Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

Special Ep 128
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Matt Regusci: Hey friends, Matt here and welcome to the special edition of Don't Eat Poop. Unfortunately, Francine had to take a little sick leave, but we didn't want to leave you hanging this week. So we're doing something a little different over the past a hundred plus episodes.
Matt Regusci: I know it's, I think this is episode 1 28 of Don't Eat Poop. Francine and I have dropped some downright jaw dropping food safety facts, things that most people don't know but really should. And if they want to keep their food safe and their stomach's happy, they should know these facts. Some of these are really surprising.
Matt Regusci: Some will make you rethink what's in your kitchen right now and some wow. Let's just say you might not ever look at coffee gloves or that innocent jar of mayonnaise, the same exact way.So today I'm bringing you five of our all time favorite food safety truths, straight from the archives in one fast-paced, fully packed [00:01:00] episode.
Matt Regusci: Think of this as like a highlight reel of wait, what moments from the past shows. let's get into it, starting with a story that might just make you check your coffee beans twice before you brew your next cup.
intro: Everybody's gotta eat and nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans, Francine l Shaw and Matt Regus for a deep dive into food safety. It alls down to one golden rule. Don't. Eat poop.
intro: Don't eat poop.
Matt Regusci: An eight ounce cup of regular coffee typically contains round 95 to 200 milligrams of coffee while decaf coffee, which has at least...
Francine L Shaw: Caffeine, not coffee.
Matt Regusci: You're right. I haven't had enough of my coffee yet this morning.
Matt Regusci: 95 to 200 milligrams of coffee while decaf caffeine, excuse me, caffeine. [00:02:00] Lordy, Matt. While decaf coffee, which has at least 97% of its caffeine removed. Usually has around two to 15 milligrams. So another thing that, is interesting about decaf. Clean Label Project, I run the certification body and testing arm for Clean Label Project. Clean Label Project did a whole entire thing about all the chemicals in decaffeinated coffee, and it's pretty bad. Like the industrial chemicals that are used to remove the caffeine out of coffee are nasty.
Francine L Shaw: I remember that. Tell everybody what that is.
Matt Regusci: It's Methylene Chloride. It's like a paint thinner stuff.It's bad, it's a bad chemical, and they use that in the process. You could find some that don't use these chemicals, but what they do is they steam this using the chemical. They're placed in the heated solvent.
Matt Regusci: This chemical is a solvent and the caffeine is removed from the coffee beans and separated out from the solvent. [00:03:00] Then the process continues until the desired amount of caffeine is removed. You can go on Clean Label Project, or if you type in decaf and Clean Label Project, you'll see there's a 17 page white paper of all the potential contaminants and decaf.
Matt Regusci: But yeah, if you're worried about that type of stuff and you drink a lot of decaf coffee, maybe go for the water based process. It costs a little bit more, but you're not putting terrible chemicals in your body.
Francine L Shaw: I think there's something called the Swiss water process. Is that right?
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Swiss water Process. Correct.
Francine L Shaw: They don't use chemicals. It preserves the flavor well, and it's the most expensive. And then there's the carbon dioxide method. Yes. Under high pressure. Yes. No chemical residue. And then there is a direct solvent method. Methylene chloride or ethyl acetate.
Matt Regusci: Okay, so methylene chloride is an active ingredient in paint thinner that was recently banned by the [00:04:00] EPA. So you could not use this product to scrape paint off of your walls. It's too dangerous for that, but to throw into some coffee beans to get rid of caffeine? No problem. That sounds like a good application for this thing.
Francine L Shaw: Wow.
Matt Regusci: For those of you that have to drink it for whatever you have health reasons. Sure. And you can't have caffeine or you have to stay up at night, but you want your cup of coffee. I would go for the water based or...
Francine L Shaw: Anything but.
Matt Regusci: Anything other than the paint thinner that was declared illegal by the EPA.
Matt Regusci: But the FDA is like whatever.
Matt Regusci: Do you refrigerate your mayonnaise? 100 percent refrigerate my mayonnaise. I do too. Okay, so the thing says this one may surprise you if you grew up on stories of people getting sick at picnics from mayonnaise for food containing mayonnaise. But it's true.
Matt Regusci: Store bought mayonnaise is acidic enough to keep safely at room temperature. Don't believe [00:05:00] me? According to Hellman's, aka Best Foods, top selling mayonnaise company in the U. S., this product can be stored at room temperature for up to a month after opening or two months in the refrigerator. The problem is actually the food you mix with the mayo.
Matt Regusci: I buy mine in the jar and use it to refill a squeeze bottle. I only ever reach into the jar with utensils, blah, blah, blah. So, okay. So the mayonnaise now, if you're making your own mayonnaise at home, that's very different than mayonnaise in the jar, but given how much acid is in the mayonnaise in store bought mayonnaise, I guess it can last at room temperature for a month.
Matt Regusci: Okay. For the same reason at which we keep our ketchup in our refrigerator, we will be keeping the mayonnaise in the refrigerator.
Francine L Shaw: Right. And you've ever seen the mayonnaise when it gets warm? Like separated? Hot.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Yeah. Like the oil separate? Yeah. So I guess you can, I think for quality purposes, I don't use ketchup and mayo in a lot of things.
Matt Regusci: It [00:06:00] wasn't really a condiment that I used a lot as a kid. The next one, mustard, definitely is. I put mustard on almost everything. I don't think I can eat warm mayonnaise.
Francine L Shaw: I could not eat warm mayonnaise and I love mayonnaise. I'm not eating warm mayonnaise.
Matt Regusci: I only put mayonnaise in egg salad and tuna salad is the only two things I put mayonnaise in.
Matt Regusci: And I just the thought of that's supposed to be a cold sandwich to me. So that would not be, that would not be good.
Francine L Shaw: Now the carbs are typically the problem at the picnics. You know what I mean? The potatoes and the macaroni and.
Matt Regusci: Oh, and once you start mixing it with things, the pH changes completely.
Francine L Shaw: But, yeah, I'm not keeping my mayonnaise in the cupboard, I'm sorry.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. And then.
Francine L Shaw: People tend to stick the dirty utensils in the mayonnaise, which creates the problem, because now you've got bacteria, again, cross contamination that's been introduced into the.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, I use my hands, I just scoop it out like this.
Francine L Shaw: This is mine!
Matt Regusci: It's so disgusting.
Francine Shaw: So let's talk about washing your meat.
Matt Regusci: Washing your meat. Yeah. Francine, let's talk about washing your meat. [00:07:00]
Francine Shaw: Okay. I'm amazed it's a number of people in the United States, even after like all of the marketing campaigns that have been out there, all the educational campaigns that still insist upon washing various types of meat products.
Francine Shaw: In this particular case, we're going to talk about poultry because that seems to be the number one product that people want to wash.
Matt Regusci: Do I wash my meat?
Francine Shaw: I'm not going to say that. I know better than to say that to you.
Matt Regusci: No Francine, I do not wash my meat.
Francine Shaw: That'd be like saying it to my husband. Not going to happen.
Matt Regusci: I understand it though. You and I are absolutely right. In fact, we've had multiple conversations about this just on the podcast about just the perception of people and their chicken right in their sink and all that stuff. I understand why. And because you and I both do a lot of the cooking. in our houses and my wife does not want to touch the meat [00:08:00] at all.
Matt Regusci: Right. Does not want to touch the chicken. Does not want to touch like a hamburger or anything like that. Like it grosses her out. And when you open up chicken, it's like there's slime in the package. It's like this chicken slime. So I get it. Right. Cause you look at that and you go, I don't want to touch it.
Matt Regusci: Let alone eat the chicken slime. So I should just wash it off. I understand that perception. And if you're growing up like you and I have grown up in the country, like we would butcher our own chickens, right? Well, part of the butchering and the feathering of the chickens, you would wash the chicken. So we wouldn't do it in our sink.
Matt Regusci: We would do it in special equipment outside, but we would wash the chicken. So if you're growing up like that, and you've learned to wash chicken from your mom who learned to wash chicken. your grandma who learned to watch chicken for the great grandma, etc, etc. Down the line, you understand where the perception could have come.
Matt Regusci: Now you're opening it up out of the package. And then there's just that chicken nasty [00:09:00] slime. And then you're like, yeah, of course I want to wash it off. Unfortunately, you are doing more harm than good when you do that.
Francine Shaw: So, anyway, there was a study done in 2011.
Francine Shaw: This is the College of Nursing and Health Professionals. 2011, 90 percent of people washed their raw poultry.
Matt Regusci: Whoa, wait, hold on a second. I want to make sure I understand what you're saying because this is an amazing statistic that I did not realize. In 2011, 90 percent of the population of the United States washed their raw chicken.
Francine Shaw: You're going to be astounded throughout this whole thing. Yes. In 2011, 90 percent washed their raw poultry. This was a washing poultry after 2013 education campaign. That's what this was. So in 2011, 90 percent of people wash their raw poultry. In [00:10:00] 2013, they ran a don't wash your chicken campaign. After the campaign, 68.
Francine Shaw: 7 percent of people still washed their raw poultry.
Matt Regusci: You and I understand how complicated and hard it is for change management. Over the course of a couple years, you get a 22 percent change in something like a behavior like washing chicken. I'm actually impressed with that.
Matt Regusci: I'm still shocked at the numbers, but I'm impressed at the progress of change.
Francine Shaw: In 2016, it was 67 to 68 percent for washing their poultry. And in 2019, it jumped back up 67 to 72 percent for washing their raw poultry. craziness, huh? That's interesting. I wonder why it went back up. Well, because people stopped talking about it would be my guess.
Francine Shaw: so, barriers to not [00:11:00] washing raw chicken. Are they saying that I'm going to do it anyway?
Francine Shaw: I clean my sink and counter surfaces really well. 58. 5%. Now, My question to that is this, regardless of how well you clean them, your sink has that little aerator thing on it, diffuses the water as it comes out of the faucet. How often do people, most people take that off and clean it? Rarely, if ever, only freaks like us do that.
Francine Shaw: The people that know even think about it, the average person isn't taking that off and cleaning it so much so that if they take a water sample from your home to do a water test, they take it from the bathroom sink instead of the kitchen sink because your kitchen sink is typically the dirtiest sink in the house.
Francine Shaw: That's a fun fact. 4 percent what our response to that is going to be the of. I'm careful to not splash 47. 2%. It's like the guys that jump off the high dive in the Olympics and make very [00:12:00] little splash.
Matt Regusci: Well, that kitchen, that wash of the chicken, what got to be an 8. 9.
Francine Shaw: I need to clean something off the poultry 28.
Francine Shaw: 8. It improves the taste. 15. 6.
Matt Regusci: Does it? If you're salting or liming or whatever and that's your washing thing, then yeah, it's going to alter the taste, but you could just throw it in a plastic bag or throw it in a bowl and create a brine in there, Netflix poison documentary of all the little points at which the chicken contamination happened in that kitchen, that was a really good visual display of how you could contaminate multiple parts of your kitchen quickly
Matt: A food safety myth that I hear all the time in my career, and that is that facilities, hacking houses, and even processing plants in the fresh produce industry can kill bacteria and create like a five log or more reduction. And that is 100 [00:13:00] percent absolutely and totally false.
Matt: A facility cannot kill. I'm not, I'm talking about a fresh produce facility, cannot kill all the bacteria. There are a lot of steps to minimize the spread of a potential systemic outbreak, like adding chlorine or oxidizing products to a dunk tank or making sure that you're really sanitizing and cleaning all your equipment between different lots and shifts so that you're not spreading more bacteria and pathogens on more and more product, right?
Matt: So you're creating a much larger problem. But if that product comes in from the field. With a pathogen on it, there is no 100 percent way of getting that pathogen off of the product. I think there's a lot of people that think that can't happen, and a lot of consumers that think that they can get it. And they think too, that if [00:14:00] they wash it, they can get rid of the pathogens, and that's also inaccurate.
Matt: The only way to get rid of the pathogens is to kill it, and the only way to kill it is to get it to a temperature that will kill it, get it to a pH that will kill it, starve it of oxygen, or something like that. That's about it, and there's no facility in the fresh produce industry right now that can do that, and there's no way you could wash it off into your sink.
Matt: Do you still hear things like that, Francine, from consumers or from retailers and food service companies? I'm just going to wash it. I'm going to use this special formula that I got from one of my suppliers that's going to kill everything. Now you could reduce it, but you cannot kill it.
Francine: I'm not sure what you mean
Francine: If product comes in with pathogens from the field on the pathogens, 100 percent get rid of it. When it's fresh produce, you can cook it, you can do that type of stuff. You could pickle it, changing the pH [00:15:00] and that will kill the pathogens. But a fresh produce like a bagged lettuce or these cucumbers, you can't just wash it away with chemicals.
Matt: It's not going to 100 percent get it away.
Francine: Freezing can reduce it to safe levels.
Matt: You can reduce it quote unquote to safe levels, but there are pathogens where all you have to do is consume just a little bit of it and you can get sick. You cannot 100 percent get rid of pathogens in a fresh produce facility.
Matt: You could spread it and make it worse, but you cannot 100 percent get rid of it.
Francine: The product itself or in the facility.
Matt: On the product itself, you cannot get rid of it. On the facility, it's a constant battle to get rid of pathogens in the facility. Because pathogens will find its way, or bacteria in general, will find its way into cracks and crevices, it'll create biofilms, it'll make life of a food safety and quality manager within the facility absolutely a pain trying [00:16:00] to find out where a potential outbreak could come from.
Matt: But on the product itself, unless you have a real kill step, changing the temperature through cooking or cooking in time, temperature and time, or changing the pH somehow, like pickling or something like that, you cannot kill pathogens.
Francine: You're saying that there's no product out there that will kill
Matt: Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Matt: You cannot 100 percent guaranteed you can kill all the pathogens with that.
Francine: On the product, or if it comes in, embedded in the product?
Matt: Both on or in because even when it's on the product and that's one of the things like why cantaloupe is so hard, right? Because the product itself has a lot of places at which pathogens can hide and create biofilms and all that stuff So there are different places at which Pathogens can cling on and it's very difficult unless you're really scrubbing it and you're utilizing safe chemicals at which people can consume And if you're really paying attention to eat [00:17:00] those fruits with that, it's virtually impossible.
Matt: Now, you can actually make it worse, also within your facility, by bringing product in hot that has pathogens on it, putting it in a cold dunk tank, and so that product that has been sweating, like cantaloupe or tomato or whatever, is a fruit that will sweat, and then once that, if there's pathogens in that dunk tank, because you didn't do your job right, it can suck that in.
Matt: And now you have pathogens within the fruit, now you definitely cannot get rid of it. And that's part of like with bagged lettuce and stuff like that. You're cutting the lettuce up. If you have pathogens on the lettuce and then it's going through its run through the processing machines and all the different belts, if it's spreading it through the machine before the next sanitization run, then you can spread those pathogens through that batch of product.
Francine: I understand the whole cross contamination and the whole nine. I'm going to send you something when we're done.
Matt: I know you're working on some chemicals. I'm not sure if they've been approved. [00:18:00] But right now.
Francine: SDA, CDC, that whole nine yards. I'm going to send it to you when we're done.
Matt: I'm working on a project right now.
Matt: Doing some consulting work with a company that does electrolysis. So their Ravim and Marjulio is the company. Then they have these machines that are, it's like irradiation, but it's irradiation, but it's different. Instead of irradiation, it's just using electrolysis and it goes into a dunk tank. You have to send everything to this one facility and run everything through this process.
Matt: So it's not really scalable on a large level, but that gets rid of pathogens and a five log reduction. Right now. The vast majority of the facility is out there for fresh produce. And when I say vast majority, I mean like 99. 9%.
Francine: And it's correct that they're not doing any, that I will agree with.
Matt: And so some of them are saying that their processes are killing [00:19:00] pathogens, and I will not disagree with them.
Matt: I'm sure that their processes are killing pathogens, but not at a rate at which is a five log reduction on a consistent scalable way over and over again. Again, some of the companies that are using certain methods, which are going to be 0. 01 percent of them, possibly, I just need to see how it's working.
Matt: But right now, every facility that I've been in industry over the last 20 years. None of them can get it down to that. So if you have a problem in the field, and something goes wrong in your facility, you will always have a problem coming out that backend.
Francine: I think I misunderstood what you're saying. The vast majority of the facilities are not using anything and that I will agree with.
Matt: So, that I think is a huge myth within our industry. And I think we might get beat up on this. I think there's going to be a lot of companies out there that say, well, they totally can 100%. And I would say to them, show me, and what happens if these processes. goes [00:20:00] wrong? Because even if you are getting rid of and have a five log reduction, can you guarantee that you can do it 100 percent of the time?
Francine L Shaw: We are gonna talk about gloves because gloves are single use. Gloves are important. So we're gonna talk about gloves today. Yeah
Matthew Regusci: One of the reasons why we're talking about this too is because it is recently relevant if you look at food safety news they did an article on Steve they called him the glove guy and And
Matthew Regusci: I still, every single time I read about these gloves, I am shocked. They're ubiquitous and we will help the right standards forcing gloves because the retailers really in food service companies really wanted these standards to force gloves and I don't know if it's helping.
Matthew Regusci: Oh my gosh. You have to give more context because you were, you were saying about stuff before the show and I was just like, my land, this is so bad.
Francine L Shaw: First of [00:21:00] all, in 2022, it was a, this says it was a 12. 3 billion industry. That is crazy.
Matthew Regusci: Just to put this in context guys, annual budget for the FDA is 7. 2 billion and the food portion of that is 1. 2 billion. And you said Francine that it's how much in the billions is gloves.
Francine L Shaw: I think it's a 12. 3 billion in 2022 and projected to grow at 3. 9%.
Matthew Regusci: So the amount of money companies spend on gloves every single year. is 10 times the budget of the food side of the FDA.
Francine L Shaw: And say they should be spending more,
Matthew Regusci: they should be spending more, but only if the gloves, it could be spending more.
Matthew Regusci: They don't have to depend as long as the gloves actually do what they're intended to do. [00:22:00] And they're not adding to the problem. And that's what we're seeing right now.
Francine L Shaw: And I say that because people don't change them as frequently as they should.
Matthew Regusci: And, but even the gloves themselves have pathogens on them have.
Matthew Regusci: Heavy metals have plastics have chemicals. It's they're testing these gloves now, and they're finding that there's so much crap on them straight out of the box.
Francine L Shaw: Fecal matter. Can't forget the fecal matter.
Matthew Regusci: Of course. Our show is called Tony poop. So we have to talk about fecal matter.
Francine L Shaw: We can't miss the poop.
Francine L Shaw: So this is a question that Steve was asked, Who checks gloves on arrival in the United States to ensure they meet these FDA standards?
Francine L Shaw: Nobody. Nobody. I'm not checked.
Matthew Regusci: FDA isn't even checking food. They're asking to increase their budget to be able to make sure there's no lead in food coming from food from other countries or spices from other countries. You're laughing. Yeah, you're right. You're laughing only [00:23:00] to keep from crying.
Francine L Shaw: That's the reality of it.
Francine L Shaw: So basically we're asking countries in Southeast Asia, where a lot of these come from to work on the honor system. Yeah, that's what we're doing,
Matthew Regusci: which is probably their honor system is I honor that I will provide very cheap products at a profit. That's their honor.
Francine L Shaw: A lot of these are fake and counterfeit because those that's limited compliance check during the height of the pandemic, a recent CNN investigation found tens of millions reused visibly soiled, well, many dirty bloodstained reach the US.
Francine L Shaw: with an improved compliance system. This is what I'm talking about was talking about earlier.
Matthew Regusci: I realized it was that bad. That's disgusting. And are these being used in like hospitals too? Cause I know like hospitals are getting very similar gloves. Are they reusing gloves from hospitals?
Francine L Shaw: I mean, [00:24:00] how else?
Francine L Shaw: It says that we know from independent research that in tests done on 2800 new and unused gloves from 26 different brands, over 260 different viable pathogens were found. Listeria, E. coli, Salmonella, name it. It was there. In addition, they found human and animal fecal indicators on 69 percent of the gloves.
Francine L Shaw: Basically seven to 10 gloves had fecal matter.
Matthew Regusci: 7 gloves.
Francine L Shaw: So, are there enough microbes on these gloves to cause an outbreak? Good question. Short answer is it's hard to know and it's hard to trace back to gloves. They're not usually tested as being the source of recall.
Matthew Regusci: Yeah. And I bet they're doing PCR tests. So the protein of the pathogens are there, but the pathogens may not be viable.
Matthew Regusci: So basically what I mean by that is PCR tests is not looking for live pathogens. Some PCR [00:25:00] tests are looking for live pathogens. Real quick, inexpensive ones are just looking for the protein of that pathogen, the genetics of that pathogen. Well, if that pathogen died, so if E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria had died on these gloves, you could still pick up the protein, the genetics of it, even though it's not live and viable.
Matthew Regusci: So it'll be interesting to see, are they sanitizing the gloves and the, but how the hell did the pathogen end up on them? Regardless, that's just disgusting. Regardless if it's alive or dead, there shouldn't be pathogens on these gloves.
Matt Regusci: That's it for today's episode of Don't Eat Poop, Five food safety truths straight from our archives that we think everybody should know. We'll be back to you soon with the regular deep dives. But in the meantime, if you liked this format, let us know. Drop a review, send us a message on social,
Matt Regusci: or tell a friend who could use a gentle reminder to, well, don't eat poop.
Matt Regusci: Until next time. Thank you.
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