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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!
DEP E181
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Francine: [00:00:00] No, seriously. The lettuce farmers, I feel bad for them because they are directly impacted. The small people who have done nothing wrong, the people that can't afford the attorneys, the PR to buy whoever Taylor Farms is buying to spin their bullshit, they're the ones that are suffering.
Matt: Francine, tell me how you really feel.
Yeah. It's crazy. In the article that Bill Marler put out specifically against Taylor Farms this morning, he wrote, "Taylor Farms has now written five different versions of the same statement. The newest one says it ran 2,000 samples and found nothing. Ohio just added 1,437 cyclospora cases in a week, and the 50 state count now crosses 20,000."[00:01:00]
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 Elshaar and Matt Regusci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule:
don't eat poop. Don't
Matt: eat poop. Hello, hello, Francine. This is gonna be a very interesting podcast, a fun podcast.
Francine: I believe so.
Matt: When we're talking about psychospore, it could be an explosive and-
Francine: Conversation ...
Matt: an explosive conversation.
Francine: So that's the second time this morning one of us has almost spit our beverage all over the place.
Matt: It is dangerous filming podcasts with you and drinking something at the same time, Francine. You know what's gonna be hilarious, is when we start getting invoices from our listeners that are like, "Literally, I just... [00:02:00] This invoice is for the 35 cents of the Starbucks drink 'cause I j- I just spit over my windshield."
Francine: Or the suit I just destroyed when I spit my coffee all over the front of me. Oh my gosh. This is just, oh my gosh, so out of hand. So out of hand. So my question is, how much lettuce are you eating?
Matt: Uh, lettuce?
Francine: Yeah. I'm eating
Matt: lettuce.
Francine: You are eating lettuce?
Matt: Yeah. Although chopped iceberg probably is the cleanest thing right now.
Francine: I should've said bagged lettuce.
Matt: I don't eat really bagged lettuce.
Francine: Yeah, so.
Matt: No. I, I buy the whole head and then chop it up.
Francine: Right.
Matt: It's, yeah.
Francine: And this is the problem. So, like, if you go out to eat, you don't really know how they do their lettuce or where they get their lettuce. So I have been asking if we go- And we've, because we've had some family issues this week, we've been eating out a lot.
So if I order something to eat, I ask for it without [00:03:00] lettuce. More than once I've received the item with lettuce on and I'm like, "Oh, dear Jesus." And we're in the car and we're at a drive-through, so by the time I notice, we're gone. It's like, for God's sake, I just asked for this without lettuce. Yeah. Yeah.
While I'm telling everybody, you know?
Matt: But y- I mean, you and I go out to eat fairly regularly, and you'll order the lettuce and you'll order salad and I'll order a salad. So in a restaurant, I live dangerously, particularly if it's a way to get protein and vitamins when you're traveling. I eat
Francine: salad al- I love salad.
Matt: Yeah.
Francine: I- And I have not eaten a lot this summer, but I love salad. So there's this... This is so weird. There's this one restaurant that my sister, my stepmother, and I go to And every time we go there, the salad makes me sick, and I don't know why, and I am sick before we leave.
Matt: Huh. Like,
Francine: it is so bizarre.
Matt: [00:04:00] Maybe you shouldn't go to that restaurant.
Francine: Well, we don't anymore. We went there, like, three times, and every time before we leave this restaurant, and it's every time. We're talking a national chain. And I've asked them, it's like, "Do you cut your lettuce? Is this bagged lettuce?" Like, what, uh Every single time
Matt: Huh. It's funny, 'cause if I go to a restaurant and I get sick or somebody gets sick, I don't automatically target it to the restaurant because I know how food safety works.
So I don't automatically do it. But the second time, now we're starting to see a trend. Third, fourth, fifth, okay, now it's no longer... We're no longer going to this restaurant anymore. Like, it's-
Francine: I mean, it's something. It's got to be something. And their salads are amazing. So it's got to be something in that salad.
This has to be something in that salad that's making me sick. Because it's like from the time I consume that salad until we leave, before we leave, it- I don't know what it is. There's something. [00:05:00]
Matt: Yeah.
Francine: So bizarre. Anyway, back to it has nothing to do with this situation.
Matt: No, but okay, one of the things is we're gonna be talking about today Bill Marler and, I don't know, 20,000 victims of cyclospora it's almost up to now.
Francine: Well, it's over 20,000 at this point, and that's the 20,000 that we know about. It could
Matt: be- And that's as of recording this. So by the time you listen to this it could be up to, like, 100,000
Francine: more. Well, you know, that's by the time- Although- That's at the time he wrote the number down this morning.
Matt: Yeah.
Francine: I'm sure it's increased since then.
Matt: Yeah. So as of this morning, it was 20,927.
Francine: And while we're, like- That's insane ... laughing about this, it really is not... It's not funny. It's just so absurd.
Matt: No.
Francine: It is so absurd.
Matt: That is 20,927 really shitty days.
Francine: Well, at least. Multiply that, 'cause they didn't have one shitty day, they [00:06:00] had multiple shitty days.
These people have been sick.
Matt: Yes. Oh, gosh. When stomach flu t- type things, like this just gets lumped into stomach flu. When stomach flu like this happens in my household, it is hell. Because you got the baby's sick, which means there's diapers, then it's washing and sanitizing your hands knowing that who knows th- the child sat on, and is now that going to be exposed?
And then it just cycles through the whole entire house, and everybody ends up getting sick at least once over the course of, like, two weeks, and it's never-ending when you have, like, 15 people living in a house. It's just, it's just crazy. And yeah, so I'm glad this didn't affect Colorado, because I'm sure anytime there's a stomach flu that goes around anything in our state, my family gets it, and then we end up the whole family getting it.
So- [00:07:00] Thank the good Lord that this did not really affect Colorado. I mean, it did, but not at the levels that we're talking about like Michigan and Ohio and stuff like that. Oh, man. Poor Michigan. Doesn't it seem like Michigan always gets the crappy end of the stick? Like Flint water- Literally ... with heavy metals and-
Francine: This is not typically person to person.
Cyclospora's not typically person to person.
Matt: No. No. True. Yeah. That's the whole article that Bill Marler wrote, which we're gonna be discussing today, about him at IAFP.
Francine: Which, that brings me to my point. That means this many people have eaten product.
Matt: Yes, 100%. Yeah. So when Bill Marler gets super frustrated, he will call or text either Francine or I, or both of us, and just download his frustrations, because we're a sympathetic ear that understands.
Francine: Typically we're [00:08:00] equally frustrated because- We're
Matt: equally frustrated, and we can provide humor on anything. And so he called me last night after writing this because his plane was delayed, and was like, "I just don't understand why people think it came from American municipal source. That makes zero sense."
So context, at IAFP, and we'll put the link to this article down below, IAFP, the Conference for Food Safety, one of the conferences for food safety, there's many of them, in the US. Bill Marler was told that it was American sewage, not Mexican lettuce, iceberg lettuce, that gets the parasite... So the title of this is, "At IAFP I Was Told It Was American Sewage, Not Mexican Lettuce.
That Gets the Parasite Half Right and the Continent Entirely Wrong". Okay Uh, he's, yeah
Francine: His humor is so much [00:09:00] like ours.
Matt: It's so much like ours. It's so much, which is why he probably calls us just to make him laugh again when he's like down. And so his flight was canceled last night from New Orleans to Seattle.
And s- so he writes it here, "So I'm listening to good jazz and thinking about diarrhea too much." I told Bill Marler on the phone that if he has problems with flights, and every single time he has a problem with the flight and it gets canceled, he ends up writing three blogs in one evening, Taylor Farms would be more than willing to allow him to use their private jet, just so he doesn't have a lot of time on his hands.
Francine: They might put all three of us on that private jet.
Matt: So yeah, so he was, like five people that I really trust and known for multiple decades came to me and were like, "It doesn't have to be Taylor Farms. It could have been from American Municipal Water Source." And so he was like, "Okay, when this happens, it's a trend.
They're getting this [00:10:00] from somebody and they're trying to spin this. They're trying to spin this." And he's like, "It didn't come from there." And so this whole entire article is about how, no, it came from Mexico. It was sold, at least a whole bunch of them with the epidemiology from CDC and the FDA. It came from Taco Bell is at least a good portion of them, and the supplier was Taylor Farms.
So it is, and this whole entire article goes to explain that. And you don't need, if for instance you needed a positive test, a positive test for a product in order to confirm that product really was sold and consumed And got that person sick, consumers would rarely get compensated for anything. And you don't.
In food safety law, epidemiology works. The [00:11:00] study of interviewing patients that have gotten sick on what they have eaten, and then figuring out what the common thread is between each of those individual patients, linking it to that common thread, finding the supplier, and then pinpointing it on that. That is epidemiology.
Tests, if you could find the tests, you could find where it came from and it tests positive, then that's awesome because now you have even true, more concrete evidence of it. But for fresh produce, by the time you're getting sick and stuff, that produce is gone. It's gone. It's very rarely do you track back the source with a positive test.
When I say very rarely, I mean very, very re- rarely, particularly when it's cyclospora. Now, when it's E. coli O157:H7 or salmonella or listeria or whatever-
Francine: Right ...
Matt: those genetic markers are really easy to pinpoint back to them. [00:12:00] But cyclospora is a parasite, so it's different. But he lays out the whole entire case that no, it didn't.
It had to have come from the water in Mexico, sprayed onto the crop, somehow got in the cr- crop systematically, and then, or systemically. Then it took four days or so for that bacteria to grow onto that crop. And I bet in the processing plant, whatever other farms and lots were added to that, if they weren't able to kill the cyclospora within their wash tank and stuff like that, it continued growing.
And then it became this massive outbreak because then the cyclospora was able to birth itself on the lettuce and then infect 20,000 people, almost 21,000 people. And so he lays out this case here, I think pretty well.
Francine: I mean, yeah, I agree. And I just have no words. [00:13:00] I'm astounded at the arguments that people are coming up with about why it's not and why it can't be Taylor Farms When there's so much evidence pointing to the fact that it is
Matt: Right
Francine: Taylor Farms
Matt: And evidence that has been used to trace back for decades now.
Epidemiology research is what is being used, and it points back to Taco Bell, and it points to Taylor Farms. And for me, Taco Bell, will I continue to eat at Taco Bell? Yes. Like, my family, the person who owned, like, the five Taco Bells within our county went to church with us. And when I was... We were super poor, and they would do these drives at church where people would [00:14:00] pay for buy one burrito, get one free type of a thing, coupon, and then all that donation went to the church.
When people at the church would ask like, "Hey, I don't really want this. I d- I wanna just donate to the church. Who should we give this to?" They would give it to us, like, in our family. So we had reams and reams of these buy one burrito, get one free. And it was, like, the coolest thing growing up, knowing that people at our church and knowing that this- that these Taco Bells were donating to us.
It was beautiful. So for Taco Bell, I am definitely, like, a huge Taco Bell fan. Then my dad ended up marrying the guy's daughter that owned all those Taco Bells. My brothers and sisters worked at those Taco Bells. I absolutely love Taco Bell. So this is just a, a big problem with their supplier, Taylor Farms.
Francine: So in addition to your connection to Taco Bell, your personal connection to Taco Bell, let's not forget that Taco Bell [00:15:00] initially said, "Hey, we have a problem."
Matt: Yes. Yes. Which
Francine: is a great
Matt: thing. Yes. They're like, "Oh, it's linked to us. We're gonna stop everything, and we're gonna stop s- putting lettuce on everything, and-
Francine: And let's find a new supplier, and let's get this under wraps.
They did that right away. Taco Bell did what they should have done. They started pulling product, finding a new supplier, and handling things appropriately.
Matt: Correct. Listen, it happens. And I don't know if this will ever stop
Francine: happening. Things are gonna happen.
Matt: Yes.
Francine: It happens. So they did what they should have done.
Taco Bell handled things appropriately.
Matt: Taylor Farms, on the other hand-
Francine: Is still in a state of denial ...
Matt: or, or I don't know about denial. I think that's a river in, in Egypt. But definitely coverup.
Francine: Yeah. Okay.
Matt: Or maybe not coverup, but CYA. Definitely some CYA is going on over there. There's
Francine: a lot of CYA happening [00:16:00]
Matt: Yeah.
So I think the worst thing that could have happened-
Francine: It's not, wait a minute. It's just not, it's, it's not just Taylor Farms CYA. There's a whole lot of people CYA-ing for Taylor Farms. A whole lot of people CYA-ing for Taylor Farms, and that's a problem.
Matt: Well, I mean, they're the largest. They're prob- And I don't know if they're the largest, but they're definitely one of the largest donators to all food safety things.
Francine: We have states here, like the state of Pennsylvania that I live in, that don't even... It's reported voluntarily. So who knows how many people are really sick in the state of Pennsylvania, or some of these other states where it's all voluntarily. And let's not forget that the whole country stopped counting this in 2025.
We don't even really count this parasite anymore because our Department of Health and Human Services decided that it's just not necessary anymore. [00:17:00] So we don't even really track it. All we know, it's one of these illnesses that's not important. There's 100,000 people sick. Who the hell knows? We don't know.
Matt: Right.
Francine: Where's Mel?
Matt: So one of the reasons why you called me last night is 'cause when I was working at Primus Labs, there was a big outbreak that was tied with an audit done by Primus Labs, and the owner of Primus Labs decided to fight the lawsuit against Bill Marler, and did not go well. Did not go well.
It was a brain drain. They lost a lot of people, including me. So Primus Labs, about two years into this lawsuit, I was gone. I w- was working for a different company that ultimately I was an owner in, WQS, but at that time it was NCSI. I was working there, and Primus Labs created this massive document, I think like 20 pages or something like that, of all these graphs and all of this stuff explaining why they should not be implicated into [00:18:00] the lawsuit with Jensen Farms.
It's public. You can go look at it. I don't know if you- the, the document that was sent out to the clients and stuff like that were public, but I got it from one of my clients that was with both of us, Primus and us, and they sent it over to me, and I r- I'm reading this and I'm like, "Holy cow, this is really cool.
This is well-written. This is great. This is gonna keep us from getting in a lawsuit or whatever if something goes wrong." Then-
Francine: And Je- wait a minute. Jensen Farms was the cantaloupe.
Matt: Jensen Farms- First- ... listeria cantaloupe, yeah.
Francine: Right.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. And then Bill Marler gets a hold of this, because he always gets a hold of everything that happens in food safety in the industry.
He gets a hold of this document, and then he on his blog writes a one to two-page article about how th- this, this do- it, it doesn't matter. You could do anything you want. You could write anything you want for 20 pages. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. If you messed up and the consumers that got sick have to get paid, [00:19:00] and it's going to, it's gonna happen.
I sent this over to the company that owned my company, and within, like, I don't know, four months, I did a management buyout and bought the company. They looked at this and were like, "The risk in produce is too big for our brand. We're selling the company, and do you wanna buy it?" And so I ended up buying it and then merging it, and it became WQS.
So- Bill Marler, when he gets challenged on things like this, he doesn't go away. He just doubles down. So any time you do stuff like this, and you do anything where you're gonna try to change his mind, and you get, like, a bunch of people to go tell him something that he knows is not correct, he doesn't put his head in the sand.
No. He spends the next five hours writing three s- blogs saying the, everything you say is wrong, and it doesn't matter. Then your whole entire idea of trying to go around and [00:20:00] get him to change his mind, absolutely the exact opposite. So I'm just telling anybody in the industry listening to this that ends up in an outbreak and tries to do any type of CYA or get all your buddies that you know know Bill Marler to go tell him something, you try to do some roundabout way, that just pisses him off, and then he gets more violent.
And he, the violence he uses is not guns and knives. It's worse. It's words. It's words.
Francine: What I remembered, I can remember, this reminds me of during the Chipotle outbreaks during 2015, every request I got was for an article about Chipotle, to the point that I was starting to feel bad. And it's like, that's how I spent my time in the airports, was writing these articles.
Matt: Yeah. Luckily for consumers, his flight was canceled. But for the lettuce industry, not good. Not good. Or I shouldn't say the lettuce industry, 'cause he's not attacking the lettuce [00:21:00] industry. He's attacking Taylor Farms directly.
Francine: Right. You bring up a point. It's affecting the lettuce industry. Oh. Those are the people that are hurting.
You posted something yesterday I think on, like, LinkedIn that said- On
Matt: LinkedIn ...
Francine: last two weeks, lettuce sales are down 20%.
Matt: Yes. In two weeks after the cyclospora outbreak, lettuce purchases, and this is Nielsen IQ data that tracks purchases that are happening in a retail store. Within two weeks of the cyclospora outbreak, lettuce sales dropped 20%, or 19%.
20%,
Francine: yeah. It was 19-point-something, yeah.
Matt: It's huge. That means that some grower that is growing lettuce, that has, is doing everything right, and they have now lost sales because of this.
Francine: However, toilet paper sales are up.
Matt: Uh, oh, wow. Same with Pepto-Bismol. Do we have a water crisis in this country? How much water has been consumed with flushing of toilets?
Oh, man. [00:22:00] We're going to hell. However, toilet paper sales are up
Francine: No, seriously. The lettuce farmers, I feel bad for them because they are directly impacted. The small people who have done nothing wrong, the people that can't afford the attorneys, the PR to buy whoever Taylor Farms is buying to spin their bullshit, they're the ones that are suffering.
Matt: Francine, tell me how you really feel. Yeah. It's crazy. In the article that Bill Marler put out specifically against Taylor Farms this morning, he wrote, "Taylor Farms has now written five different versions of the same statement. The newest one says it ran 2,000 samples and found nothing. Ohio just added 1,437 cyclospora cases in a week, and the 50 state [00:23:00] count now crosses 20,000."
This is where you can read... This is a fascinating article, okay? This one, which will be linked down below. Because in these two articles, the IFP article, which we'll have the down below, and the Taylor Farms article, you get to see how Bill Marler builds a case. This is actually fascinating for consumers who are sick and want anything to be done, because this is fantastic marketing for him.
Because they get to see, like, "Oh my gosh, this is how he builds a case. He's gonna be able to build a case that shows why I got sick," right? If nothing else, if this podcast annoys you because you're getting insight into Francine's and our relationship with Bill Marler and you, you view Bill Marler as the big boogeyman who you absolutely hate and are terrified by.
If nothing else, get from this podcast, this is how his brain works, [00:24:00] and this should be part of your emergency plans. How to get in front of this the right way, not to piss Bill Marler off, not to have so many people get sick, and then get this fixed as soon as possible so he doesn't attack you personally.
When I say personally, I mean as a company, although I've seen him attack individuals personally, too, that big chiefs in companies that are completely failing in their messaging, like the Jack in the Box case. He went after that CEO personally Chipotle
Francine: Pranav's
Matt: He went after them, him directly, and he's going after Bruce Taylor now directly.
If you don't want this to happen to you, get in front of it, get your product off the shelf, and do this as fast as possible, and don't try to spin anything, and he's not gonna go after you personally. Because he, he, he's gonna be like, "Great-
Francine: Right ...
Matt: you're helping me."
Francine: Just do the
Matt: right thing.
Francine: Right. Uh, just do the right thing.
[00:25:00] So the sad thing is there's a lot of beneficial information for consumers in here. I share a lot of this. More consumers would see this. I'm one person. A lot of food safety nerds see this information because this is what we do. We like this information, and it... We learn a lot, and we know a lot, and we were interested in this.
However, the average consumer isn't seeing this information. They're seeing the crap that they read on social media. They're seeing the stuff that they see on the news, which I swear to God, the news gets their informations from social media sometimes.
Matt: 100%.
Francine: I think that some of the national news stations are getting their news from social media.
They don't see any of this information. So I think that is detrimental because they're not dealing with facts. They're just dealing with, I don't even know what they're dealing with. I don't know where they get some of the information and [00:26:00] some of the thought process. Some of what I've heard about this whole false positive from that case of lettuce has just driven me insane because it doesn't matter, and nobody understands that it doesn't matter.
It's irrelevant
Matt: It's absolutely
Francine: irre- Whether it's true or not.
Matt: It's 100% irrelevant because it's how the food safety s- traceback works. It's how epidemiology works. And in fact, okay, so-
Francine: Taylor Farm knows that. They're the ones that are out there, like leading the charge with this false positive. They know it doesn't matter.
Matt: Taylor Farm knows this because they helped write a lot of these rules. They s- they're like, for food safety, for FSMA 204, okay? For the Food Safety Traceability Act, a lot of what that, what the traceback and the lot codes and all this different type of stuff that got punted by the FDA until, like, for another year and a [00:27:00] half, what a lot of it was using PTI, Produce Traceability Initiation.
Produce Traceability Initiation, it, like Taylor Farms is part of this whole entire committee of that. They got the whole lettuce industry to put together PTI, Produce Traceability Initiation. They are at the forefront of product recall when it comes to lettuce and stuff like that, and they don't want somebody else's outbreak to affect them, and vice versa, their outbreak is affecting other people.
So it's, they're, they know about this because they help... They really do. When I say that they are one of the top donators for food safety, they are one of the top donators for food safety. I mean that in terms of millions and millions and millions of dollars Taylor Farms puts into food safety resource, food safety studies.
They fund research. They help prop up organizations that do food safety. They, and I, when I say millions and millions of dollars, I don't [00:28:00] mean accumulatively, I mean annually, they spend millions and millions of dollars on this. They really do believe in food safety.
Francine: Unless it affects them.
Matt: They, they, they messed up on this one.
They, yeah, they messed up on this one. And I think maybe because it's so big, it's huge. This, a recall that affects 20,000 people that we know of now- It's huge. It's going to be a big lawsuit. It's going to be a very big class action lawsuit.
Francine: Bill might be able to retire. Not that he will.
Matt: He could have retired many, many years ago, Francie.
I think he could have retired after the Jack in the Box case, but he just decided no, these... And really truly, as a boogeyman, and he is perfectly fine being the boogeyman of the industry. He's said that on our show multiple times. It's fine. If you need to use him as the boogeyman, he's perfectly fine with that.
Because what we have seen is the side of him that really cares about the [00:29:00] consumers. He really cares about his clients. And he knows that he can get the most amount of the industry for his clients. At the same time, he does well himself, but he actually really cares. I didn't realize that until about, what, four or five years ago when we started talking to him, maybe three years ago.
You and I had seen him at conferences and stuff like that. But my first real relationship with him was a negative one. He was suing my company. He was suing the l- like, I was an executive in this company. It was all positive. He was our boogeyman. He, we- I never- We hated him ...
Francine: Bill Marler.
Matt: But then getting to know him and understanding why he does this for the victims.
He said to me again last night, like, "I really wish we could figure out a way to get the regulatory to really implement these things so I could go out of business." He doesn't [00:30:00] want to retire. He wants to be put out of business.
Francine: He would still advocate.
Matt: I don't know if that'll ever happen, though. Even if we had the best regulatory in the world that did this, it, there's still going to be outbreaks.
Just hopefully they stop at, like, a few people, and it's really difficult to do epidemiology instead of 20,100- Well, this is just- ... 21,000 people.
Francine: This is just, it's astronomical. It's crazy. And it's not stopping.
Matt: No, I thought it would've slowed down.
Francine: This is, the first episode we recorded was, what, three weeks ago?
Two weeks ago?
Matt: Yeah.
Francine: We're still talking about it.
Matt: Yeah, we're gonna be talking about this one for a while, 'cause this is, like, Boar's Head.
Francine: Talking about it in the sense that the numbers are still growing.
Matt: Oh, yes. I get what you mean. Not only- This is gonna be like Jack in the Box or
Francine: Chipotle ... talking about as it happened, what's going on now.
Talking about it in the sense that the numbers are still growing.
Matt: Yes. Yeah. And talking about this, I think actually, and how I thought you were saying this, is we're gonna be talking about this [00:31:00] case, we are talking about Peanut Corp. of America, like we talk about Chipotle, like we talk about Jack in the Box, et cetera, et cetera.
This is so big that it's going to be around for a very long time. And then now that I think about it, I understand why Taylor Farms is doing this, because the last thing they want is to have their name eternally-
Francine: This is gonna be- ...
Matt: placed in the biggest outbreak in US history.
Francine: This is gonna be in textbooks, it's gonna be case studies.
This is gonna be, this is gonna be, it's one of those.
Matt: Yeah.
Francine: It's gonna be around forever. Yeah. It's gonna be in journals, it's gonna be universities, colleges are gonna use it. This is everywhere. It's not going away.
Matt: No.
Francine: We're immortalized.
Matt: No. You're absolutely correct. Yes.
Francine: They've just... Yes. They have cemented their place in produce [00:32:00] history, if they weren't already there- And you know what?
and not in a good way.
Matt: Because Taco Bell did what they were supposed to do and just nipped the bud super fast, we're not talking about Taco Bell like we do- You know what? ... Chipotle and stuff.
Francine: You know what is the thing? Normally, when these things happen, for example, when Chi-Chi's had their outbreak-
Matt: Yes
Francine: you don't r- remember who the vendor was, but you remember Chi-Chi's.
Matt: Right.
Francine: When McDonald's had that outbreak, we remember who the supplier was, but most people don't. They remember it was McDonald's. Jack in the Box, people don't remember the supplier, but they remember Jack in the Box. In this situation, we know that Taco Bell was affected.
We're not gonna think about Taco Bell. No. We're gonna think about Taylor Farms. So Taco Bell-
Matt: Congratulations.
Francine: Yeah.
Matt: Good job, Taco Bell.
Francine: Taylor Farms.
Matt: 100%.
Francine: And this is one of those rare situations where that's the case. Specifically, you remember the brand, you do not remember the [00:33:00] supplier. So this is an anomaly.
Matt: Whoa. 100%, Francine. Way to put those dots together. You're absolutely 100% correct.
Francine: And that is what handling a situation and handling your PR correctly does for you if you're a national brand.
Matt: Yes. Ouch You're right. No one remembers the
Francine: supplier See what happens when you let me talk, Matt?
Matt: Pina Corpse America, we remember Pina Corpse America because that was just absolute fraud, and it was so...
I mean, they went to jail over that.
Francine: Well, it is fraud, and there were so many brands that were impacted. And as a supplier, the, it would be hard to attach them to a specific brand because there were so many brands that were impacted by them.
Matt: Yes.
Francine: And the stories that came out of that were crazy. I mean, I saw some of the [00:34:00] video from their warehouse.
Don't know if you saw any of that or not, but when there's rats laying along the perimeter of the building, that was fraud. That was, I think that was a different kind of a case.
Matt: Yes. That's the only one I can really think of. Boar's Head as well, but they're a processor. I mean, Taylor Farms is a processor.
Francine: Boar's Head was a brand.
Matt: But Boar Head's were a brand. Taylor Farms is a brand too. Yeah. I mean, they're a marketing company. But
Francine: Boar's Head is... I feel like that was different. I feel like Boar's Head was different. Boar's Head was sold, like, at a retail level, not... I- in restaurants retail, but we look at restaurant retail a bit different than we look at grocery or supermarket retail.
Matt: Right. You're right. You go into every grocery store, and they're marketing Boarhead meat. Yes, I totally get what you're saying, where it is different.
Francine: I mean, retail as a sector, restaurants fall into that. Convenience stores fall into that. Grocery falls into that. But [00:35:00] it's, it's still, it's a different category within that sector.
Matt: Yes. Way to put those pieces together. You're absolutely right. We're not talking about this as, like, a Taco Bell outbreak. We're talking about this like a Taylor Farms outbreak, and that is unique.
Francine: Mm-hmm.
Matt: Wow.
Francine: Even though a lot of the people that got sick did indeed eat, it appears, at Taco Bell. Except for this one cluster, I guess, in, was it New Hampshire?
Matt: Yeah, and they're linking that to- To a cafeteria
Francine: in a hospital.
Matt: Yeah, which- Taylor Farms is the lar- one, like, if not the largest, one of the largest suppliers of, of produce, processed produce, to food service.
Francine: So when this is written about, again, it's not gonna be written about as a Taco Bell case study.
It's gonna be written about as Taylor Farms. It might be written as, in a positive manner, as this is how you handle [00:36:00] it, as compared to this is how some of these other companies handle it, and this is what it, how it turns out, but-
Matt: Yes.
Francine: It is- We're, people, people aren't talking about, people aren't posting things about Taco Bell.
They're not talking about Taco Bell. They're talking about Taylor Farms.
Matt: Yes. The only things that I see about Taco Bell are the memes. W- what was one of the memes that I sent you? Something along the lines of, "Everybody knows that you get explosive diarrhea from Taco Bell. Who called the news?" Like,
Francine: Yeah.
So well, and then think about all the memes that we saw when people were at the conference, the IFP conference. Nobody was talking about Taco Bell. All the signs and things that were up were about lettuce.
Matt: Yes.
Francine: All those memes and all those jokes were about lettuce. Lettuce makes you sick, alcohol doesn't.
Matt: My wife, I sent this over to you, the TikTok of this teacher that j- it, it is like the, the wording says something along the lines of, "I just received an email about going back [00:37:00] to school and having to do all of these workshops and icebreakers and all this stuff." And then, then the next scene is her with a Taylor Farms bag of lettuce, eating it, so that she can say she's sick and doesn't have to go.
People are brutal on, on TikTok and social media. Well,
Francine: and my God, it takes like five minutes until the memes start coming out. Yeah. It's like five minutes till we start getting these insane memes. Some of them are pretty funny. Oh, they're hysterical. Some of them- I mean, some of them are just hysterical.
Matt: And it's, a lot of them are so our humor.
Francine: Ugh.
Matt: I have a Gr- And
Francine: it's like- We gotta get,
Matt: we gotta get Tim in our group thread, Francine, where it's you, my wife, and I, 'cause my wife sends some crazy TikTok memes and, and stuff.
Francine: My, my husband sends some funny stuff. Some of the stuff he sends to me, it's like, "Oh my God."
Some, it's, some of it I have to think, "Is this, like, too over the line?"
Matt: Okay, and when you and I have to ask that question, it [00:38:00] is way over
Francine: the line. Over the line or not?
Matt: Oh, my land. Okay. Well, on that note, don't eat poop.