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 E161
===
[00:00:00] Francine: I was in a facility one time where we were called in to do some work. We're talking about compliance and to say I'm in compliance. I don't wanna say it doesn't mean anything because it does. But we were called in because this facility was having a lot of issues and there was a Quest infestation issue and they were mixing product and there were some cockroaches in this product, pointed this out to them.
There are cockroaches in your planet too. We can, I
[00:00:32] Matt: wonder how you had to point that out to them. They couldn't physically seek the cockroach in the product,
[00:00:36] Francine: so we, you're gonna have to get rid of this. You, you've got get rid of this clean it stand set. You're gonna have to get rid of it. The response was, we're within compliance.
[00:00:52] Intro: Everybody's gotta eat and nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food [00:01:00] 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 safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't.
Eat poop. Don't eat poop.
[00:01:18] Matt: Hello? Hello, Francine.
[00:01:21] Francine: Good morning, Matthew.
[00:01:22] Matt: And, and we have a special guest. We have Deal Rick Virus. Good friend of the show. Good friend of us. Good friend of the food safety industry. How are you, Rick?
[00:01:34] Rick: I'm doing well. Thanks Matt. Hi, Francine. Good to see you.
[00:01:38] Francine: Good to see you as well.
[00:01:40] Matt: Well, we as any, anybody who listens to the show, longtime listener, knows that we have been attending the Food Safety Consortium for many years now, formally attending as Don't Eat Poop. Since our inception, since we started it February of 20 23, 20 24, we were [00:02:00] at that conference recording In New Jersey.
[00:02:04] Rick: Yeah, in New Jersey. Yep. Yep. Both of you guys had been in a different situation at the consortium when we used to be in Schaumburg, Illinois.
[00:02:15] Matt: Yes. And now it's in DC.
[00:02:17] Rick: And now it's in dc. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:19] Matt: The whole place is, it's so nice, but people only complain about the escalator. That seems to never work. Work.
[00:02:27] Rick: Who would've thought the same escalator would be broken two years in a row?
[00:02:33] Francine: You know what Rick? The last year we were in New Jersey, I nearly froze to death. I can walk steps. I'm good. I'd rather be warm.
[00:02:45] Rick: Right? Very.
[00:02:46] Francine: So I'm good.
[00:02:48] Matt: Well, this is a little bit different than the last times we've interviewed you, which is at the Food Safety Consortium.
We're gonna be talking about 15 years of food safety tech. Where you guys [00:03:00] started, where you guys are going. You guys are now doing multiple conferences. So there's one in St. Louis coming up, and then the one that's in DC every year, but celebrating 15 years of food safety tech, like that's. In today's world, that's like forever Rick.
[00:03:20] Rick: It feels like it some days and other days it was like it's gone by like that. Yeah, it's been a while. It's been a fun ride and we've got so much more to accomplish.
[00:03:31] Matt: So tell us the evolution. So you've been in media for a while and what was the evolution of food safety tech over the last 15 years?
[00:03:40] Rick: Okay, well without spending a lot of time.
Prior to the 15 years, but just to put things into context, I had started a print magazine called Food Quality, which technically was the first business to Business Trade Journal addressing food safety and quality. It was in the end of [00:04:00] 1994, and so that was coming off of a lot of the consumer press and publicity related to.
The e coli outbreak in the Pacific Northwest, which the Bill Marler famous, which brought tragedy to Darren Detweiler. That incident is what gave me the idea. 'cause I had been in a food publication prior to that, and I thought that the industry, and there was an opportunity related to the niche of food safety and quality that could be dedicated to that.
So we launched Food Quality, my wife and I, small privately held firm. We published that for close to 15 years and sold the company and the property to John Wiley and Sons. And I went to work for them for a couple of years, and after the non-compete was up and I was itching to get [00:05:00] back on my own. It was a time when I wanted to get back into food safety, but I wanted to do something specifically just purely digital.
So the business model was different. And back then it seems, you know, everyone's got a digital publication. There's very few, if any, print publications, but back then everyone had a print publication and the digital. Platform or whatever they published on their website was just like an afterthought. And my thought was I wanted to create a business model that generated revenue and survived on its own without print.
So that meant first doing the digital platform and then you still needed something tangible. You needed something that either someone could pick up, which is print, or someone could go visit, which is an event. So that led to the launch of the Food Safety Consortium, [00:06:00] giving us something of a tangible, non-digital product.
And I was just talking to Jacqueline Southie this morning and I'm completely separate conversation. This really is relevant to this point. She's like, I just view Food Safety Tech and the Food Safety Consortium as just this one entity. It's you. It's, you have the written word and then the spoken word, but basically between food safety tech and the food safety consortium, you're providing best practices on food safety and quality.
You're providing regulations, updates on there, and new technology. It's providing information to the industry in just two different forms, and that's how the business model has evolved and it's changed a lot in 15 years. On the publishing side and it's evolved on the events side as well. So, wow. I dunno if that answers your question.
[00:06:59] Francine: Totally [00:07:00] does.
[00:07:00] Rick: In the food safety publishing business for 30 some odd years, when you look at the two. The two,
[00:07:07] Matt: wow.
[00:07:08] Francine: It's a long time.
[00:07:08] Matt: Just to put in this perspective. In 94, I think I was in eighth grade, so, so, okay. So I remember you talking about starting foods. Quality Magazine. That magazine has been around forever.
Just as an entrepreneur, when I see my baby develop and grow and then move and then continue to grow, you move on to other projects and you're doing other things, but you get to see what you're developing or what you had developed before, still be around for so long. How does that make you feel?
[00:07:44] Rick: It was, well first off, Wiley ceased publication of it two years ago, and that was very sad.
I dunno how else to put it. It [00:08:00] probably at the end of the day, was just never a true good fit to the platform and the method that has worked for them. So, I mean, they're a very, very good scientific peer reviewed publisher. But their model isn't really advertising based. It's subscription based from academia.
That's their model. But to answer your question, it was hard. It was really hard to hand off something you created and then have no say in it. So that really was more of a motivation. It was actually my wife who had said, you know, everyone in the food industry even go to the food safety summit and they still think you're running Quality Magazine.
They don't even know you last. You really need to do something and get back into it. And that again led to the launch of food safety tech and now with after 15 years. Yeah, that's my baby. Both brands are, and I was asked by an advertiser, what's the difference [00:09:00] between food safety tech and some of the other?
Digital media serving the same market, and there's some very good digital platforms out there with some differences. But I said at the end of the day, there's still really no one out there that started it from scratch and really wakes up in the morning and worries about it every day. How we can do better.
How's it going? You're always on edge a little bit. You always want to do things better. It's my baby. I care. And so when you work with Food safety Tech or you work with the Food Safety Consortium, you are working with me and I will do anything and everything, including blatantly wearing a t-shirt of one of my advertisers to support the industry, our brands, our customers, our attendees, our readers.
You know, I'm kind of like a mama bear protecting [00:10:00] my cubs.
[00:10:01] Matt: Yeah. We've experienced that directly with you. I mean, you have a team, but every single time we schedule something with your team, you're always on every meeting. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:11] Rick: So I've got a great team that is being supportive and providing great insight and doing things that I can't do, and that's a great feeling.
But at the end of the day, it's still people who work with our team still get me.
[00:10:26] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. In fact, we have somebody from your team here in the background candy with the chat section open to remind us or you if there's anything that you didn't hit because she
[00:10:39] Rick: just wrote. Yep.
[00:10:40] Francine: I was actually just looking to make sure she was able to get back in.
That's what I was looking at.
[00:10:45] Rick: It's so funny.
[00:10:46] Matt: So, okay, so over the last Food Safety Tech's been around for 15 years. By the way, congratulations for having the insight in what, 2007 of going, you know, I think the world is moving to digital and doing it on digital, but how have [00:11:00] you seen. The industry evolve.
We've talked a lot in the past at different in interviews, but I never think we've really asked you this question before. How have you seen the world evolve in food safety since 94 and then since you started Food Safety Tech 15 years ago?
[00:11:18] Rick: Well, let's just kinda look back on the last 15 years launching Food Safety Tech and the Consortium was in the same year that FISMA came out.
So FISMA is 15 years as well. You look back at FISMA and then and FISMA in the 15 years, FISMA made a massive splash by bringing back more attention by senior level management and food companies to the aspects of regulatory compliance related to food safety. I think that was a fairly major event in the last 15 years compared to, let's say, the e coli account in the early nineties.
You couple that [00:12:00] with several related and unrelated things, the digital transformation. We have more data now. We're doing more testing now, so there's some really interesting questions and challenges to the industry on, okay. Well, if FISMA started based on being a preventative. Method. It's not a reactionary, it's trying to prevent food safety outbreaks from happening in the first place.
So then the question goes is, well, are we succeeding? We as an industry, we as a community, the food safety and quality community, are we succeeding after 15 years? And I had my opinions, Francine, what's your opinion on that
[00:12:51] Francine: with fisma? Specifically? No,
[00:12:54] Matt: I think it's complicated.
[00:12:55] Francine: No, we are not. We no, we have not succeeded.
We have not [00:13:00] succeeded.
[00:13:01] Rick: Well, how do you define success? I'm asking you guys the questions, but this really is the conversation. How does the community define success? And Matt, you did say it's complicated and there I think there are things
[00:13:15] Francine: like you, it's very complicated. He's right,
[00:13:17] Rick: but I think that one of the key things would be is, is to try and figure out some form of agreed upon metric that we can measure against.
Instead of saying, in my opinion, it would be easier if we could agree upon to here's where we're at and here's where either we need to go or here is where we're going up or down based on some form of metrics. Some people I've seen try and measure, use that metric on injuries, hospitalizations, deaths per year.
[00:13:52] Francine: Think that maybe we should set a new starting point.
[00:13:55] Matt: And what I say is complicated. Every single person at the table, [00:14:00] every single stakeholder has a different expectation of sma. So for the politicians and for FDA, I think they believe it's a huge success. They got together, they passed this bill. They can now tell their constituents, look, we did something for food safety.
We created food safety. We created this whole entire thing. Right? We created fsma. And then for the FDA. They're like, look, we were able to hire these people and do these tasks that Congress told us to do, and look, we did them right. It took us 10 years and actually 15 years, we still haven't done this traceability side of things for them.
They see this as a success. For multiple people within the industry. They're like, listen, now we're quote unquote regulated. So we can say we now have expectations through FISMA that we are meeting, you know, the [00:15:00] basic preventive controls and the basic farmers act and all that different types of stuff.
They could say, we're now doing these things. That was a success. For consumers. If you're looking at consumer action side of things, it's a total and complete absolute 100% failure. And so when I say it's complicated, I always try to look at what's the point of view of each of the individual stakeholders when answering that question.
And for consumers, nothing has really changed.
[00:15:29] Rick: Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. And I think the industry continues to evolve. I think. What we've also seen coincidentally, or in concert with the rise of FSMA, was the aspect of food safety culture. And it was interesting. We receive a fair amount of contributed articles for food safety tech, and I got one and it talked, they said literally company had no food safety culture [00:16:00] until it started doing so and so, and I called them up and I said.
I'm gonna run your article, but I'm correcting it. Every company has food safety culture. They might have had bad food safety culture and they got better for whatever reason. But you don't go from zero. It just means what is your food safety culture and how does that evolve? And that's really just a management attitude in my opinion.
[00:16:29] Matt: Yeah. It's like you listen to our podcast or something, Rick.
[00:16:33] Francine: I know he must listen. We say this all the time because you know, it's the absolute truth. Everybody has a culture. It may be poor or it may be great. There are both, but there's always a culture. There's 100% always a culture. And it can always change.
It can always change.
[00:16:53] Rick: So what we've seen is Frank Ian has introduced the topic in some books. Early on [00:17:00] in his career, and I think winning was actually at Disney, and I remember him speaking about that and just said that, how do you get thousands and thousands of people who are involved in food safety to be more aware of it?
It starts at the top. Over the course of the last 15 years, the topic of food safety culture has changed. We've had articles, we've done presentations, there's groups, there's organizations that focus on just food safety culture. And so I started thinking about this actually at the consortium, and then I started saying to myself, and then I opened my big mouth.
The people that are at these conferences, whether it's consortium or the other ones, are the people who are being proactive. Those are the ones that we're preaching to the choir at that point.
[00:17:57] Francine: Hundred percent.
[00:17:58] Rick: You know, I think [00:18:00] the challenge is, and where I always been trying to steer some of our content when it does talk about food safety culture is how do we help the food safety and quality assurance community actually make a change in areas that they technically don't have the ability to make a change, meaning it has to go to the top.
How do we help them move the needle when it's basically talking to the C-suite and various aspects of the C-suite.
[00:18:35] Francine: The other thing is, what worked 15 years ago is not gonna work today. It just isn't certain aspects of an A, but things have changed a lot in the last 15 years,
[00:18:47] Rick: a lot,
[00:18:47] Francine: so,
[00:18:48] Rick: so you're absolutely right.
Trancing, if you're gonna move the needle. It's not gonna be, well, we have to be in regulatory compliance because more than likely, they already are. Right. [00:19:00] Pay, perform. So if you're gonna move the needle beyond that, which again, and I'll give credit where credit is due because I, it was Mark Carter who told me this, I actually was speaking at the consortium and I remember him very vividly saying, the regulations is the bare minimum.
That's not what you shoot for. That's what you. At least fall back on, you need to shoot higher than that. And, and that's, that I think is one of the bigger challenges for the safety and quality community is how to get companies to go above regulatory compliance. And I have some ideas, and I think we're seeing things evolve, but Francine chime in on this.
[00:19:45] Francine: I just wanna say, I'm gonna tell a short story. I was in a facility one time where we were called in to do some work. We're talking about compliance and to say I'm in compliance, I don't wanna say it doesn't mean anything because it does. But we were called [00:20:00] in because this facility was having a lot of issues and there's a Quest infestation issue and they were mixing product and there were some cockroaches in this product.
Pointed this out to them. There are cockroaches in your product too. We, I
[00:20:18] Matt: wonder how you had to point that out to them. They couldn't physically seek the cockroach in the product,
[00:20:23] Francine: so we, you're gonna have to get rid of this. You, you've got, get rid of this. Clean it, stand aside. You're gonna have to get rid of it.
The response was, we're within compliance. There's not gonna be enough to make a difference. We're within compliance. I'm like, excuse me, we're within compliance. This isn't an answer I wanna hear. I'm not gonna work with somebody like that. I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna work with somebody like that.
Regulatory compliance, there is a felt factor. There are certain things that, there is regulatory compliance. I mean, what do you do in that case? You call the regulator is a consultant. I'm not working with [00:21:00] somebody like that. So my point to regulatory compliance. So you have to go above and beyond, like you said, regulatory compliance.
You've gotta care. You've got to care.
[00:21:13] Rick: I think you have to care. But I think where this industry needs to go is turn food safety and quality into a financial benefit to food company, food and beverage company. A
[00:21:31] Francine: hundred percent. It's an investment.
[00:21:33] Rick: It could be looked at as a profit center, the digital transformation and the tools that are.
Available and are developing, are coming out, are giving more and more data that if used could be used for efficiency, for quality, for tangible metrics that can be equated into dollars and cents. I agree with [00:22:00]
[00:22:00] Francine: you. So our insurance, and this is a question 'cause I honestly don't know. At one time, insurance companies were involved.
If you achieved a, you would get a discount. If you met certain qualifications, you would get a discount on your insurance. I don't know if that's still
[00:22:18] Rick: Francine. I think that there is, and I think there also is for a lot of food companies, a budget from the insurance companies to invest in some form of improvement in food safety and quality.
Whether that's investing in digital technology or even just training, so.
[00:22:37] Matt: And I know you, you have a couple shows coming up. Are there like some conversations that you guys are having? Like I know the conversations are happening 'cause of Food Safety Consortium. That's one of the greatest things about Food Safety Consortium is the networking there and the conversations that are happening outside of the actual talks.
What are some of the talks that you're gonna be talking about with and is that. What we're discussing right [00:23:00] now. A lot of companies just don't even know where to start. And when you're talking about putting together benchmarks and metrics, like what should those benchmarks and metrics be like? Where do you even start?
Are some of these conversations and talks happening at your shows that are coming up?
[00:23:15] Rick: Yes, absolutely. We're evolving a couple of them. I'm talking to one speaker right now. I really can't get into the details of it. Part of his job was brought into a company that had been doing things the same way for a long period of time, and he's got full supportive management, but he's establishing benchmarks and then showing how they can grow.
So that's on an individual scale, individual meaning that company and. He and I are talking about turning that into a session and maybe even a workshop to share with people on establishing benchmarks so that you have these kind of metrics to measure against. Yes. And [00:24:00] build a food safety equality plan based on achieving certain metrics against that benchmark.
And I think that is gonna be huge in helping hundred
[00:24:13] Matt: percent. 100% because it's so hard for a lot of companies. To figure out where to start. And if you have an example of a company that's already done this successful, it's much easier to rob and duplicate or r and d, it Rob and duplicate go like, oh my gosh, I have this example.
And then once you have that example, then you'd be like, okay, well how will it work in my facility, which is gonna be different, having at least that example. Then you can change things around that fits your culture, fits your company, et cetera.
[00:24:45] Francine: I think that's something that a lot of the conferences are missing or the success stories.
You need to have the success stories for people to learn from. We can sit and listen all day to the policies, the procedures, and all those types of the regulatory stuff, which [00:25:00] are important. They're very important, but we need success stories for people to learn. We need to know like. How do we figure that out?
How do we do this? 'cause people are so overwhelmed with all the information that we learn by listening to stories and we need to hear those stories in order to move forward and figure out how other people, we don't wanna start from ground zero. We want to know how did they figure it out, what did they do?
And there's nothing wrong with sharing those stories because we need to make it better.
[00:25:34] Rick: Yeah, it's a lot easier to edit a document than it is to look at a blank screen.
[00:25:41] Matt: 100%. 100% Francine, and I could tell you that from experience right now with things that she and I are developing, it's a blank screen.
That is very hard to do
[00:25:56] Francine: and blank screen is edited all the time.
[00:25:59] Matt: You guys, [00:26:00] you have an event coming up end of April in St. Louis. What's the difference between this event and the main event in Food Safety Consortium? What's the difference between this?
[00:26:10] Rick: Good question. The primary difference is that the Food Safety Hazards Program really focuses on the on practical solutions.
It doesn't get into food safety culture. It's not establishing benchmarks. We're not talking about the bigger picture related to risk management or should we have one food protection agency or not. It is very practical with solutions that can be used next week after someone leaves the conference.
That's the main focus of it. Those type of presentations are still offered at the consortium, but it's a bit of a mix. This is really seriously focused on the folks boots, on the ground kind of [00:27:00] folks that can truly benefit from immediate situations.
[00:27:05] Matt: Got it. So the Food Safety Hazards Conference in St.
Louis end of January or April, so I think it's April 20th through the 22nd. Is that right? It's three days of exactly what we were just talking about. Where it is, three days of here are the different hazards, environmental, physical, biological, blah, blah, blah. Here's the sheets that you can edit to where you get this workshop done and you can.
Then figure out how to minimize these hazards within your facility. So it's very technical then as opposed to Food Safety Consortium, which is much broader in terms of food safety culture, where Theor is going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:27:45] Rick: That's correct.
[00:27:47] Francine: And there's a virtual aspect.
[00:27:48] Rick: Yes, there is. By having it as a single track conference, everyone stays in the same room.
We don't have breakouts. It allows us to broadcast. The [00:28:00] event and we partnered with Millipore Sigma, who has a really great facility in downtown St. Louis. And that auditorium, which has all the latest AV equipment, it gives us the ability to broadcast it using a simple platform like Microsoft Teams. So attendees don't even need to.
Get it something new most people have access to and can use. Microsoft Teams. We'll be recording it. We'll be, each session will be recorded as an individual session so people can watch. If they can't sit in front of their computer for two and a half days, get it, but they can watch one or two of the live broadcast and then watch the other ones on demand.
It's really flexible and we've even made it so that the company sends even just one person. To the event in St. Louis. The rest of the company can watch and participate via the teams platform at no [00:29:00] additional charge.
[00:29:02] Francine: So I heard some great news this morning. The TSA agents are getting paid on Friday, so yes, thank God if you've been in an airport recently, thank God.
God bless the people that have been working through this. So by then, hopefully things will have
[00:29:23] Rick: come down. Yeah. We hope. And we hope like literally by next week things will start evolving. Right. Getting back to whatever is normal, whatever that benchmark is.
[00:29:32] Francine: Well, I was joking, I said flying through Atlanta on a good day.
Sometimes it's scary the last few weeks. Wow. But anyway, yeah. So by then everything should be. Hopefully black.
[00:29:45] Rick: Yep, yep, yep. We're, and this is really our first time doing it. We're really trying to establish, you know, food Safety Consortium has a reputation each year. We're always in the fall, and now we've established ourself in Washington BC.
It just takes time [00:30:00] to get that message and that reputation out in the industry and with food safety hazards. This is our first year. We pulled it off really quickly. We found the partner working with Millipore like in January. Normally I like to have. A year ideally to pull up a conference like, you know, the end of October of last year, we started working on the 2026 program.
So you get into this rhythm and so this is a startup for all intents and purposes, and we're really excited about that. Again, the focus of it, the smallness, we have Dr. Mindy brochures from USDA coming. I just saw on my email this morning Dr. Don Prater from FDA's coming and he's staying the entire three days.
Like I had just helped them get their this hotel reservation for three nights coming in on Sunday. So usually these folks come in, they give their [00:31:00] presentation and they go back to work and actually. When they're in DC they had that ability to do so because it's just a short metro ride to Arlington with St.
Louis, Dr. Brochures can go visit the new lab that's about 20 minutes outside of the city, the new USDA lab that was opened up last summer. She can update us on the salmonella rule. What's going on with that? There's quite a lot of things that are happening at USDA. And then it'd be really interesting to spend this much time with Dr.
Crater, and he's a great guy. He is very approachable, so it's a really interesting and unique opportunity for attendees.
[00:31:40] Matt: That is so cool. And. Francine and I talk about this all the time about your shows, is the networking there is the best. There are other shows where networking is good, but it's overwhelming, right?
Like there's just thousands of people at this event and it's very hard to find people. And you've created the culture I [00:32:00] think, of food safety tech, food safety, consult source, and soon to be food safety hazards. This is your first event, right? First event. The culture is, it's like a family there. I don't know any other way of explaining it other than people seek out new people to talk to them.
They're like, oh, this is the first year. I mean, Francine and I have been front and center at each of the table, like every year at a table there last three years, and even before that, being there with my previous companies. It's amazing just people seeking out other people and talking to them. And this will be very interesting to see what the food safety hazard side of things because on the food safety consortium side of things, a lot of times big picture, right?
Like here's the food safety world. And you can be in more abstract in your conversations where the food safety hazard one, it's gonna be, the conversation's probably gonna be a lot more different. Well. That session was really cool. Talking about heavy [00:33:00] metal
[00:33:00] Francine: risks, which heavy metal risk is a big thing for me.
[00:33:03] Matt: What does that mean for my suppliers? What does that mean for my pro individual products? And you can really get more into the weeds, which having those unique conversations with experts about that, going into depth into that specific thing, I think it's going to be very helpful for a lot of people. And then having the ability to have the sessions at your.
Right at your fingertips throughout the year and being able to, when a question pops up internally and be able to share that video with multiple people within your organization is invaluable.
[00:33:36] Rick: Yeah. Yeah. Again, this is all new. It's, you really just has literally two months of marketing under my belt when ring the first six, but it's all good.
We're excited about this and I think it's gonna be very helpful. Useful and valuable to the industry. And that's ultimately it's about, and it's a great program. We have really good speakers with great content. So [00:34:00] again, we're excited about April and we're, I guess about a week away from doing the save the dates for the Food Safety Consortium, and we just opened up the call for abstracts.
So we'll be looking for, we already got in about 12, 13 abstracts and I haven't even marketed it yet. Just to your point, Matt, the reputation people know it's coming.
[00:34:23] Matt: Yes. So Rick, Rick is offering a 25% discount to be used the word poop for either food safety hazards or food safety consortium, which is a huge discount.
So. If you're interested in doing that, go ahead and register for food safety hazards and doing that 25% discount. Just type in poop on the discount code and you're good to go.
[00:34:47] Francine: And we'll put the links.
[00:34:48] Matt: Yeah, we'll put the links too, too.
[00:34:49] Francine: Put the links. Yes.
[00:34:52] Matt: Fantastic. That's a great thing. Okay, so you've also written a white paper.
Francine and I have talked about this, or I shouldn't say you, but [00:35:00] you in conjunction with a lot of experts have written a white paper, which is. Really, Franc and I have talked about this so many times, so I hope that this gets some, I don't know, traction in in the government, but the white paper. Is called.
I have it up right here 'cause I was reading it yesterday when you told me about it. Achieving goals, integrating the fragmented United States federal food safety system into a food protection system. So basically combining everything into one entity as opposed to being fragmented across multiple entities.
This literally came out when? Just like last month.
[00:35:39] Rick: Yeah. There's an evolution to it. And for the record, I did not write it. We published it, but there was four authors that I've been working with, and it's their opinions, but it's based on research that they've done. Dr. Ben Redding, was it speaker at the Food Safety [00:36:00] Consortium that approached this idea and a lot of conversations at the consortium then led to them gathering more information and they just make the case that.
The US food system would be better served with one type of agency, and it's a very compelling, interesting story. We publish it right on food safety tech.com. It's literally on the top of the homepage. There's an executive summary that's a short article on, and then it allows the attendees to download the full 46 page white paper and with all the references on it, we're hoping.
The goal is over time to actually create a food protection community that would allow people to contribute additional resources and build like a landing page on food safety tech that would have these different resources for people.
[00:36:58] Matt: Yeah. The first paragraph [00:37:00] kind of sums everything up, and so if you don't mind, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read this because I think everybody should download this white paper and yeah, when you say 45 pages, it's 45 pages plus like another six of references, so there's.
Yeah, two line references and there's six pages of it, so you can then go, if you love the rabbit hole that Francine and I do like just going in and reading all the journals and stuff like that. There's plenty of rabbit holes to go down, but the first paragraph sums up the white paper very well. And then obviously there's another 40 something patients to digest it, but.
The United States Food Protection System is fragmented across federal, state, and local jurisdiction, resulting in duplication inefficiencies, in systematic failures that underscores public health and erodes consumer trust. No kidding Rick. No kidding what this is happening. But then the next one is foodborne pathogens such as listeria, [00:38:00] salmonella, and e Coli.
Do not respect institutional boundaries yet. Responsibility for oversight is divided among more than 15 federal agencies, 75 state entities, which there's only 50 states in the United States, so it's fascinating that even the states have this crap out. And then thousands of local jurisdictions operating under more than 30 laws, 70 inter-agency agreements.
Because of course the agencies can't do anything just amongst themselves. They have to also agree to do something else with each other for something else on my land. It's crazy. This structure has proven incapable of reducing the persistent burden of food bore illnesses across the United States. The center of Disease control and preventative CDC estimate that one.
Six Americans is affected annually causing 10 million illnesses, [00:39:00] 53,000 hospitalizations and more than 900 deaths. By the way, that data is like a decade old. I would love to see them do that. Do, because we've been saying literally the same data from the CDC for like over a decade. But
[00:39:13] Francine: yeah, let's not forget that.
CDC was pretty much cut. Decimated. Yeah. The ones that were remaining were at the meeting that I was just at. There weren't a lot.
[00:39:22] Matt: I love that. Fred seated, I forget, this is a podcast sometimes when she's like the c, c is and then she does a hand motion of cutting the throat.
[00:39:30] Francine: Yeah. So I forget if you can't see me.
So those was listening. I could totally see that.
[00:39:36] Rick: You know, interesting about all the people that work in these different agencies in which I have so much respect for is they're really passionate about it. Yes, sir. About public health, and you gotta respect that.
[00:39:54] Matt: Yes, but they're right. It's not their
[00:39:56] Francine: fault.
Oh my God. What have, have I, what have I said? [00:40:00]
[00:40:00] Rick: Well, again, they're in a fragmented situation. The question is how do you change that?
[00:40:06] Francine: This is the thing. There's not a person that works in any of those agencies that doesn't know that. I can't tell you how many times I heard that at the meeting that I was just at.
Everybody knows it's a problem. Everybody knows that it's an issue and the issues, the problems that it causes across the board, but it's like how do we fix it and where do we start? So in the meantime, we have to do something. To make what we have work, we have to start somewhere to make what we have work and how do we do that and how do we find the people that are willing to work with what we have to make that work
[00:40:51] Matt: well, I know where they could find the people.
This literally was a conversation at Food Safety Consortium last year. There's a white, then those, then a bunch of those people got together, met with a bunch of [00:41:00] other people. They put together this huge white paper to describe exactly how to do this. If you wanna be a part of the conversation, I would say go to Food Safety Consortium, meet with these people and be a part of that.
'cause I know Francine, you and I are, I mean we're talking about it now, but like this is the inception of something. I know you and Darren Detweiler and Frank Giannis, other people like that have talked about this for years and it's really cool to see this. As an overarching potential concept starting to funnel down into here are some proactive ways at which we can influence, like you said, Rick, it has to come from an act of Congress, influence Congress to make this happen.
[00:41:46] Rick: There have been a couple of Congress people on both sides of the aisle that have introduced bills even as recently as the last six months. Republican and a Democrat, it [00:42:00] just, they tend to get preoccupied with other stuff right now.
[00:42:03] Matt: Right. Well, regardless of your political affiliation, e coli, salmonella, listeria, neurovirus does not care.
It doesn't
[00:42:11] Rick: care if you're conservative or a liberal.
[00:42:13] Francine: No, it does not. No it doesn't.
[00:42:15] Matt: Green peace, libertarian, it doesn't really matter. You eat something and it makes you sick. They cross biology crosses political divide.
[00:42:27] Francine: Projectile vomiting and exclusive diarrhea. Doesn't really matter. Doesn't matter. It'll get you with the best of them.
[00:42:35] Matt: Okay, Rick, was there anything else that we missed? Or candy? Is there anything else that we missed before we close this out? Like I, I really advise everybody to download this white paper because you told us about it this week. Was assuming this white paper is gonna be like a normal white paper, like 10, 12 pages long.
No. This is like a [00:43:00] journal article of what to do with creating one entity and it's, it is not something you would just read during a lunch break. This is something you digest over a period of time. But I love that more because it's now you're really putting things into tangible.
[00:43:22] Rick: The credit goes out to the forts.
Alan, Jason Murda and Ben, they put a tremendous amount of time and effort into this and they just kudos to that.
[00:43:34] Matt: Yes, we see Jason like every single time at We Safety Consortium, we're like, Jason, you gotta come on our podcast. And he is, what is he, like the VP of compliance for Pepsi or something like that.
And he's like, no, actually I, uh, like my job, I do not wanna go. You scare
[00:43:50] Francine: people. I don't understand why. 'cause we're very good to the people that we interview. We know, especially with corporate people, we understand there's a line [00:44:00] and we don't cross that line. We've both worked for corporate. America. We would never cross that line.
[00:44:08] Rick: I have one thought that I'd love to maybe talk to you guys about in another episode. There's currently a FDA investigation into raw milk. Mm-hmm. The company is in California and. There's been, I think the update was about nine people had gotten sick from what was raw cheese, and the company refuses to do the voluntary recall.
And when I went to the website for that company, the owner of the company did a very passionate video, two and a half minute video talking about how they test. All their food safety procedures and then they just [00:45:00] disagree with the government that it's not their product. And I think it's an interesting scenario where companies can be faced with what should they do in these situations?
'cause any recall's expensive. What's the tipping point of that? And I think there's a lot of people. You guys know, and I know that would advise on maybe what that tipping point is, but it's an interesting scenario on when to pull that trigger
[00:45:32] Francine: cheddar cheese.
[00:45:34] Matt: Yeah, and it's interesting too because where does the FDA end and the state departments begin?
Is it passing over? Why can't the FDA just say no, you need to recall everything and 'cause the mandatory recall thing that is part of fisma, but I don't know, can they force if it doesn't cross state lines?
[00:45:55] Rick: I wrote the article, it's on the homepage of food safety tech and then I, I think
[00:45:59] Francine: it has crossed state lines, I [00:46:00] believe.
[00:46:01] Rick: Yes, it has crossed state lines. So it's, last I saw it was Florida, Texas, California. Wow.
[00:46:07] Francine: Yeah.
[00:46:09] Rick: So.
[00:46:10] Intro: Yeah,
[00:46:10] Rick: and so, so I also put a link to the video in the article, so I'm, what I'm trying to show is both sides of this, not just so and so company is. In other words, I'm not just copying and pasting the FDA news alert.
It's okay, well there might be another side to this and so by list the name of the company and then I say, or not on the headline. I just think it's an interesting scenario worth discussing, and it would be interesting to hear from the industry on if they've been in those kind of situations.
[00:46:45] Matt: Hi, so if you want to talk more about these conversations that we've talked about with Rick and many more, hop on to.
If you want to go to the hazard ones and end of April, it's April [00:47:00] 20th of the 22nd, you can put poop in, get a discount and Food safety Consortium, not poop.
[00:47:05] Francine: Poop in. Put the word poop.
[00:47:07] Matt: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. And say with Food Safety Consortium, by the time this goes up, I think there'll be a link there and type in poop and you can get a 25% discount and you could be part of these conversations.
[00:47:20] Rick: Absolutely.
[00:47:21] Matt: Some little awesome. Thank you, brick, and don't eat poop.