cases in the last, a lot, few years, several other cases. This just happens to be the most current. Now we're giving them poisoned food and it's the only food they're receiving. It's detrimental. And we need to find a way to curb this.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. So one of the things that my wife deals with a lot in the NICU is something called NEC, and I forget what [00:32:00] exactly it means, but NEC is an acronym and it basically is a form of
Strep or staph. It could be one of those two things. And it basically necrotizing like
Francine L Shaw: Necrotizing enterocolitis.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Every single time I ask my wife this acronym, she says it to me and it goes in one ear and out the other. 'cause I am not a medical people type of person, which is hilarious 'cause a bunch of my kids are too.
So they talk to each other in a completely different language. Like, uh, they're speaking English, but it's not English.
Francine L Shaw: It's a gastrointestinal problem.
Matt Regusci: It basically eats like the baby alive. It's terrible.
Francine L Shaw: They're intestines. It causes it to die. Yeah. It inflames the intestines. It causes it to die.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. It's terrible.
Like when my wife has those cases, she's, it's very sad, but a lot of that comes from infant formula because that's the only place that they're gonna get it. So it's like a strep or a staph. It could come from the environment to the [00:33:00] hospital as well, but a lot of times it comes from that. It's because the baby's in the NICU.
Everything is sterile. They don't have really an immune system, and so it's, yeah, it's tough. Poor babies.
Francine L Shaw: It's a mortality rate of 50%.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: Tell your wife to call me. I understand. Tell Tracy, gimme a call.
Matt Regusci: It's so funny 'cause my daughter loves medical stuff. My son-in-law is basically going to med school. He wants to be like a holistic doctor.
My 26-year-old son is an EMT. He went to med school, my 20-year-old son, he's going to a different university starting in the spring because he went to college to play wrestling and then realized I'm gonna end college and I'm. All I'm gonna learn is how to wrestle. And he's like, I actually wanna be a doctor.
So he's changing universities to go to med school. So they all come together, like I'm [00:34:00] listening to them talk and they're all talking in acronyms like you and I. Not on this podcast. We try not to talk in acronyms on this podcast, but in general, like when we're talking about food safety, so much of stuff we're talking about is acronyms.
And so now I get to see what like my. I drove through my kids when I was talking in acronyms about food safety. Now they're all doing it with my wife in medical stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even like watching like medical shows, people cutting people open and changing a heart. No, thank you.
Francine L Shaw: Some of that I don't like to.
Matt Regusci: My kids will have that on. And I'm like, what horror movie are you watching? Oh, no, it's not a horror movie. It's a documentary on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Francine L Shaw: And I'm like, pull the liver out and lay it on the side. I can't, I, I don't like to see them. Our ADHD just took over. I don't like them to see them like, take the scalpel and cut into the skin. Once they get inside, I'm okay. It's when they're cutting the skin. I don't like [00:35:00] to see them cut the skin or to suture it. Ugh.
Matt Regusci: Oh my God. This is where we, I wish our, we once, they, everybody could see my face. Right now she's describing this and my face looks an absolute disgust.
Francine L Shaw: Once they get inside.
I'm okay. It's the actual cutting of the skin. It's ugh. 'cause I can feel it. I like, I can feel it. Physically when they're cutting the skin.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, none of that is good. Cutting of the skin, pulling out organs, putting your hand inside of a human body like a hand should not be inside of a human body.
Francine L Shaw: After you heart to keep me alive.
As long as everything's gonna be good when they're done, I'm okay with it.
Matt Regusci: Oh, I'm cool with being asleep and somebody doing it to me to keep me alive 100%. I just don't wanna see the replay of the footage of doing it. No, thank you. No, I'm good.
Francine L Shaw: Watching this TikTok the other day, it was a scene of what you know, happens in a hospital, you know, whenever there's a [00:36:00] certain code called and it was showing these doctors all running to different parts of the hospital.
There's, I guess it's basically a crash cart. And this, this isn't funny, but they're running down the hospital and he like literally grabs the side of the gurney, jumps on top of this person and starts doing CPR. Good God, I don't know if I could jump that high.
Matt Regusci: Oh, my wife did that. Like when she, right now she always wanted to be a a neonatal nurse.
A NICU nurse. But when you go through the nursing program, you. I forget what they call it Again, this is how much I remember of my wife going through. She got her second BA talk about an amazing woman. My wife is she with all the crazy, me being an entrepreneur, having a dozen kids doing foster care. She also goes back and gets her second MBAA few, I don't know, five, six years ago.
This is not second MBA second [00:37:00] BA or a BS in nursing. Then goes through the whole entire program in her late thirties. She was almost 40, and she goes, and she has to do all of that interning. So she's like in emergency rooms, she's doing all of her stuff, getting her hours. This is when our internet goes down.
Okay. Our internet goes down, the account is underneath my wife's name.
Francine L Shaw: Uh, I remember this.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Do you remember this?
Francine L Shaw: Uhhuh?
Matt Regusci: Huh. The person would not let me have access to the account so I could figure out how to schedule an appointment to get, 'cause I work from home most of the time and so I'm like literally cannot work except for on my phone.
And I'm like, we need this internet back up. And they're like, well we need your wife to give the go ahead or whatever. And so I.
Francine L Shaw: I think I was like with you.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. I'm texting my wife. Can you please give the code or whatever to, I think it was whatever at and t was at the time. [00:38:00] I canceled this afterwards 'cause I was so annoying.
Francine L Shaw: I was in Hagerstown.
Matt Regusci: Yes, I remember. I remember I was livid. This was ridiculous. The way customer service is for internet is just crazy. And so then she's like on her Apple watch, I'm giving CPR someone is coding on the table. And so I'm on the phone with the guy and I'm like. My wife cannot give me the code.
She is literally giving CPR keeping someone alive. Can you please just like how many people the last name of Regusci are there, but yeah, she hopped up on the table, was given CPR.
Francine L Shaw: I 100%. Remember that?
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Yeah. I have to do first aid every single year for foster care and I'm like, okay, CPR, I think I could do CPR.
I've never had to do CPR. I think I can do it. First aid. If someone is bleeding out, Lord, I hope somebody else is there 'cause I may not be able to do it. In the process of helping someone while they're bleeding out, pass out as well. [00:39:00] Wake up with like blood all over me and I'm like, oh, I'm dying too.
Francine L Shaw: I'm usually okay until it's with my kids or my grandkids.
The blood and stuff on a crisis like that, I'm good until it's over and then it's deep breath it. Yeah. I remember taking my son to get stitches and it was like, until they started stitching him up, they're like, I think you need to sit down. I was fine getting him to the hospital, but yeah. Any, anybody else I'm good. But.
Okay, so.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, this is, this is the bad outbreak. It's gonna go on. Yeah, it is for a while.
Francine L Shaw: Food Safety News, every year it, the beginning of the following year, so it'll be the beginning of 2026. They'll go back and they'll recap. The worst outbreaks ever in the top outbreaks of 2025. I feel like this is gonna be on there.
Matt Regusci: 100%. Yeah, this is gonna be on there. We're in it every single day, so we see it every single day so we can like see solutions to things. This is [00:40:00] something that people can learn from, companies can learn from and just get better, and I hope that happens.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah, we always were optimistic. Always, yeah. Hoping that people learn from the most recent tragedy that it's like Darin Detwiler, we've talked to him several times, is but they keep repeating themselves.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: And each one in some cases seems to be worse than the last.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. It's interesting. Sometimes it's worse than other times, and a lot of times it's just more of the same. I think most of the time it's more of the same when you have a supply chain that is designed to send as much product to as many places as possible across the United States and the world when there is an outbreak.
It is going to affect a lot of people. And so it's like when it does happen, it's gonna affect [00:41:00] people a lot.
Francine L Shaw: It can't help. It's mass produced and it's going everywhere, so it can't help but affect a lot of people. Fortunately in this case, nobody, I don't think anyone, any babies have died yet. I said yet, hopefully none will, I don't think.
Matt Regusci: No, they haven't yet. At least not that I've seen as of recording this. No babies have died. Right. Okay. Well on that note, don't eat poop.