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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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[00:00:00] Matt: The oldest archeological findings of fermented fish is 9,200 years ago because they were starving and they learned if they could fish when fish were in the river and then learn how to dry it, smoke it, ferment it. They could eat fish in the wintertime and not starve. If your choices are occasionally getting foodborne illness or starving to death.
Okay, I will choose the former over the ladder. But if I'm not starving, I'm not gonna choose option number one.
Everybody's gotta eat. And nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans, Francine l Shaw and Matt Reci for a deep dive into food safety. It all wars down to one golden rule. [00:01:00] Don't eat poop.
Don't eat poop. Hello? Hello, F
[00:01:06] Francine: Hi Matt.
[00:01:07] Matt: I did the teaser wrong last week.
[00:01:09] Francine: I wasn't real sure what you were referencing and I'm like, the only thing I can think of is puffer fish and we're not talking about puffer fish, so I'm not sure where he is going with that.
[00:01:20] Matt: Let me rephrase that. Well, we never do teasers, so first off,
[00:01:25] Francine: apparently we don't know what we're doing.
[00:01:28] Matt: We never do teasers and that,
[00:01:31] Francine: I don't know why I'm rolling myself into that 'cause it was you that messed up.
[00:01:34] Matt: So give us some grace. So let's just say that of the teaser of last week, what do you think? I got 90% of inaccurate.
[00:01:42] Francine: Yeah, 90.
[00:01:44] Matt: So it's not like we're doing, we're recording a completely different episode.
That was teased last week, but yeah. Okay. So what I was thinking about, well, I'll just start with that. What I was thinking about was, because it's a fermented swordfish. In my head, I was [00:02:00] thinking that fermented Greenland shark that is made in Iceland, that's where my brain was. It said fermented swordfish.
We knew it was fermented swordfish, you told me it's fermented swordfish three times and in my head, probably, because I haven't, I think over the last, what do I say, last three nights, I've gotten like 12 hours of sleep. So it's fermented, swordfish. Not fermented Greenlandic shark from Iceland, which makes more sense because how would you get fer homemade fermented, Icelandic, Greenland shark in the United States,
[00:02:39] Francine: which I didn't even know that existed.
So again, pufferfish was the only thing that I could think of. And I'm like, I'm not sure how we went there, but just gonna let him go.
[00:02:50] Matt: Like fermented swordfish.
[00:02:53] Francine: Have you ever heard of that before? No.
[00:02:57] Matt: Okay, well while we figure that [00:03:00] out, let's start with the article. So, Francine shoots this to me and is like, have you heard of this?
And it was literally in my newsfeed as well. So this goes to show the stuff that Francine and I look at. But yeah. Do you wanna tee it up, Francine? 'cause this is a, this girl, what a tough life. She's lived so far.
[00:03:20] Francine: Well, and she's only 24. She's only 24 years old and this poor woman has survived cancer twice.
She goes to a friend's house with other people and they have this fermented swordfish, and she says It tasted horrible. I'm gonna be honest, but it's supposed to be healthy, and I figured I might as well try. If it's bad, I'll just get a stomach ache. A bad stomach ache. Okay. People, there's much more to food poisoning [00:04:00] sometimes than a bad stomach ache, which she learned.
She noticed a couple days later when she was chugging water, but she wouldn't be able to chug it. It was going down the wrong pipe. And then slowly over the course of 24 hours, she went from not being able to chug water, to not being able to drink any water at all. And then after nearly choking on a sip of coffee, she went to the hospital.
And then at first she wasn't, they weren't able to figure out what was wrong with her. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with botulism. She nearly died from eating this fermented swordfish. So. This is a neurological toxin, you know, blurred vision, and you could very easily die from this. There are people that don't completely recover from bism.
If they do live, they don't completely recover. You live with lifelong [00:05:00] ramifications from this illness. So she's fortunate that she woke up. I believe she was, it says she was intubated. Yeah, I woke up, I had three IVs. I was intubated, had a central line in my neck and an NG tube, which we just talked about.
An NG tube. Yes. Before you started recording the last, you wanna explain what that is?
[00:05:23] Matt: Yeah, actually we were talking about it beforehand. So why I haven't gotten any sleep is I've been working every day, but then every night I've been at the hospital, because we've talked about my kid who keeps Y and C, Jesus.
Every day for like the last six weeks, a new baby, and he has an in, he had an NG tube. So an NG tube is where you're fed through your, the tube is through your nose down into the esophagus, and NG tube goes into the stomach. So you're being fed a liquid diet through a hose, through your nose, into your [00:06:00] stomach, an NJ tube.
Which is what my baby had because his stomach, he couldn't handle the food in the stomach, goes in through the nose, down through the esophagus, bypasses the stomach and goes into the gut directly. So when she woke up, she goes to the hospital and then wakes up. He's being fed through the nose, quote unquote.
It's not like they're feeding it directly through the nose, like when you ducked, dive into the pool the wrong way and you got water rushed in through your nose. It's not like that. It goes directly into your stomach, but still not fun. Not fun
[00:06:35] Francine: from just making the bad decision to eat. This swordfish. It says she wasn't able to talk before.
She wasn't able to walk. Five people ate this fermented swordfish. Three of them developed botulism.
[00:06:53] Matt: Yes.
[00:06:53] Francine: Out of the five.
[00:06:56] Matt: Yeah.
[00:06:57] Francine: She still is not fully recovered, you
[00:06:59] Matt: [00:07:00] know? Okay. So, so I had to research this because I was like, okay, I know Francine on your fun, you like to watch people, murder people for flags, for me,
[00:07:12] Francine: commit the orders.
It's solving the mystery.
[00:07:14] Matt: Francine's fun. What she does for fun is murder mysteries, is what she watches is murder mysteries. I watch like YouTube gravel cooking stuff 'cause I like to see what people are eating like the crazy stuff and I'm like, how are these people not getting sick? The best ever food review show is.
Hilarious. The guy is hilarious. I've actually had an Uber driver and he was talking about being from Vietnam and this guy, he's from the States, but he lives in Vietnam, and I was like, oh, I watched this YouTube show that's in Vietnam, and he was like, oh, Sonny, from Best Ever Food Show. I watch him religiously every week, and this would be why I thought it was that.
Greenlandic [00:08:00] shark is because I watched an episode where he ate this fermented greenlandic shark from Iceland and they had to like, I'm guessing it took probably a generation of people dying off. They figured it out that this, this shark is unedible unless you ferment the ammonia off of this thing and then you eat it and it's,
[00:08:19] Francine: I like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine eating this.
[00:08:23] Matt: So like when I saw this, I was like, oh yeah, I gotta research. What is this fermented swordfish. It's actually not swordfish. It's this fermented swordfish, what they call it. Fermented swordfish is actually lightly salted fermented Baltic sea herring, traditionally a Swedish cuisine since at least the 16th century.
So, you know when Europeans started conquering the world and they needed to have some sort of food that could keep them alive on [00:09:00] long journeys, it's like pickled herring is another, or it is distinct from fried or pickled herring. It's this fermented fish you have to like this poor woman who battled cancer, 24-year-old girl who battled cancer twice.
Eats this thing and gets botulism and why? I'm gonna explain to you what this tastes like. There's no way I would eat this and I will eat almost anything during the production of sir storming. Just enough salt is used to prevent the raw herring from rotting while allowing it to ferment. A fermentation process of at least six months gives the fish its characteristic, strong smell, and somewhat acidic taste.
A [00:10:00] newly open can of serum strong as one of the most putrid food smells in the world, even stronger than similarly fermented fish ditches such as Korean, Hong Ho, and Japanese. Siah or the Icelandic or Carl, basically any place that this is made, you cannot pronounce it in the United States. I'm reading it and I'm guessing it's not phonetic.
Like I have no clue what this, what I was to say. Making sure and acquired taste. Yeah. Meaning you've been starving for generations and you have nothing else to eat. And so you had to acquire it in order to get enough calories to fricking survive. That is the only reason why this thing exists. And this per girl went to somebody's house and ate it with probably peer [00:11:00] pressure, and she says she had a quarter sized piece of this fish and then ends up waking up with an NG tube and barely surviving fun.
[00:11:11] Francine: All the peer pressure in the world would not make me eat something that smelled like that.
[00:11:18] Matt: No,
[00:11:19] Francine: be like, I'm sorry. Thank you for preparing this, but no. Have you ever played the jelly bean game where you taste the jelly beans and they taste like these really putrid flavors? It's a jelly belly jellybean game.
[00:11:38] Matt: No, but this game does not sound like fun. This is not games. Were supposed to be fun Franzy. This does not sound like, pun like what?
[00:11:47] Francine: There's this jelly belly jellybean game.
[00:11:53] Matt: This sells like a chapter in Harry Potter. Remember like the everything, jelly beans or whatever, and it's throw up and [00:12:00] snot and
[00:12:01] Francine: yeah.
That's.
[00:12:03] Matt: Is that what this is supposed to be like? It's like a game of the Harry Potter,
[00:12:07] Francine: jelly belly, bean bled
[00:12:10] Matt: jelly belly bamboozle,
[00:12:12] Francine: bean jelly belly bean bled. I think that's what it's called.
[00:12:19] Matt: Yeah. No. Doesn't sound like fun to me. Doesn't sound like fun to me. And listen, I understand peer pressure. A lot of the reason why I am adventurous in what I eat is because.
I have worked with lots of different cultures and if you can't speak the language, you can build a connection through their food, right? I will eat almost anything put in front of me, but most of the time, like I would say 99% of the time, what I'm eating tastes good and isn't rotten a hundred percent of the time.[00:13:00]
It isn't rotten. My, my colleagues and friends in different countries are not giving me rotten food, like I've eaten bugs, but it wasn't rotten. It tasted good. It actually tasted really good. I would do it again. I would do it again in the States. One of my family members handed me the bugs that I eat in different countries and said, I dare you'd eat them.
I'd be like, you don't have to dare me. I'll eat them right now, because they were good. There's nothing in this description that is good. It's not good.
[00:13:34] Francine: Yeah. No,
[00:13:35] Matt: no. My girlfriend in high school, it's funny 'cause she was friends. My wife was like a different group, but she was also in my group. My wife was like a floater person in high school.
My, one of my girlfriends in high school was a Turkish foreign exchange student, and it was the first time I ever ate curry. She made curry and. That's an acquire taste. When I say acquire taste, [00:14:00] like the first time I ate it, she was like, you don't like it either. And I was like, you know what, no. I think I could learn to like this.
Like I could like this. It's just different, right.
[00:14:11] Francine: I love curry.
[00:14:12] Matt: Yeah. But growing up in the way I grew up, it wasn't like we had curry.
[00:14:17] Francine: Oh, we never had curry. No,
[00:14:19] Matt: no. Like I did not have curry. Yeah. But then she made it for me a few times and then now I crave curry. I absolutely love curry, but curry is not rotten fish.
The oldest archeological findings of fermented fish is 9,200 years ago because they were starving and they learned if they could fish when fish were in the river and then learn how to dry it, smoke it, ferment it. They could eat fish in the wintertime and not starve. If your choices are occasionally getting foodborne illness or starving to death, okay, I will choose the former over the [00:15:00] ladder, but if I'm not starving, I'm not gonna choose option number one.
[00:15:05] Francine: I'm like you. There's a lot of things that I've eaten that I will eat that people probably have not eaten. I'm pretty particular about where I will eat and doing health inspections changed me a lot about where I will eat and what I will eat. Oh yeah. A hundred percent audits and health inspections.
[00:15:33] Matt: Yeah.
You're like, this place doesn't have cockroaches. I'll eat here.
[00:15:37] Francine: Not just cockroaches, but just So, just a lot.
[00:15:42] Matt: When I say like, I'll eat insects, let me clarify that.
[00:15:46] Francine: I'll eat bugs.
[00:15:47] Matt: I will eat bugs. I've eaten bugs. I will not eat cockroaches because that's disgusting. Like I know what cockroaches eat.
Grasshoppers [00:16:00] literally are eating what we eat. Yeah, but cockroaches no
[00:16:06] Francine: flies. Like the flies are just nasty. I don't wanna eat something a fly has landed on.
[00:16:13] Matt: Yeah.
[00:16:13] Francine: Let alone, I
[00:16:14] Matt: mean, I have, but I don't want to.
[00:16:16] Francine: Well, probably most of us have, but I don't know.
[00:16:20] Matt: Oh, but can you imagine, can you imagine being sick, going to the hospital or being sick and then waking up with a whole bunch of different tubes in and then finding out.
That would be the craziest thing. Waking up four days later and realizing that you,
[00:16:37] Francine: well, you can't walk, you can't talk.
[00:16:40] Matt: That would be crazy. And those people who are like in comas for 10 years and then wake up and then they're, they 10 years have gone by and they're still thinking like it was 10 years ago.
Beautiful. So much [00:17:00] technology has happened. I just think if I was 24 years old, okay. When I was 24 years old, that was 2006. Okay. If I had gone and she didn't, she's awake. But if I, like you had gone into a coma and woken up 10 years later, the amount of technology that happened in those 10 years, that would've been crazy.
[00:17:23] Francine: And then can you imagine being the person that prepared that?
[00:17:27] Matt: Yes, that would kill me. If it was me that did that and three people got botulism at my house and I cooked it, like the amount of guilt I would have would be earth shattering. That would've been earth shattering.
[00:17:42] Francine: Yeah, that would be, I can't imagine.
[00:17:44] Matt: You know what, now that you say that, like I feel for this person, I feel for the girl, obviously, I feel for the other two people that got botulism, that sucks. But the person who fed the food. Oh man, this is very different than, than the woman [00:18:00] we talked about a couple months ago that purposefully tried to kill off her family member, right?
Like this, this person was not trying to kill off a bunch of people at bots. Oh man. That would be, uh, I would be, if it was me, I would be sitting by the, I'd be in the hospital the whole entire time.
[00:18:21] Francine: I would be devastated. I can't imagine cooking something and making somebody sick. Yeah, so the jelly bean, it is being boole.
The flavors Barf. Rotten egg. Stinky socks, dead fish.
[00:18:39] Matt: Why? It's a
[00:18:41] Francine: game. Yep. You spin a thing, you spin a thinner,
[00:18:46] Matt: no, there's no way I would play that game. There's nothing,
[00:18:50] Francine: I dunno if anybody would play it more than once.
[00:18:53] Matt: No, I would sit there and watch my kids play this game, but I would not participate in this.
There's [00:19:00] the fun would be observing them while they're doing this, but I, they're like everything going into my mouth would be not,
[00:19:07] Francine: I remember correctly. There are good flavors in there as well, like popcorn and there are good flavors in there as well. Yeah. So anyway, back to the fish.
[00:19:17] Matt: Yeah, boy. So this girl, this 24-year-old girl is a wedding platter.
Do you think that after this holds our experience, she's making sure the caterers have the right food safety expectations? Based on the episode last week? I bet she's like, no, I know what botulism is.
[00:19:35] Francine: We're gonna make sure nobody at this wedding party
[00:19:38] Matt: dies.
[00:19:39] Francine: She's looking at the menus carefully
[00:19:42] Matt: and choosing the caterers correctly.
Oh man.
[00:19:47] Francine: Thank God. Apparently she's in full remission.
[00:19:52] Matt: Yeah, and it wasn't like she was, she might be immunocompromised, but half a dozen people ate this. Three people got [00:20:00] botulism. It wasn't because she had cancer twice. Part of the story is she had cancer twice, but it's not because she had cancer twice that she got this.
[00:20:06] Francine: Our immune systems amazing, aren't they? Just
[00:20:11] Matt: absolutely
[00:20:12] Francine: flipping fantastic. The way they work, the fact that three people. Got this to, we don't know to what degree the other two people got sick, but two people did not get sick.
[00:20:26] Matt: Yeah. Okay. And then she quoted her, one of her quotes is it wasn't a dinner party.
She said, I tried the swordfish. The fermented swordfish, because we were all pretty healthy conscience and we heard it was supposed to be good for your gut. Yeah. Well, botulism isn't. This she writes. Honestly, it was horrible. It was so bad. I figured it might give me a stomach ache, just like what you said, but I wanna say it one more time, but I didn't expect this.
It was just a piece the size of a quarter. That's all it took to [00:21:00] get sick. Yep.
[00:21:01] Francine: It can take a lot less than that.
[00:21:04] Matt: Yes. You know what else is good for your gut? Just throwing this out here for people who are listening to the show who want to eat fermented stuff, that's good for the gut. Kimchi, it's good for the gut.
Sauerkraut is good for the gut. There's a lot of fermented food out there that are made by legitimate food safety conscious companies that can provide you the same type of gut health. You know what else is good? Yogurt.
[00:21:28] Francine: I was just gonna say yogurt. So back to Facebook, which we talked about previously. I see a lot of people making homemade yogurts and some of the procedures that they're using to make this homemade yogurt.
I love yogurt, but I don't wanna eat theirs. 'cause I'm just like, it just scares me. It's like you're gonna let that stuff sit out for a week.
[00:21:50] Matt: Yeah. I've made homemade keefer before 'cause I was drinking, like whenever I have to take antibiotics. For me, like I never [00:22:00] take antibiotics. So when I have to take antibiotics, it's like a real infection and I can't, I'm allergic to amoxicillin and penicillin.
So like the stuff I have to take is like, it kills everything that's good in your system. So I will drink Keer for like two months afterwards. I went on Amazon, found a reputable seller. That's like a real seller, not. Somebody who's selling this as a side gig on Amazon, like it's a real company, and they're like little keefer pellets, they call 'em, and you just drop 'em in the milk in like a glass jar with the milk, and then it turns into Keefer and I'll drink that and then take Ssur.
Then I'll eat sauerkraut, I'll eat kimchi. I'll do that type of stuff and just let my gut naturally do it. And then from Queen Label Project. One of our certified brands is Ritual and they sent over a ton of samples to get certified and we keep all the samples out in our lab, but we keep a we for people to take home.
And right when I [00:23:00] was taking antibiotics, I was like, oh, I'm just gonna go check the sample and see what's on the table. That maybe a probiotic. And it was like rituals, pre and probiotic, like prenatal probiotic. I was taking a pregnant woman's probiotic. Yeah, I was like, is this gonna make my boobs get bigger?
But I was taking that. I was like, oh, we certified it. It's kleb. It doesn't have all the crud in it that other supplements do. I'm thinking this, there's a lot of ways to get gut healthy. You do not have to eat putrid, rancid fish. There you go. Anything else? Or have we beat this dead fish?
[00:23:44] Francine: Just take food safety Seriously.
Me who had found the old stuff in my refrigerator a couple weeks ago. Yeah.
[00:23:54] Matt: Yes.
[00:23:55] Francine: That being said, I do clean my refrigerator out more than it appeared, but [00:24:00]
[00:24:00] Matt: Well, she did too. She sent me the text messages of things as she was throwing out pictures of her mustard from like 20 to 20.
[00:24:08] Francine: A regular stuff gets thrown away regularly.
It's those condiments that are dangerous.
[00:24:13] Matt: If this show, like if you and I are at a conference and something tragic happens and they go into our phone, they're like, who are these people? And somehow are able to hack into this phone and they find our text spreads. That alone would be extreme entertainment and in a real insight, yours and mine and my wife's.
Text threats. Oh my gosh. Oh my.
[00:24:37] Francine: Well,
[00:24:37] Matt: I'm talking about mine and my wife. I'm talking about the three of us.
[00:24:41] Francine: They'd pick us up and take us somewhere. Take us away.
[00:24:43] Matt: Yeah. A mental institution broth
[00:24:46] Francine: and they'd take us away.
[00:24:48] Matt: Okay. On that note, don't eat [00:25:00] poop.