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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: [00:00:00] Why did 98% of all hospitalizations and deaths come from 13 outbreaks, which would probably equate to about 13 recalls unless they recalled a few lots and then recalled everything. Right? So then that would be two different recalls. But if we're looking at why 13 recalls accounted for 98% of the hospitalization and deaths.
It's because 22% of the recalls came from listeria. That is crazy. That has jumped significantly since we started our careers, is how much listeria outbreaks and recalls there are.
intro: Everybody's gotta eat. And nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil into shadows, keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans, Francine l [00:01:00] Shaw and Matt Reci for a deep dive into food safety and all wars. Down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.
Don't eat poop.
Matt Regusci: Hello, hello, Francine.
Francine L Shaw: Hey Matt.
Matt Regusci: I always forget how rural you are, Francine. Here I am talking about when she needs a new computer. I'm like, oh, I'll just go to Best Buy. Yeah, this might surprise you, Matt, but we don't have a Best Buy. Where is the closest Best Buy to you, Francine?
Francine L Shaw: I can't remember if there's one in Hagerstown or not, or if it closed.
If there is, it's an hour away, which.
Matt Regusci: I think think is like an hour to two hours away from.
Francine L Shaw: Okay, so wait a minute. Wait a minute. It's relative. Keep that in mind. It's relative because when you live here, an hour isn't that far. For example, it feels so ridiculous saying this. People are gonna be listening to this and be like, oh my God. I'm gonna go get my nails done tonight, which I do every other week.
I've gotta drive 45 minutes to do that. One way.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: To get my nails [00:02:00] done.
Matt Regusci: I used to, when I lived in California, I lived in the central coast, so I was about, theoretically I was two and a half hours from LA and about three hours from San Francisco. That does not include traffic. So that would be like five hours from LA and six hours from San Francisco.
And we would drive everywhere. Like for my job in agricultural food safety, we're driving San Joaquin Valley up and down the Salinas Valley going to, and going to like every part in California that grows something, which is huge. Which is so much. So I would drive to Sacramento and back in a day. So I'd be on the road for, I don't know, 16 hours, and I would meet people on the way up to Sacramento and then meet people on the way back down.
And then I would go and I would drive to other states and people would be like, oh. That's an hour away. And I'm like, yeah, and I'm driving through two states to get to that place an hour away. [00:03:00] But Pennsylvania is pretty big.
Francine L Shaw: Well, to drive from one side to the others, if you were to drive from border to border, it's over five hours to drive. So.
Matt Regusci: Border to border in California is, I don't know, 24 hours.
Francine L Shaw: If you're going north and south.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: Right. Yeah. I'm talking east to west, but, right. Yeah, because to drive from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh's, probably it's, I'm two and a half and I'm in the middle, so it's about five hours depending on traffic on the turnpike, it's about four and a half, five hours to drive from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh or vice versa, but.
So yeah, so it's 45 minutes one way for me to just go get my nails done. So last time, you saw a picture of my car, I went to get my nails done. Hit a deer on the way home. Yeah. Pretty much wrecked my car. That was a.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. You don't have to worry about hitting pedestrians. You have to worry about hitting animals.
Francine L Shaw: [00:04:00] That was a fun time.
What a mess. And Aunt Helen, for those that are new, Aunt Helen's 85 years old and she's one of our biggest fans. This huge, massive buck jumped off a bank, landed on the hood of my car. Thank God it didn't come through the windshield, but it landed on the hood of the car in the head. Hit the windshield.
Matt Regusci: Your Aunt Helen is a hoot. I remember. I don't know. We had been doing the podcast, I don't know, for a few months, and then every single time you would drive her somewhere, she would wanna be listening to the podcast. Remember I called you and you were on speaker phone and your aunt Helen was there.
Francine L Shaw: You were just, you were unloading and it was, I don't know if there was a regular word in the sentence.
It was just all the high level cuss words were there.
Matt Regusci: Francine is like laughing and she's like, um, you're on speaker, and Aunt Helen's in the car and I'm like, oh, shoot.
Hi. She's like, it's okay. [00:05:00] I just want happened to me talking to you. I listen to you so much.
Francine L Shaw: She's a riot. This woman is a riot. I just, she's actually my husband's aunt, but I just, yeah, I just love her.
Matt Regusci: Okay, so Francine sent me an article from Marler's Blog the other day, and we're gonna talk about that, the next episode, which is really fascinating. The next episode is gonna be about reprinted without permission, but too shocking not to share. The government might be reopening, but food safety be damned.
He's very colorful with his words, Bill Marler, and he's talking about in this article that the government is looking to shut down some key rules and key food safety acts. And, but in reading the article, Francine and I saw that he linked back to how big increases in food safety outbreaks there was in 2024 as opposed to 2023.
And the article came out in February and [00:06:00] Francine, and I totally missed it. And so that, that's what we're gonna be talking about is because when we were looking at the statistics between 2023 and 2024. It's insane.
Francine L Shaw: It's mind boggling that they are shutting down food safety programs one after another and have been, you know, agencies and just different things throughout the course of the year and foodborne illnesses are increasing.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: So I mean.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. And where they're increasing is interesting and that, and we're gonna be getting into that in here before we go into why it's important that the government doesn't shut down some of these. And when we talk about like government shutting down some stuff, it's like they passed these bills, they're part of Food Safety Modernization Act, and they're trying to gut Food Safety Modernization Act at a time at which outbreaks are growing.
Probably not a good idea, but we have this article and we're gonna link to it.
Francine L Shaw: Who are we? Who are we to make that [00:07:00] call?
Matt Regusci: Oh my God.
Francine L Shaw: I'm sorry. It's too early in the podcast for me to start.
Matt Regusci: It's never too early, Francine.
So we're gonna jump into just some of the statistics that this reporter found. The article is called Food for Thought 2025.
Hospitalizations, deaths and deaths from contaminated food doubled in 2024 as recall of Salmonella, listeria, and e coli increased by 41%. 98% of all illnesses were linked to 13 outbreaks. Ranging from cucumbers to deli meats, which would be Boar's Head, which we spent a lot of time last year on, right? It'll be interesting to see what the stats are in 2025.
But yeah, 2024 was crazy.
Francine L Shaw: So increased by 41%.
Matt Regusci: Increased by 41%.
Francine L Shaw: It's huge.
Matt Regusci: It's, it's huge. And so in this article, it's great because she has a bunch of graphs and I love graphs. I love pictures. So do I. Why? I have so many children with so many babies. Personality.
Francine L Shaw: Well, graphs. [00:08:00] It works with
Matt Regusci: pictures in it, what
Francine L Shaw: Who wants to read words? Show us graphs and pictures. We, we can understand those.
Matt Regusci: Okay, so when we look at some of these graphs here, you can't see them, but check out the article that's in the link below and it has it. But Francine and I found interesting was a lot of the outbreaks were Listeria. So we look at the recalls.
Let's just look at recalls, right? Because recalls and outbreaks are two very different things. When we look at recalls, just normal, everyday stat, 34.1% of all the recalls were because of undeclared allergens.
This is like consistent. I, this has been consistent since I started my career is, maybe it was higher back when I started, was undeclared allergens, but it's been consistent for like the last, I don't know, five years, 10 years, that about 33% of all recalls are undeclared allergens. [00:09:00]
Francine L Shaw: It's always the most prevalent reason for recalls, always.
Matt Regusci: Okay, but why did 98% of all hospitalizations and deaths come from 13 outbreaks? Which would probably equate to about 13 recalls, unless they recalled a few lots and then recalled everything.
Right? So then that would be two different recalls. But if we're looking at why 13 recalls accounted for 98% of the hospitalization and deaths. It's because 22% of the recalls came from listeria. That is crazy. That has jumped significantly since we started our careers, is how much listeria outbreaks and recalls there are.
Francine L Shaw: Even careers. Even since we've known each other.
Matt Regusci: That is 100% true since we've known each other. Since the decade that we've known each other, listeria has gone up. Yeah.
[00:10:00] Salmonella equals 13.9%.
Increased lead is 4.4% which is excessive lead. Sorry. Excessive lead. So any lead. That's over the FDA's expectations, which is. The FDA's expectations of lead is in something like, I don't know, they're concerned what is 10 parts per billion?
That's so much lead. So when excessive lead, quote unquote, is an FDA outbreak, that that means it's like way over 10 parts per billion.
Francine L Shaw: I'm just gonna go home and eat the paint on my porch. We have a really old house that we're renovating, which is home and.
Matt Regusci: It's crazy.
Francine L Shaw: Led paint on the porch.
Matt Regusci: Foreign material, which is 4.1%. That's probably stayed pretty consistent. So foreign material would be like glass, plastic, metal, any type of stuff that gets into the product. It's not good. It's consistent. It tends to be something went wrong in their manufacturing [00:11:00] process and they find out and they recall the product.
E coli. 3.4%. I think that's makes sense. E coli's kind of been dropping, but when we do have e coli outbreaks, they're big, huge e coli outbreaks. Like the McDonald's outbreak with the little onion shreds that are in those burgers. That was a big recall. So we tend to see the E. coli outbreaks are in produce.
And in the salmonella outbreaks. Where do you think that comes from? Yeah, we just talked about that. I think be last episode. What was it? High amounts of accessible salmonella
Francine L Shaw: in poultry. as it's flying by on the machines at At a hundred and what,
Matt Regusci: 75?
Francine L Shaw: 75 miles an hour.
Matt Regusci: So yeah, I don't see salmonella decreasing unless the poultry industry. Unless the government says that salmonella is an adulterant and the [00:12:00] poultry industry has to be treated like the beef industry with e coli.
Francine L Shaw: Can you imagine 175 miles an hour?
Matt Regusci: You know what? Yes, actually, why not? Let's just put it in 175 miles per hour or whatever.
Francine L Shaw: There's no stress in my life right now.
Matt Regusci: It doesn't matter the speed at this point in time, it doesn't matter.
Francine L Shaw: Really, it would not matter. Maybe 175 miles an hour, the salmonella would fly off the chicken.
Matt Regusci: If that's the case, we should allow them to do that on the freeway when they're moving the poultry crop from one place to another. Let the trucks with the open poultry pens go 175 miles per hour. Maybe it'll blow the salmonella off the feathers before it gets to the plant.
Francine L Shaw: Ah, okay. I'm just being ridiculous.
Matt Regusci: Don't think it works that way. Okay.
But the Listeria being is the big one. So 22% of the outbreaks were are for the recalls were from Listeria.
Francine L Shaw: And that's scary. That is terrifying.
Matt Regusci: The reporter then goes on to [00:13:00] say, here's what's true about 2024, we saw more high profile recalls that involve brands we're familiar with, such as McDonald's Quarter Pounder.
Boar's Head's lunch meat, and everyday foods such as eggs, cucumbers, carrots, and cinnamon. The cinnamon was the excessive lead, right? Then there were the Listeria related recalls of frozen waffles and pancakes, a favorite among many families, including mine, like easiest things to do is get Eggo waffles or like protein style Eggo waffles.
I'm, I'm not sure they're Eggo, but it's like some sort of protein waffle. My kids will pull that out for like breakfast or for snacks. South. Yeah, it's crazy.
Here are some more interesting stats for 2024. Overall contaminated foods sickened more people in 2024 than 2023. A total illness increase to 1,392.
Up from [00:14:00] 1,118 in 2023. That's a lot. That's still a lot.
Francine L Shaw: It. Well, it's 274, which is like a 20% increase. That's huge.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. There were two big cucumber recalls, 551 people that we know of, which is very clear in food safety world. The only time they're actually linked to an outbreak is when they get tested and the genetic marker matches that outbreak, which is very minute compared to the people that get sick and then don't do anything.
So 551 people that we know of became sick from cucumbers containing salmonella in 34 states in Washington DC and that was that Fresh Start one they had recalled twice. Remember that Francine, that farmer had two recalls of salmonella [00:15:00] like within a few months apart. It was like a season apart. Yeah.
And then we look at key findings. So at the bottom of the article it goes through key findings. And again, there's like a couple few graphs in this thing, which is the number of recalls because of Listeria, Salmonella or E. coli increase significantly in 2024 compared to 39% of all recalls.
Well, let's see what other ones here. Ranking number two recalls because of potential listeria contamination reached 65 compared to 47 in 2023. And when we talk about recalls because of listeria contamination that 65 recalls not 65 people sick. 65 recalls compared to 47 in 2023. That's a lot. That's gonna continue to grow because listeria is everywhere. [00:16:00] Listeria is everywhere, and we're getting better at finding it.
So again, anybody listening out there that has a facility, seek and destroy that is your number one enemy is listeria.
Francine L Shaw: The last thing you want is a listeria outbreak, and you don't want any outbreak.
Matt Regusci: What is it that we talk about? We say this all the time, like Listeria outbreaks, the death rate, the percentage is like 25 to 30% of Listeriosis.
Once you get it, and then once you do get it,  Listeriosis. Even you survived, you wish you didn't.
Francine L Shaw: In a lot of cases. Well, in the incubation period is so long that by the time that you're diagnosed with it, oftentimes it's too late to do anything about it.
Matt Regusci: It's everywhere.
Francine L Shaw: The people that get the most ill with it are people that are already in a highly susceptible population.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, that's true. Right? Because the majority of people can consume [00:17:00] listeria and be perfectly fine. Most countries have a tolerable amount of listeria in a product. But you're 100% correct. It's if you do get listeriosis. Yeah, it's bad.
I forgot to say I'm going through the rankings here. So number one was allergens, undeclared allergens. Number two was listeria. Number three recalls because of potential salmonella contamination. Hit 41 recalls compared to 27 in 2023. Ranking number four, excessive lead. There was 13 in 2024 compared to four in 2023. This is mainly because of cinnamon products, and this is mainly because of food fraud. I tell people all the time, do not trust your COAs from your suppliers.
'cause the CPG brands that had cinnamon, it wasn't like they were the ones that were putting lead in that [00:18:00] cinnamon. It was their supplier that was putting that in the cinnamon. But those CPG brands are forever tainted because of that.
And so I can't wait to see what the statistics are for 2025. I'm not quite sure they're gonna be as bad as 2024.
Francine L Shaw: Well, see, this is the thing. How many illnesses did we stop testing for?
Matt Regusci: Yeah, we should do a whole entire.
Francine L Shaw: So that's gonna impact things.
Matt Regusci: Right. Podcast on that.
Francine L Shaw: And that's part of what I was talking about earlier. So when you, you know, cut the number of foodborne illnesses in a third. What, to a third of what we used to test for.
Matt Regusci: Three quarters.
Francine L Shaw: Your numbers are gonna come down.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. What the numbers are. You're absolutely correct, Francine. If you stop testing for things, your numbers are gonna go down.
So congratulations, government.
Francine L Shaw: Media blitz.
Foodborne illnesses have decreased.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Rachel didn't drive the [00:19:00] legislation that we're gonna talk about next. That's right. This could be a huge marketing blitz.
Okay, well it is what it is. Okay, well on that note guys, 2024 was a crazy year. We all saw that 2025, there happens some big outbreaks. We'll talk about that next episode, but not like as big a high profile as like McDonald's and Boar's Head and that type of stuff.
Francine L Shaw: Not yet.
Matt Regusci: I'm just waiting for the next lettuce one. Where's the bagged salad outbreak that's gonna come? We're doomed.
Francine L Shaw: The baby formula thing right now? Who knows where that's gonna end up?
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Yeah. It's not good. I know. It's so sad. Okay, well on that note, don't eat [00:20:00] poop.