Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

DEP E92
===

Bill Marler: There was a question about whether or not a hamburger is a product manufactured by the restaurant. Like an automobile is a product manufactured by GM. And the court had to make a decision that the hamburger in fact was a product, no different than an automobile. And it comes with a bunch of different component parts, less maybe than a car does.

But if there's a defective product or defective component part of that product, And something bad happens, it's the manufacturer of that product that's responsible legally. McDonald's is legally responsible. They have a claim against Taylor farms for sending them E. coli contaminated onions. Just like GM would have a claim against somebody who sent them a bad break line.

intro: Everybody's got to 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 Ragushi for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule.

Don't eat poop. Don't eat poop.

Matt Regusci: Hello, hello, Francine. And hello, hello, Bill.

Bill Marler: Good morning from the bomb cyclone.

Matt Regusci: Are you having a bomb cyclone?

Bill Marler: We had one Tuesday night. I guess we're going to get another one this weekend. That's just, yeah, it was crazy. We had 99 percent of the time, the winds come from the South.

And this bomb cyclone kind of whirled around and all the air and the wind came from the east. And so it was crazy because like everywhere you looked, there were leaves and branches everywhere because the trees had been all leaning one way and all of a sudden the wind came the other way and our power was out for almost 24 hours.

Wow. Pretty exciting. Yeah.

Matt Regusci: Okay.

Well, thank you for coming on here again, Bill. I love that on LinkedIn. I reposted one of your articles. I'm sure there's a lot of people that repost your articles, but I may be the fastest. I love your blog. We repost stuff on food safety news all the time as well, but your blog, we get a little bit more of Your personality and it's pretty interesting. So yeah, I posted something about McDonald's and then you were like, yeah, I need to get back onto your podcast. Francine and I have an open invitation to you to come on board. We are talking about. We want to dive deep into one of these, or we want to talk about what's going on in general.

I think we're all in the decision that we want to talk about everything that's going on in general, because like I said to you, Bill, when you first came on, it feels like the industry in terms of a lot of amazing brands decided to throw their brands into a dumpster, put gasoline on it, and light a fricking match over the last six months.

And we keep referring back to Darren Detweiler's, what is going to be the major outbreak this year, because it always happens. He wrote early on, I think in February, and it wasn't one. This year's been unique. There's been like five. Francine and I were like, Should we dive deep into one of these five things?

And then we're like, let's just talk about all of them and where they're going.

Francine L Shaw: What's that? Which one would you pick?

Bill Marler: I don't know. And then I was on some TV show earlier this morning and they were listing the outbreaks and I said, Oh, you forgot one. And they're like, which one? And I said, well, it's, there's over a hundred high school kids and their parents who've gotten E. coli 015787 in St. Louis, outside St. Louis. From a caterer and they're like, I've never heard about that. And now I bet you guys haven't heard about that.

Matt Regusci: No.

Bill Marler: So yeah, no, it's crazy. Yeah. The owner of the catering company is denying their catering company was the source of the outbreak. And he's threatening that heads will roll.

And, and then over the last couple of days, it's shows that the common denominator between five different clusters of cases, common denominator is this guy's catering company salads. He's threatening to bring defamation suits against my clients who have filed lawsuits. And I was like, bring it on. Sue me, please.

But you know, I mean, I think Matt, one of the things Francine, I think said it earlier too, it's not just like some random small restaurant. It's like big brands. It's Boar's Head, McDonald's, Grimmway, which is a weird name to have for a company that just killed somebody. But that's like the largest carrot grower in the world.

Yes. And you look at those, the carrot brands that they bag, and those are, God, they're hugely popular with exactly the wrong skew of humanity. Little children like to eat those little carrots, or old boar's head. Could you really produce a food product that was more specifically designed to be eaten by old people, the liverwurst, you know, it's just been, it's really been crazy.

Well, you were talking about edibles, too.

Matt Regusci: You've been talking about your schedule before, since July, so you're been pretty busy, huh?

Bill Marler: Yeah, no, I mean, people who know me know that I work all the time anyway, but it's been really nuts since Boar's Head, I've been working pretty much 16 to 18 hour days. So, but yeah, I'm even, I'm a little tired, but that's, unfortunately it's just, there's just a lot to do and a lot of people to talk to and a lot of grief to talk to people about.

I mean, I've become really, Close with a guy, essentially my age. He just lost his wife to a 0157 infection. They were on vacation. They'd been married 47 years and he lost his wife. And he's just distraught primarily because like most men were incapable of doing things for ourselves. And he had a wife who like mine is like the solid human in the relationship. And I don't, I can't imagine what would happen if I lost my wife, it would just be devastating. And so I talked to this guy, I've talked to sons who fed their mother and father Boar's Head. They bought the product, they made the sandwich, they fed it to them and they're, they obviously didn't do it on purpose, but they feel like they killed their mom and they killed their dad.

I posted a note. I think you guys saw it on food safety news this morning. I deleted the name because I thought that would be more appropriate, but just read that. We did. I met my husband when he was in junior high. I've been in love with him ever since. And then I had to watch him die. Yeah. We all are going to die.

I get it. I think the thing that drives me the craziest about death in food cases is People live their entire lives and then all of a sudden they eat something and it kills them, or it kills their child, kills their spouse. It's just not the way it's supposed to be.

Matt Regusci: No, francine and I, we record an episode right before this, and that's going to air after this, where we read the letter.

Bill Marler: Yeah, that just breaks your heart. I always try to find some positive thing. It's been a little harder, maybe I'm just tired, but it reminds me of The Listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupe from 2011. I represented 33 families of people who died and we did little short videos of them and they let us put that up on Marla Clark Vimeo channel that people can look at.

I always urge companies to look at them because these are real people. We're now running out of World War II heroes, but I had, I think it was three or four clients who were World War II vets who had fought in Imojima or D Day, you know, heroes, purple hearts, came home, lived a life, and then ate a cantaloupe and died. What?

Matt Regusci: Right. Anyway. Lived through trench warfare and stuff like that and died eating a cantaloupe. Crazy. Anyway.

So the boar's head is wrapped up. We got that.

Bill Marler: Oh yeah. Boar's head's all over. It's the, we counted all the bodies and, and, uh, I'm deep in litigation with them and in the Eastern district of Virginia, which is affectionately known as the rocket docket because all trials have to occur within a year.

And so we have a conference call with the judge on Monday and they're just going to set a schedule that's lightning fast and brutal. And that's okay because that's how I like to roll.

Matt Regusci: So we were talking about that as well. That will be airing next week. It's fascinating. So 61 people sick. 60 people hospitalized and 10 deaths.

And we were like, but how many of those Francine was saying that can't possibly be the real number because so many people probably died and they just called it. What were you saying, Francine? Like

Francine L Shaw: natural causes.

Bill Marler: I mean, one of my clients who was 92 died. They thought she had died of cancer that she had.

And then, then they realized that she tested positive for listeria and then they looked back at the medical records and went, Oh, of course that's what it was. You know, you're absolutely right. And yeah, I think like for Salmonella, I think the statistic is like for every one counted, there's a 35 or 40 that are uncounted.

I think it's a little smaller, but it's 10 for listeria. But there's a lot of listeria that happens where, because it's really hard to culture out a stool. And so most of the people, the reason why you see 99. 9 percent of them hospitalized is usually it's because these folks are suffering from a meningitis, which obviously brings them to the hospital.

Yeah. There's a, you're missing a lot, but, but the other thing too, that's missing is a lot of this listeria cases never come forward because you come forward to make claims or file lawsuits. And we probably won't see. But half or even that of these cases, most of these people who died a nobody knows anything health departments don't call these people back and go, Hey, by the way, You're a whole genome sequence match to the Listeria outbreak link to Boar's head.

And health departments don't do that. I don't know if you could do that, but they don't.

Matt Regusci: So, Francine, where should we go next?

McDonald's?

Francine L Shaw: McDonald's.

Bill Marler: Yeah. McDonald's, I, it's not been on my radar since the early 90s. They had the first recorded well known 0157 case linked to undercooked hamburgers and 40 some odd people sick.

Oregon and Michigan, that got no coverage. I had a handful of E. coli cases linked to McDonald's in the 90s. But they've been, for the most part, hepatitis case here and there, the old worker. They were involved in the Cyclospora outbreak several years ago, from a supplier. But they've been pretty on the ball.

We just haven't seen, given that everybody eats at a McDonald's. Quite often, or most people do. So I think it's interesting. It was interesting to see how this one's playing out, but another supply chain problem.

Matt Regusci: Yeah. And so just for the people who don't know, the company implicated in this outbreak are Taylor Farms in a facility in Colorado for the diced onions, the little hamburgers, little tiny diced onions on them.

That was distributed through U. S. Foods to franchises of McDonald's in the Rocky Mountain and Midwest area. And so, yeah, Francine and I did an episode on this kind of talking about Taylor Farms and all these are companies with world class food safety programs. And it's what happened?

Francine L Shaw: So I have a question. It's just opinion based. So these companies all have a board of directors. In your opinion, should they have a food safety expert of some sort on those boards?

Bill Marler: I've sat on a not private company boards. I've been on several public company or university boards and things like that. State kind of boards.

Francine, that's a good question. I don't necessarily think that's like, A requirement, but I do think I do, I guess my thought is, is that a sitting on boards? I think it's more important who your CEO is or the president of your university and whether or not that you as a board and the president or the CEO have a culture that is not to, I know it's like food safety culture is becoming kind of cliche, but do they have people who have, you know, direct reporting abilities to the president and the board of directors and as well. And I think that's maybe, I would just hate to see a bunch of food safety professionals sitting on boards around the country. I'd rather have them in their jobs.

Francine L Shaw: No, I agree that. And maybe my question isn't. So my question became after looking at some of these boards with everybody being from finance.

Bill Marler: I think it's a really great help. They should have consumers on their boards. Hey, it's science. Don't poison me.

Matt Regusci: Yeah, that's interesting. The, but you did post it and I reposted and that's what ultimately you were like, I didn't get on your podcast was McDonald's has put up what, a hundred million dollars for marketing.

And you were like, well, how about put some money towards supplier food safety? And I couldn't help but thinking like, that makes sense for them to. Put money into the franchises, because it wasn't their fault. It was the supply chain issues fault. And so there's a lot of mom and pop businesses that are hurt, but the optics looks terrible.

Bill Marler: I don't know who, nobody calls me and asks for PR advice, because usually I'm in the position of whacking people's PR. But I thought it was. Odd the way McDonald's handled this thing from the get go, from a public relations point of view. They quickly posted a video of the CEO, but not once did the CEO go, Hey, geez.

I'm really sorry that our product that we take a lot of pride in poisoned and killed somebody. Just, they didn't say that. And I commented on that earlier. And then it was a couple of weeks later that they came out and said, we're really sorry to see this happen and I know the pushback is that, well, nobody wants to say they're sorry.

Cause they're going to get sued. Well, that's BS because McDonald's. is responsible. It is their fault that this outbreak happened. They are, and this goes back to the Jack in the Box days, and you guys might not remember this, but there was a question about whether or not a hamburger Is a product manufactured by the restaurant.

Like an automobile is a product manufactured by GM and the court had to make a decision that the hamburger in fact was a product, no different than an automobile. And it comes with a bunch of different component parts, less maybe than a car does, but in, if there's a defective product or defective component part of that product and something bad happens.

It's the manufacturer of that product that's responsible legally. McDonald's is legally responsible. They have a claim against Taylor Farms for sending them E. coli contaminated onions, just like GM would have a claim against somebody who sent them a bad brake line. But I just, I thought the whole beginning of this whole thing was odd where they didn't say anything about the customers.

And then they lost eight, 10 billion in stock value. And then they came out with, Hey, we're going to spend a hundred million dollars convincing people to come back and eat our quarter pounders with no real clear incentive or assurance that they're not going to get poisoned by the lettuce on the quarter pounders.

So I think that's the odd part. I could have seen them saying, we really need to do a better job. Um, With our supply chain, and we're going to invest in that as opposed to what I know is going on behind the scenes, which is we need to tighten our contracts with our supply chain that says that if something goes sideways, it's your fault.

There's no collaboration going on because really who's going to remember 10 years from now that this was a Taylor farms, onion outbreak? Nobody. Even this morning, they were asking me questions, they've raised the McDonald's. They didn't say anything. Oh, the Taylor Farms onions case.

Matt Regusci: That's a really good point.

And Taylor Farms has done a really good job of, they're the massive company that everybody in the industry knows exists, but everybody outside of the industry has no clue who they are.

Bill Marler: And like you said early that, or maybe it was Francine, I, but Taylor Farms, I know those people at Taylor Farms. I've been at conferences with them, I know they're good people, but it's a big operation and they got a lot to pay attention to, but they clearly could have done a better job because it's bad to have an outbreak.

Matt Regusci: Yeah,

Francine L Shaw: a couple of things. They always remember the brand. They never remember the supplier. If you think back to, was it Chi-Chi's?

Yes. A long time. Yeah. It's a bread and the onions. Nobody remembers that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I know. You did. Outside, right. But there was, but nobody remembers.

Bill Marler: Yeah.

Matt Regusci: Dr. Bob will tell you about it.

Bill Marler: The best quote I saw in the Chi-Chi's case, cause I was in the middle of that, the best quote was from Mike Osterholm and it was in some, can't remember if it was a CDC report or wherever it was, but he said they brought the onions and they put them in these five gallon buckets in the kitchens and then they never changed the water.

They just kept adding more of the green onions. And he said that they were creating hepatitis soup.

Francine L Shaw: Oh my god.

Matt Regusci: Yummy.

Francine L Shaw: Really?

Bill Marler: Yeah. Yeah. So, would you like some hepatitis soup with your salsa? That was a terrible outbreak. Five dead. I represented a couple of the families of the people who died and then the guy who had his liver transplant. So.

Francine L Shaw: What sent me on the research for the boards was whenever they did the, that it was the post about the marketing, the money they were investing in marketing. And it was like, so who makes these decisions? We're not going to talk about food safety budgets, but we're going to talk about the marketing budget.

And ultimately who's making these decisions and what kind of insight is going into that? Cause at least Chipotle had the mindset to say, okay, this is what we're going to do about food safety, along with the exuberant amount of money they spend on marketing. They did both, and that's what sent me on that.

Bill Marler: Look at Boar's Head did. They hired lots of people from Former government folks and food safety folks and scientists and they created this board and it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out over the course of the litigation that's going to go forward and then the criminal investigation that's likely going on behind the scenes that we don't know about and the office of inspector general going after FSIS, asking them tough questions. It's going to be, I think there's a real, going to be a real opportunity to peel back some layers so people can see. I know we're circling back to Boar's Head. We're supposed to stay on McDonald's, but we can also jump to carrots. So,

Matt Regusci: yeah. Well, before we go to McDonald's, before we leave McDonald's, Patrick Quaid from I was poisoned, do you know this guy?

Bill Marler: Yeah, I figured you would know him.

Matt Regusci: Yeah. You probably have a link in his database to find potential outbreaks. Boar's Head.

Bill Marler: No, actually I don't, but I did early on give him some ideas about how he could actually make his website more useful. And simply because I think the big data idea is great and somewhat helpful, but I had suggested that he focus on trying to get more people who are culture positive.

So there's a little bit more legitimacy. So knowing like incubation periods and stuff like that. So he's done some improvements on a site that has actually been useful, but not ethical to troll Facebook, Twitter, or other sites for potential clients. So that's an ethical no no.

Matt Regusci: What would that be like, uh, the digital version of chasing ambulances?

Bill Marler: Exactly.

Matt Regusci: Okay. Yeah, that's good. You have ethics, Bill. There's a lot of people in the industry that don't believe that.

Bill Marler: Lawyers, ethics? It's an oxymoron.

Matt Regusci: Yeah. Okay.

So here's some stats that he had just posted today. The cost of the food safety headlines, 2024 McDonald's edition, 72 hours of impact, 200 million plus monthly revenue loss, 160 million recovery spend, 13. 5 billion market value vanished.

By the numbers, 9. 5 percent traffic drop nationwide, 32 percent drop in outbreak region. So in the region at which the outbreaks were, 32 percent of the people didn't show up to the drive thru for their Big Mac. The stock dropped 7%.

That is crazy.

Francine L Shaw: And this is why we've invested all that money in marketing.

Matt Regusci: Touché.

Bill Marler: Well, maybe they just know they're going to own Taylor Farms now, so they can just have their own supply chain.

Matt Regusci: Wow. Okay.

Well, now that we're talking about supply chain. Grimmway. This is a company I know very well as well. I helped them with their food safety program back when they first started in the field. Not in the facility side, but on the field side of it.

And they invest a lot of money in field food safety. They're organic as well. Grimmway has CalOrganic as well. So I was really surprised at this because they really do focus a lot on food safety and I was surprised on how widespread this outbreak was, meaning all of these different brands, it wasn't like it was one brand or like just baby carrots.

It's like a whole bunch of stuff.

And I, I'm just really curious, Bill, what your thoughts are on this. This is big.

Bill Marler: Yeah. What's interesting too, is That it is small compared to how many products were out there. And to me, it's a little perplexing how widespread the illnesses are, but how small it is, and you don't know for sure, but the fact is that last reported illness was mid October and yeah, there's always a lag and you're going to, that number is going to go up, but I'm a little perplexed by how you have such a widespread product.

I just would have expected more illnesses, you know, and maybe that's, that's not the question you're asking me, but that's something that I sort of been, you know, as I've been talking to more and more people who have been sick and I filed a couple of lawsuits, but I, I just been a little perplexed that it wasn't more people, which is good. How does a company, it's just going to be interesting as we dig into the litigations to see if we can find out why this happened. And it's to your point,

Matt Regusci: it's right now, 39 cases, 15 hospitalizations and one death in 18 States for E. coli generally it's a hundred people got sick from E. coli and then one death. And you usually are seeing like, okay, it was this brand of lettuce in this bag, these lot. And I don't know if Grimmway just over abundance of caution, because again, they have a really good food safety program. They were just like, you know what? Let's recall everything, right?

Like maybe they just went super high and then call everything back and try to keep anybody else from getting sick. But yeah, every brand they have, they recalled.

Bill Marler: But it's also, it's so geographically spread of the illnesses. So yeah, it's an interesting thing.

But what's your speculation on, obviously it's, it's a somewhat more novel strain of shiga toxin producing E. coli. There was a death, maybe there are more people who are sick, but they didn't get as severely sick to seek medical attention to get a stool culture too. So there, I don't know if, if what we're seeing is. a function of the pathogen as well. So, but did you have any guys, what are your thoughts about how it got?

Matt Regusci: Well, so Grimmway and Bolthouse basically own a, a whole region at which they grow these carrots. I don't know if you've seen this in the San Joaquin Valley. Francine and I were talking about this off air, what this could be like, is also cal organic. So some sort of There's obviously a systemic issue. So if this systemic issue happened at the field level, then it would be very difficult for the facility to get rid of it.

You couldn't get rid of it. So it probably is something like that. But then I don't know if you've ever seen the process of making baby carrots. It's basically all the carrots at which they can't sell perfect, whole, beautiful carrots that you would see in a bag. Right. They cut them into little pieces.

They throw them into Basically like a, it looks like a washing machine or a dryer, and then they tumble it like a rock tumbler. And that's how you make baby carrots. In that process, they're dumping those things full of chlorine and stuff. That's why when you open up the bag, you smell chlorine for baby carrots, right?

While it's not a 5 log reduction kill step, it's pretty good at getting rid of E. coli. So I just think there's something wrong, like a systemic issue. Because that's all I can think about with how widespread this outbreak is in terms of days. They must have figured this would happen in the field. They probably tested something in the field.

This was this product that we spread over these thousand acres and we don't know what carrots are contaminated and what aren't. And so we're going to recall everything because we know that's all I can think about. Because if that is the case, it really isn't a facility issue. This wasn't some sort of recirculated water or a dunk tank that something went wrong with.

Because they get rid of that. And you would know the lot at which that Contaminate that product. So just, all I could think about is a systemic issue in the field. That's all I could think.

Bill Marler: Yeah, no, no, it's, it's a, it's a kind of a, I'm trying to think of a similar outbreak that is applicable and I'd really, I was struggling to think.

So with the, if you're thinking about it, Chi Chi's was like one component of the bigger problem. Cause they had like Tennessee or Kentucky or somewhere. It was someone, another cluster, there were clusters of these cases. You know, in various places, so I'm not quite sure. I don't know.

Matt Regusci: Another thing would be like the spinach outbreaks and stuff like that, or the bagged salad outbreaks where you have a systemic issue at the field level at which the facility cannot get rid of the product.

It tends to be a systemic issue in the field. And then the facility just can't get rid of it because it's, there's no five log reduction in the facility. Listeria is 100 percent of facility issue.

Bill Marler: No, no, that's it. That's yeah. See, I learned stuff hanging out with you guys.

Matt Regusci: Yeah. I, and, and that's all I can, and we'll find out more. I'm sure I, if, if hopefully Grimmway will be open with their findings in some place, like a conference or something like that, but yeah. All right. So Grimmway and then what else? So that's it, right? That's all the. It's all the major brands in and out right now.

Bill Marler: Between my lack of sleep, I've been creative. I did an op ed the other day. I mean, it was yesterday. I can't remember about what I'm seeing is this undercooking of hamburger problem. In July, there was an outbreak up in Kalispell, Montana for the most part. 22 people sick, two dead, six kids with acute kidney failure, all in Kalispell over essentially a Fourth of July weekend.

I All of them, common denominator, Wagyu, beef, ground beef. They did find beef that tested positive, hamburger leftover that tested positive. And all these people scattered all over the country. I've got clients in Virginia, Florida, Arizona, Canada. They all went there. Vacation, boom, they took off. And every single one of them said, you know, nobody asked me how to, I wanted my hamburger or if they did, you know, I just said, well, however you want to cook it, you know, and, and then now we're seeing this cluster of cases in Minnesota at 15, 17 people sick, but a recall, I kind of wonder.

That's used to be my core and core bread and butter was E. coli cases like the hamburger and that's disappeared. And I wonder if restaurants are taking their eye off the ball that meat supply has been so problem free that it's people who justify not getting certain vaccines. Because last time you heard of a polio outbreak or whooping cough, why take the risk of getting a vaccine?

Plus, I don't like the pokey thing. And I just wonder sometimes if. We need to be reminded that, yeah, the beef industry has done a really good job of, and USDA has done a really good job of making our meat supply, or at least our red meat supply safer, and I wonder if restaurants are taking their eye off the ball, so.

Francine L Shaw: You mean Wagyu beef can make you sick?

Bill Marler: Yeah, grass fed Wagyu beef, so really expensive stuff can still poison you.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah, I think maybe, or maybe it was, I read it somewhere else, but I actually commented on that on LinkedIn. I think it might've been yesterday. I grew up eating rare hamburgers. It's just the way my mother prepared them.

I'm, thank God I'm still alive. The risks that I may take eating a rare hamburger is not of them. It just is not something that I do. The fact that there are restaurants out there that still think that it is okay to serve this just boggles my mind.

Bill Marler: There's going to be a bunch of restaurants that could put out a business in Kalispell, Montana.

You know,

Francine L Shaw: I would imagine. So

Bill Marler: one of the restaurants has no insurance, one restaurant, two people who died and they have a million dollars of insurance. If it wasn't so fricking sad. Yeah. These kids with HUS wasting lifetime complications. The grinding operation and I got,

I was talking to the lawyer for the cattle company that supplied the Wagyu beef and he was like, well, why are you suing us?

Because E. coli is normal in cows. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's true, but you might not remember this, but the people who were buying the product from you at the restaurants were buying your product. And yes, you know, the cow was natural occurring bacterium, but you sent the cow to the slaughter facility, killed him and ground it.

And then you picked up the product and had your name on it and you sold it to the grocery store. And that means that you're what's called the ostensible manufacturer and you're strictly liable under the law. Just like co packers, when a restaurant or a grocery store chain puts their name on a co packed bag, the grocery store is considered to be, under the law, the manufacturer of that product, so.

Matt Regusci: So if, um, going back to this brand, because, uh, They don't run their own meatpacking facility, right? They're using this packing facility. I mean, they're using this processing facility because it's a USDA meatpacking plant, which we've learned obviously are super safe, Bill, right? Every, because they have a USDA person there, should be no E. coli could possibly be in this thing. Well, stamp it. It's good. It's good to go. So that sucks because they don't control that part of the product. If they had put on their packaging. You need to cook this to X degree temperature in order for X amount of time in order to kill off the E. coli or potential E. coli. If they had put that on their packaging, would that make a difference or no?

Bill Marler: It does on the margins and same thing with the signage on restaurants put on their signage, on their menus, on the margins, it helps. But on the manufacturing side of it, the manufacturing side of the beef stuff, because E. coli 0157 is a per se adulterant, it's not supposed to be in the supply chain, period. It just can't be there. And so that the manufacturer, even though they put, Oh, you got to cook it on it. It should never have been there to begin with. So it was a defective product from the get go. The restaurants, too, have a contributory fault.

But I'll give you an example. Let's just say. Matt, you and Francine and I go to a restaurant and we all say, heck, to the wind, let's all have medium hamburgers. And we all get sick. And of course, no jury's going to give me money because everybody hates lawyers, but they have an effective thing. I was like, the three of you should have known better, right?

Yeah, we cooked it, but we cooked it the way you wanted it to be cooked. Same set of facts, but say there's three 13 year olds go into a restaurant. And they say, how do you want your hamburger? They go, I don't know, medium. I don't, I don't know. They're not going to be able to go, Oh, Hey kid, you saw that sign.

So we're not at fault. You did it yourself. And so it's all dependent on contributory fault is all dependent on the facts. Those things are not as effective as people would like them to be. And it'd just be so much simpler to use a thermometer.

Francine L Shaw: Calibrated thermometer. Yeah.

Bill Marler: Yes. Calibrated one. Hey, speaking of calibrated thermometers, my kids gave me this digital one that it's, you got an app, it's called a meater, meater, M E A T E R.

It seems pretty cool. Do you guys have any sense of how accurate they are? Cause I think my cooking skills have really increased because I've been using it to cook stuff on the grill and like it's not as burnt and dry as it used to be.

Francine L Shaw: Nice! If you want to calibrate it,

Matt Regusci: get ice water and put it in there and if it's 32 degrees you'll know it's calibrated.

You're good.

Francine L Shaw: Okay. Make sure it doesn't touch the bottom or the sides, don't shove it all the way down in there. You're welcome.

Bill Marler: I'd learn.

Francine L Shaw: Okay.

Bill Marler: All right, cool. I see. I learned another thing today from you guys.

Matt Regusci: There you go.

Well, we want to be respectful of your time. And is there anything you want to add before we

Bill Marler: appreciate what you guys do really do.

And thanks for letting me ramble on. I think we all just need to pay attention to what's been going on the last six months and sort of, I always want to leave people with hope and that's hard for a lawyer to do because sometimes we appear, we're always focused on the bad stuff. We know people are capable of doing a better job.

Yes. Things can go sideways. And, and I won't even say for the most part, every single outbreak I've ever been involved in, there's usually something that happened earlier that could have prevented an outbreak. And it's really just a matter of, do they have professionals like you two helping them visualize what could happen and to point things out.

I was getting interviewed. I think it was yesterday or the day before by some restaurant magazine. And he was really pushing on the sort of whole ambulance chaser thing. And that these are just mistakes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, let me just tell a couple of my oldies, but goodies.

I said, Jack in the box knew that Washington state had an increased cook temp to one 55 and they decided to ignore it because all of their other restaurants were in states that had 140 degree temperature and to change that they would have had to increase their cook time 15 seconds. And they didn't want to do that. So, and the outbreak blew up and then Odwalla, uh, they tried to sell their juice to the U S army.

And the army said, your juice is not fit for human consumption. So what'd Odwalla do? They kept selling it to pregnant women and little kids. So yeah, you could say Bill Marler's an ambulance chaser, but it's, these companies need to be held accountable and responsible. You know, I've seen that. Boar's Head.

Matt Regusci: I've seen both sides of you, Bill.

And when I say both sides of you, what I mean is it's the same thing. You have the same personality. You want to help people, okay? And you have two different sides, right? You have the side of you want to help the industry get better. And I, and I've seen that side of you and you also want to help the victims get what they deserve.

Bill Marler: Right.

Matt Regusci: And when you have that hat on, you are very scary to the industry because you are a fricking pit bull, but you're an advocate pit bull for the consumers, for your clients, which is your job. You do not have to go to conferences and talk about this stuff. You not have to be on brand scenes in my podcast talking about this.

Bill Marler: I learned new things today from you guys. I'm like, I'm a lifelong learner.

Matt Regusci: Yeah, but so you do, you're very passionate about this and that passion is what I mean by both sides. That passion goes both ways. You have a passion to make the industry better and you have a passion for your clients. That is scary to the industry.

It truly is, but it should be. That's what your job is supposed to be.

Francine L Shaw: But in all fairness, that's where the accountability comes from because if there's nobody out there doing that, where does the accountability come from? Because they're not being held accountable anywhere else.

Matt Regusci: Well, from FSIS. Francine.

Oh yeah. Okay.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah. Okay. .

Matt Regusci: Oh, sorry. No, just kidding. That's really sad.

Francine L Shaw: Okay. Just like the FDA, we wanted to talk about the job cutting, but we'll have to save that for, yeah, we'll save that for another time.

Bill Marler: Did you guys ever get T-shirts? My F Get the F out of the FDA T-shirts. Yes. I have a box that I it's in storage.

I sent a box to AFDO. I was going to give a talk. So I sent a box. I think it was a hundred t shirts to give out. They sent it back because they didn't want to give them out as swag. And then the funny part was I'm giving my was in Virginia or someplace, and I was looking out in the audience and the bright color blue kind of pops.

And you can see there were like a handful of people with the shirt on with their coat over it. It was hilarious. So,

Matt Regusci: well, if you're giving them away, I'll take another one.

Bill Marler: Yeah, no, I got some, but to keep up the good work, have a great Well cooked, safe Thanksgiving, Matt. I know with your 27 children, it'll be a wild event, so we're going to have a bunch of people over ourselves.

There's a ton of people who, our families are far away. And so we try to feed them and. My brother's coming over to cook the turkey outside and within the pot where you put peanut oil and stuff. So I'm going to make him be way far away from the house because I'm a physical family. So, but anyway, all right guys.

Well, okay. Well on that note, don't eat poop. Don't eat poop. Take care. Enjoy your Thanksgiving. Good to see you Francine and uh, you too Matt. So All right. Take care. Bye bye.

Francine L Shaw: Have a nice holiday.