Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

DEP E119(2)
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[00:00:00] Matt Regusci: And they could be amazing farmers and create amazing quality product, but you don't know. There's salmonella on it. You don't know if there's listeria on it. You can't taste it, you can't see it, you can't smell it. It's invisible to the naked eye, but not invisible to human body system. And just like that too.

Three, four generation family grower goes outta business.

[00:00:31] 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 Sci for a deep dive. A food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't. Eat poop.

Don't eat poop.

[00:00:57] Matt Regusci: Hello? Hello, sister.

[00:00:58] Francine L Shaw: Hey Matt. [00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Matt Regusci: We got lots of news today. I know. Crazy. There are so many outbreaks happening right now. We could literally change this to a daily news show or not maybe change this format, but we could probably have a morning show every single morning. That was just a news show.

You and I just talk about the news every morning for like 15, 20 minutes just to talk about all the crap that's happening at fruit safety every single day.

[00:01:27] Francine L Shaw: So what time does Food Safety News update, or does it update throughout the day?

That's a good question. I don't know, because what we could do is 30 minutes after Food Safety News is released, we could just talk for 15 minutes about the outbreaks.

We totally could.

[00:01:50] Matt Regusci: We could, or we could just change food safety news to make sure everything, we could just change food safety news, like we have the power to do that. Hey, bill, [00:02:00] why don't we have all the articles update like five o'clock in the morning? Francine and I will do a show on it and just talk about everything that's happening and all the updates that you're doing.

[00:02:08] Francine L Shaw: You're not getting me up.

[00:02:11] Matt Regusci: No, no. Five

o'clock in the morning my time. Should be seven o'clock in the morning your time.

[00:02:16] Francine L Shaw: Matt's a morning person.

[00:02:17] Matt Regusci: I'm not. That is true. When we're at conferences now that I don't drink, it's nine o'clock at night. I'm like, f are you ready to go? Do we need to be here longer?

Yes, Matt, it's a conference. The party's just started at 8 45. What

[00:02:31] Francine L Shaw: The network, Matt, we have to network. Networking at 6:00 AM

[00:02:37] Matt Regusci: How much younger are you than I am now? What are you doing? Yes. No, we need to go out. Okay, so, but I can do it for food safety news.

You could do it for food safety news. What's crazy is, okay, so I'd love the format of our show An hour, what About a half hour to an hour, depending upon interviews tend to take longer than our normal show.

Generally. Our normal show is [00:03:00] around a half hour to 45 minutes long. It's really hard to keep track of all the outbreaks as they go through because we're a topical show. But man, there is so much stuff that is happening all the time. All the time. And this used to never get covered by news. Now it actually is getting covered by news.

I know we use food safety news as our source most of the time, but like it gets covered now by CNN. It gets covered now by so many different news sources because consumers are starting to wake up and going like. Hey, there's a lot of stuff going on in our food supply.

[00:03:35] Francine L Shaw: What? And they wanna know, there was a time where they were just oblivious and they had no idea.

Consumers,

[00:03:39] Matt Regusci: yeah. We have the safest food system in the world, had been crammed down their throat for a generation by politicians and now they're waking up going, you know what? Maybe politicians lie. That was like a, like a paradigm shift or something like that. No, politicians have always lied about coming to the realization that they've been lying about our food.

[00:03:58] Francine L Shaw: Sometimes it's just [00:04:00] omission.

[00:04:00] Matt Regusci: Yes.

[00:04:01] Francine L Shaw: Don't tell you everything.

[00:04:04] Matt Regusci: I talk to my kids about all the time about making sure you get your news from a bunch of different sources because every news source is biased and they're like, well, every news source isn't biased. Your show isn't biased. I said, I. BS. Our show is 100% biased.

Just in the editorial process alone. Francine and I are biased because we pick the things that we know our audience is going to like to listen to, and sometimes we pick the things that we know are gonna challenge our audience, but we know that when we pick our stuff, the editorial process alone is a bias.

And you're absolutely right. Francine omission is a bias. Mm-hmm.

[00:04:45] Francine L Shaw: And we do, we pick the things that we, like, you or I, or the

things that we know are what kind of podcast will we be if we didn't, we resonate with our audience. That's 100% what we do.

[00:04:58] Matt Regusci: Boring. That would be what our podcast is. And

[00:04:59] Francine L Shaw: our [00:05:00] opinions are our opinions, which, yes,

[00:05:03] Matt Regusci: yes.

And sometimes Francine will pick an article that will be challenging to me like it. Lead in tampons. That was not my favorite episode. That was so fun. And sometimes I'll pick something like, I know Francine and that this is not gonna be your favorite thing to talk about, but I want to talk about it just because I know it's not gonna be your favorite thing to talk about.

That's why I really think that this platform with you and I both on it is good because it challenges each other too. Alright. Wow. Today we're gonna be talking about something that normally does not happen. You and I joke all the time that the safest restaurant to eat at is the one that just

ha their health inspector by the health inspector and they reopen.

Yeah, that's generally the same as place to eat. Because they're like,

oh shoot, we actually really need abide by all these things. Everybody gets retrained up and every the place gets spotlessly cleaned and then that. So it's a great place to eat. [00:06:00] 'cause everybody knows, oh, there's ramifications to not doing this stuff.

Generally the safest farm to eat at. From, or byproduct from is the one that had an outbreak too, because if they're still in business after a major outbreak, generally they need to clean up their actions and get things done so that they don't lose a bunch of money between fines, loss of product, and lawsuits.

But today you and I are gonna talk about something that isn't that way. What the hell is going on at Bedner growers?

[00:06:39] Francine L Shaw: It is creakiness. Ew. Is

cucumbers always sell? No, because you have a cucumber outbreak. Two years in a row.

[00:06:51] Matt Regusci: Two years in a row. Actually, not even two years in a row. A cucumber outbreak last fall or last summer.

I guess it would be close to two years in a row. [00:07:00] So right now. There is an outbreak of salmonella that the FDA has traced back to Bedner farms. And so the FDA announcement, I'm looking at the FDA page right now. We got the update from food safety News. Thank you Coral Beach for the article there and the other authors there that are on the news desk, but bedner growers.

Is voluntarily recalling cucumbers sold at Benner's Farm Fresh Market between April 29th and 2025 and May 14th, 2025 because they have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella. So the FDA has traced back this and then. Last year outbreak in June, 2024, the FDA and CDC in collaboration with state and local partners investigated a multi-state outbreak of salmonella with infections of 551 illnesses in 34 states.

This was last [00:08:00] June. Their update was in August. So they trace back this from that outbreak in June. Laboratory epidemiologists and trace back data have determined that the cucumbers from Bedner growers of Boyton Beach, Florida, and Thomas Produce company of Botta Raton, Florida are likely sources of the illness of this outbreak.

However, these growers do not account for all the illnesses of the outbreak of all the 551, so. What is going on a, on those fields in Florida and what is going on with Bedner Farms that they were tied to this outbreak last year, and we've learned that the FDA does not name names unless they have really gotten this back to that organization because that whole entire lettuce salad thing that happened, the FDA knew who that was, but the outbreak was done and they decided not to list it.

So. Yeah, so this outbreak, they're [00:09:00] saying not all the victims might have come from this of salmonella. The 550 ones came to Bedner growers from Boynton Beach, but enough of them to get listed. And then right now they're saying that Bedner Farms is voluntarily recalling their cucumbers that were sent out from April 29th to May 14th, 2025.

Call. Outbreak. So on food Safety News on May 20th, Dan Flynn wrote this article where it says The whole cucumbers grown by Bedner Growers Inc. And distributed by Fresh Start Produce are linked to a multi-state outbreak of salmonella in several states. That began on April 29th. Bedner Growers of Boynton Beach is one of the growers linked to last year's outbreak of salmonella, which infected 551 people in 34 states.

The Center of Disease Control and Prevention, CDC and the [00:10:00] FDA and state and local health officials and regulatory officials are collecting different types of data to investigate the new multi-state salmonella outbreak, the CDC advises businesses not to sell or service. Whole cucumbers grown by bedner growers and distributed by fresh star produce between April 29th and May 19th.

While the investigation is ongoing. Anyone with the whole cucumbers. In their home, who cannot tell where they came from should throw them out. So if you have opportunity,

[00:10:30] Francine L Shaw: so they already listing the grocery stores and whatnot from where they came from. 'cause those are places where they're sure that these establishments, retail establishments have sold them.

So I go to the grocery store and there's all these two cumbers in the produce owl. You don't know where they were grown. You wanna be over where they were grown? Nope. You put you a cover, you take it home and you don't know till you get sick. It was one of Bedner cucumbers. I tell somebody that eats it and gets sick and it's, oh yeah, we got our cucumbers from [00:11:00] Bedner.

You know what I mean? That's how they end up adding establishments to the list one at a time.

[00:11:07] Matt Regusci: I am proud of the FDA for getting this done so quickly, so people started getting sick. On different cruise ships illnesses started from April 20, April 2nd to April 28th of the 23 people with information available.

'cause we know a lot of people get sick and don't say anything or do anything because they just think it's a 24 hour flu or whatever. Nine have been hospitalized with no deaths reported, and so this happened in April and they got this out in May. That whole entire epidemiology process is, it takes forever to do so.

They were able to get this figured out pretty quickly. Maybe Bedner growers was on their hit list. Maybe they just went over there and started taking samples. I don't know, but like, well, crazy

[00:11:52] Francine L Shaw: cruise ships, they were sick on cruise ships.

[00:11:55] Matt Regusci: Yeah, some of the initial ones were sick on cruise ships.

[00:11:59] Francine L Shaw: They don't play.[00:12:00]

[00:12:01] Matt Regusci: Now they don't. They do not play. They were probably freaking out thinking they had a neurovirus outbreak going on. You're talking about an industry.

Oh my gosh, yeah. Yeah. So if you want to go through to this article on food safety news, you can actually see like the PulseNet system, health inspectors use PulseNet system to identify illnesses that may be part of the outbreak.

Uh, people reported buying and eating cucumbers from various locations, including grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, and cruise ships. FDA's trace back investigation identified bedner growers as the common cucumber grower in all the outbreaks. So how epidemiology works, for those of you who don't know, is people get sick, okay?

And so the FDA or the CDC starts going, okay? What you need to do is fill out this form. What have you eaten over the last week? Two weeks, month, year, and you start naming off all the things that you ate, which is very hard to do, right? Because who remembers what you ate like [00:13:00] yesterday, let alone a week ago?

Salmonella, the incubation period can be pretty quick compared to listeria, but still you need to know like what you ate. It's not generally what you just last ate, right? It's what you ate yesterday or the day before yesterday or the day before that. For salmonella or listeria, it could be, what did you eat six weeks ago?

So the FDA is like going, okay, what did you eat over, over last week for salmonella? And where did you eat them? What did you buy? And you have to list it all out. So if you went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of groceries and you ate cucumber with salt on it two days ago, then that's something you would list off.

And so then what the FDA does is says, okay, this person has salmonella each. They ate all these things and one of the things that they ate was a cucumber and this other person got sick from salmonella. They ate all these things, but they also ate a cucumber. Another person got sick and cucumber, cucumber, cucumber.

So they figure out, okay, the common thing that all of these 20 something people or 551 people like last time [00:14:00] outbreak was cucumbers. Okay. So it's most likely the cucumber. So then they go to the places at which these people bought them and said, what cucumbers were on your shelf that, that they were able to purchase on these days when they went to the grocery store?

And then they go, okay, so I. These cucumbers link back to this distribution center or marketing company like Fresh Star Produce. So then they go to Fresh Star Produce and they say Fresh Star produce. What cucumbers did you sell to these grocery stores? They may have had four different growers, five different growers, and, but all of them lined up to that one grower Bedner Farms.

And they go, okay, that probably came to Bedner Farms. And so then the FDA goes, okay, now I need to go in. Start doing the investigations on this as well. So the CDC and the FDA worked together on this epidemiology process. That takes time. That takes a lot of time. So for the FDA, to actually get this out pretty quickly is when I say quickly, it was still weeks.

And that's where [00:15:00] Andy Kennedy and I have talked about this on the show. That's what I used to do was consult for FISMA 2 0 4, where we're trying to minimize that timeline by using information and data to make this go faster.

But generally. You had an outbreak with salmonella last year. You changed your farming practices if you're still in business, so you don't get salmonella again.

What the heck is going on? Should be listeria. I just kidding.

[00:15:28] Francine L Shaw: Okay. It wouldn't be two years in a row. I used to joke, the only way I would know what I ate was my travel receipts. What do you do now that you don't travel as much? I would have no idea.

[00:15:41] Matt Regusci: No

[00:15:41] Francine L Shaw: idea.

[00:15:42] Matt Regusci: Yeah. And so cucumbers could be in a lot of things, right?

Because cucumbers could be in different salads. And so you have to remember like you had a salad. Okay, so what was in that salad? And so then like last week's episode, you talked about even the restaurant didn't know if there was iceberg lettuce in it, right? In this salad. So now [00:16:00] you have to think like what type of lettuce.

Products were in that salad that then could be used for the CDC to then link that back to this particular grower. Like in a restaurant, you don't really know all the stuff that's in that

[00:16:14] Francine L Shaw: well, and then talk about the supply chain because they didn't get their lettuce from a first supplier

[00:16:19] Matt Regusci: they went through.

So then they would be like, oh, it was from US Foods or Cisco, because they would say That's where my approved supplier was. But the manager would have to be able to go, oh, actually that particular day. We ran out of our mixed lettuce greens from Cisco or US Foods generally, or those, or Gordon or whoever their food service supplier is.

So we went to Giant down the street and picked up a bunch of bagged lettuces. This is the type of stuff that gets very complicated on that epidemiology study because they threw those backs out and put 'em in the box like we talked about last week, and so they don't have the bags. They don't have, did they keep the receipt from Giant that then Giant could

[00:16:59] Francine L Shaw: [00:17:00] trace back what?

That I think contaminated at Giant. Did they get contaminated in the car? Did they get contaminated in the restaurant? Where did they get contaminated? Who knows? Because now we broke the supply chain. And who's at fault? Who knows where? Contaminated, but I'm sick.

[00:17:16] Matt Regusci: Okay, so where does Salmonella come from on a farm that is big enough to people are like birds.

Well. Yes, that's a potential, but generally not. 'cause birds aren't, unless you have, so when we do food safety audits in a field, we're not looking like, did a finch fly across the field? No. Finch is fly across fields all the time. That's not a problem at all. Could be a potential problem for that particular product that the finch decided to poop on.

But generally, you're not going to have a systemic issue that is going to then create a huge outbreak, a multi-state outbreak. Birds can be an issue if you have a flock of birds on that field or in [00:18:00] your reservoir right next to you, that then flies in to the field and eats a bunch of products, and now you have a potential systemic issue.

A lot of birds pooping on a lot of things, but that's generally not what we're talking about when you have it two times in a row. So where could the salmonella come from? The salmonella could come from the. Reservoir or the watering system, if they have a bunch of issues in, that could be one thing. The salmonella could also come from any fertilizer that they're putting onto their product, so water can get on the field.

For cucumbers, generally from the like it depends on how they grow the water, how they apply the water. Are they doing an overhead system or are they doing it like through tape in the field? If they're doing it through tape in the field, generally salmonella, unless there's a lot of it. That can get sucked up in the roots and go into the product, then that tends to not be the issue.

But fertilizer could be the issue. Are they using organic fertilizer and [00:19:00] there's salmonella in this? Are they getting it from a place that is created some sort of salmonella super bug? So I was at a a conference one time and the fertilizer company was talking about how if they get salmonella. They kill 99.9% of the salmonella, but not 100% of the salmonella that 0.1% of the salmonella could become a super salmonella.

Now, their heating treatment might not kill all that salmonella because now they've created a form of salmonella that can live in a heating treatment. It's just like a superbug at a hospital where you're super sanitized and you kill almost all the bacteria except for one bacteria that ends up eating up somebody's skin and now there's like no antibiotic treatment for this superbug or like aids.

So people who have taken AIDS medicine, but they don't take their aid medicine or their HIV medicine consistently, well, they kill most of the HIV, but [00:20:00] then they create a form of HIV that is then. Resistant to that HIV medicine, same thing we see with antibiotics, which is why people don't take antibiotics for everything anymore because you can create a bacteria pathogen that now the antibiotics doesn't work on.

So that's another way that this could be happening. There's some definite systemic issue on this farm that salmonella just keeps coming back and

[00:20:26] Francine L Shaw: that re the machinery. Remember that doll? Where they looked and they couldn't figure out what was causing it. Yes. And then he was being moved from one farm to another farm and finally it was like they brought that machine into the warehouse and they tore it apart piece by piece.

And they found it in the machine. Yes. Isn't that was explained to us.

[00:20:46] Matt Regusci: Yes. And it was

[00:20:47] Francine L Shaw: the machine that was causing the problem.

[00:20:49] Matt Regusci: Yes. That was a fascinating presentation.

[00:20:53] Francine L Shaw: That is one of the most fascinating presentations I think I've ever heard.

[00:20:57] Matt Regusci: Yes,

[00:20:58] Francine L Shaw: yes.

[00:20:59] Matt Regusci: It was [00:21:00] like listening to a crime scene investigator trying to figure out who murdered who by going through and just listing off all the potential details.

And so this risk, something's gonna happen on this farm if this farm continues to survive, which I hope they do. It's a family farm, but the day of gotta go through and figure out what is going on that this issue keeps coming back. And it could be, you're right, it could be the machinery. It could be like they're harvesting practices.

What are they using to harvest these products? What are all the equipment being used? Man?

[00:21:35] Francine L Shaw: Well, and I hope that they're smart enough to have asked for help

[00:21:42] Matt Regusci: if they survive two outbreaks in a row. Most don't survive one, right? Well,

[00:21:49] Francine L Shaw: it's in Bill's paper.

[00:21:51] Matt Regusci: Publication. Well, yeah. And all their customers. So every single customer of theirs that are gonna be packing, growing, packing.

[00:22:00] Um, so in, in on the produce side, there's like grower packers and shippers. Some of them do all three, right? But some of them only do one or two, or just one or two or three. So if you're selling your product to a shipper that is then going to put their logo on your product, who's going to wanna do this?

This is a huge risk and for it to go number three, who's going to do that? Who's gonna be like, you know what?

[00:22:30] Francine L Shaw: Well, yeah,

[00:22:30] Matt Regusci: the end user the first time really sucked. The second time, let's give you third time as a charm. Yeah. So I don't know. And I is, the problem with our industry too, is trying to get to the bottom of what the issue is, or was, I should say.

Or is, 'cause it could still be there is really hard because everybody locks up because of lawsuits, which makes sense, but then you don't really get to figure out how it happened. So [00:23:00] here's one part of their thing. It says FDA inspected Bedner Farms, Inc. On April of 2025 as a follow-up of previous outbreak.

During that inspection, environmental samples were collected. One of the environmental samples was identified as the outbreak strain of salmonella. Based on the timing of the illness, this outbreak, the CDC and FDA, were concerned that the contaminated cucumbers may still be within the shelf life. So they went out and took environmental samples.

And so, but we don't know what environmental samples they took. Was it environmental samples of the machines? Uh, the harvesting equipment was environmental samples, like of the actual environment, like the soil or the water or the actual product. It didn't say. Product sampling. So I'm guessing it wasn't the product.

So it's on the farm somewhere, but they don't say where. Yeah. Wow. It's sad. It's sad 'cause every food safety [00:24:00] outbreak, what is it? Darren Dewi says Every food safety outbreak is preventable.

[00:24:06] Francine L Shaw: Well, they all are. All, they all are foreign illnesses are are preventable. You get 'em from eating something that's contaminated.

Are we ever gonna eliminate all of them? No. But they're all preventable. Yes. All preventable. One level or another, every single one of them is preventable.

[00:24:27] Matt Regusci: Yeah. So it's crazy. So if you have cucumbers and you don't know where they came from, you might not want to eat it. See, as of this, so this was, this article is as of May 20th.

So probably by the time this comes out we'll be in June. By then, it's probably fine. But right now

[00:24:53] Francine L Shaw: I always wonder about like, so you know, some of these are in storage.

[00:24:59] Matt Regusci: Yeah. [00:25:00] Cucumber shelf life though isn't that long. This

[00:25:02] Francine L Shaw: time the year, probably not as many as other times a year, but some in cold storage.

[00:25:12] Matt Regusci: So Cucumber shelf life is one to two weeks. So by the time this comes out, one of those products that once you cut, unless you pickle them, which is why we have pickles, right? Pickle cucumbers, or you freeze them. But even if when you freeze 'em, the quality of the cucumber isn't the same as a fresh cucumber.

So cucumber shelf life is pretty short, which is why they wrap 'em in plastic. To try to extend the shelf life of them. So a lot of like extension of shelf life type of products out there that are designed to try to extend the shelf life of products. A lot of times they're used for cucumbers, they're used for berries, they're used for things that are really short shelf life.

Trying to extend it, the shelf life of those products. It's always, every outbreak is very sad, but it, for me, it's just [00:26:00] growing up. Farming community and working with farmers almost my whole entire life, actually my whole entire life. Still work with farmers. Not as much as I used to, but I still work with farmers pretty frequently.

It just saddens me 'cause they're not trying to hurt anybody, you know? They're just trying to pass their, most of 'em are trying to pass their farm off to the next. Child or kiddo, just like their parents did to them, and the grandparents did to them, and the great grandparents did to their kids, and, but it's a completely different world now.

[00:26:41] Francine L Shaw: Most of these happened from honest mistakes or legitimate mistakes, or from just ignorance. People didn't know they were doing something wrong or they tried to save money and took a shortcut.

[00:26:53] Matt Regusci: Yep. But now with technology. We can pinpoint exactly where the outbreak [00:27:00] came from, which changes everything. Like my grandpa was truck farmer, and basically you grew a bunch of product, threw it in a truck, and you sent it over to the market and you sold it to market.

Well, when that happens, nobody can really pinpoint anything. Nobody knows who got sick removed product, like it was all co-mingled together in that facility or that market, and it went off right? Today, one of the greatest quotes from Frank Giannis that he used to run the FDA, he was he not the whole FDA, but for produce here, and he worked at Walmart and he worked at Disney, worked at a lot of places before that.

One of his great quotes that he would say all the time, and probably still says it, is now we can find the needle, but we can't find the high E stack. Meaning we can withhold genome sequences. We can. Pinpoint what unique genetic salmonella [00:28:00] is. Every one of these is unique. It has a unique marker matches what farm.

Okay, so what we have to do is find the haystack. Where did that needle, that unique salmonella or that unique e coli or unique listeria, where did that come from? With the whole, going through all of what we talked about with the epidemiology and all that stuff, that's the haystack. So then trying to get it back down to not just the commodity, but then where that commodity was actually grown is the very complicated part.

Now they can do that. That means it changes farming completely for food safety because now every single family farmer has to understand that. If they do not abide by the appropriate practices that are expected to minimize foodborne illness, they're going to be implicated in an [00:29:00] outbreak, just like what we're seeing right now.

Right? Just like 12 years ago, 12 years ago, 2010, 13 years ago, happened with the Jensen Farm Brothers, really good family, multiple generation cantaloupe, grower, got people sick with listeria and then lost everything. They could be amazing farmers and create amazing quality product, but you don't know.

There's salmonella on it. You don't know if there's listeria on it. You can't taste it, you can't see it, you can't smell it. It's invisible to the naked eye, but not invisible to human body system. And just like that, 2, 3, 4 generation family grower goes outta business,

right? So sad. It's gonna be interesting to see what happens.

Well, and you

[00:29:50] Francine L Shaw: know that when something like that happens, it affects not just that brand, it affects the whole industry. Oh yes. Nobody was [00:30:00] eating cantaloupe.

[00:30:01] Matt Regusci: I remember that outbreak. There's a few outbreaks that have changed my career and that listeria outbreak on definitely changed my career. And I remember going to farmers and watching them disc.

Hundreds of acres of cantaloupe gone because, not because they had any problems and not, and I'm talking about like in the desert of California, not even in Colorado, where Jens of farms was having an issue. No, no. In California, these cantaloupe growers were disking field because nobody was buying cantaloupe.

So what you're saying is absolutely correct. Yeah. Because just like you said, nobody knows what farmer they got their cucumber from. They know what grocery store they did, so that hurts the grocery store.

[00:30:47] Francine L Shaw: There was another product that happened with two, I'm trying to remember what it was. I don't remember if it was spinach.

[00:30:53] Matt Regusci: Yes.

[00:30:54] Francine L Shaw: Where it was like, you can't eat any spinach.

[00:30:57] Matt Regusci: It took a decade. It was 2006, I [00:31:00] think.

[00:31:00] Francine L Shaw: Or this was something where they like they nobody could sell. I didn't like, this was, since I remember

[00:31:07] Matt Regusci: that outbreak, it was 2006. I.

[00:31:13] Francine L Shaw: That it was like there wasn't, it wasn't like all the farmers that It was like all the farmers were affected.

Yep. Romaine lettuce, I think it was Romaine lettuce. Yeah, I think it was romaine lettuce that I'm talking about. They made everybody throw all the FDA, I believe it was me. Everybody get rid of the romaine lettuce. It was like, we don't know where it's coming from, so nobody should be eating any romaine lettuce and Yep, all the romaine lettuce was gone.

[00:31:41] Matt Regusci: The same thing happened in spinach too. It took a decade, almost a decade, for spinach sales to increase to the point at which people were eating spinach like they did in 2006, 2006, 2007, 2008. One of those, it took like a whole decade for consumers to eat as much spinach as they did [00:32:00] back then. It, I, it doesn't just affect it immediately.

It affects it for years.

[00:32:08] Francine L Shaw: Psychological impact add on us because we do what we do is extreme, but it affects consumers all over the place. Don't trust anybody. It's like

[00:32:24] Matt Regusci: lab. We just had an audit right by one of our customers and the auditor was in our facility and they were talking about how they still don't eat Jack in a Box.

We were talking about how good Jack in a box is. My auditor was like, Hey, I haven't eaten Jack Box since 1992. And I'm like, what? And then one of my employees said the same thing and one of one of my employees and I were looking at you like, oh no, I definitely eat a Jack in the Box. But that's still, I wonder how many people still don't eat a Chipotle for that same thing.

It's crazy. You're right. The psychological impact [00:33:00] of that. So

[00:33:00] Francine L Shaw: that, but I've not been to one since then.

[00:33:04] Matt Regusci: Oh, I have.

[00:33:05] Francine L Shaw: I like Chipotle,

[00:33:07] Matt Regusci: but I also know the VP of Food Safety. I used to work with her. She's awesome. So I think Chipotle is great.

[00:33:12] Francine L Shaw: So many articles about that. During that time, it was like, I can't read anymore.

I feel like I'm beating them up and I'm not.

[00:33:19] Matt Regusci: Yeah, it used as an example.

[00:33:21] Francine L Shaw: I haven't been there since that. There's not, first of all, there's not no one real close to me closest, but there's nothing close to you. Francine me, but yeah, I,

[00:33:32] Matt Regusci: yeah.

[00:33:33] Francine L Shaw: I've never been to a Jack in the Box. I've never seen a Jack in the box.

Really?

[00:33:39] Matt Regusci: Oh my gosh. Okay. This is gonna be, people are gonna laugh at this, but there are tacos. I love tacos in general. I'll, I eat tacos. I like tacos all the time. My kids like almost every morning I'm making some child, some taco like egg taco. I will, if somebody has a [00:34:00] taco on their menu, I will order that taco just to try it.

Some are better than others, but just total just rashy Food is the Jack in the box. Tacos are just, they're like any Latin American person listening to me say this is gonna be like, oh my god, Matt, I cannot believe you said that. 'cause it is not a, but it is. For me, so good. I used to eat them when I, when I drank, I used to eat them as like hangover food.

[00:34:33] Francine L Shaw: I can't imagine like when I think Jack in the box taco isn't what I think, but we've been programmed to think burger like and, and something else. Like the idea of a fish taco is just not something I can wrap my head

[00:34:45] Matt Regusci: around. True, true. But I'm from California where fish tacos were, fish tacos are so good.

[00:34:51] Francine L Shaw: I just can't wrap my head around the idea about fish taco. I've.

[00:34:55] Matt Regusci: I can wrap my head around anything that's wrapped around a tortilla. [00:35:00]

I will try it. And my son doesn't like tacos at all. I, Tim, it's okay to be wrong. Loves tacos. Oh wow. We went down a whole rabbit hole on that one is to tacos. Our

[00:35:15] Francine L Shaw: lines are like a scary place.

[00:35:18] Matt Regusci: I know people with A DHD understand our show very well. People without a HD are like, gosh,

[00:35:23] Francine L Shaw: what the hell are they

[00:35:23] Matt Regusci: talked

[00:35:24] Francine L Shaw: to you

about?

[00:35:27] Matt Regusci: Okay, well, my prayers are for the victims and for the family. The grower family, Bedner farms, both. And anybody who thinks this cannot happen to me better have good systems in place to make sure it doesn't 'cause it totally could happen to them.

[00:35:44] Francine L Shaw: Backup insurance.

[00:35:47] Matt Regusci: The greatest backup insurance is a good food safety program.

[00:35:50] Francine L Shaw: So yes, I, we were at the food safety summit. There were insurance underwriters at the insurance, at the food safety summit, which [00:36:00] is neither here nor there. I was just surprised That was the new event that they attend.

[00:36:05] Matt Regusci: Oh yeah. I, I've talked to a lot of insurance companies over the years.

The hardest. Thing for them is the, is trying to figure out how food safety fits into their tables.

[00:36:18] Francine L Shaw: So I did in, I did inspections for insurance companies, food safety inspections for insurance companies. It's risk management.

[00:36:27] Matt Regusci: It's still risk management and like how do you include food safety as a risk in their actuary tables is very complicated.

'cause they have, I mean they have people who are. Very mathematically inclined, and it's very hard to invest in every sales person or somebody who's designed to create a new product or something like that. In insurance is very different than the people who actually create the product. The people who create the product are very mathematically oriented.

The people who sell the product. The only math they think about is the money, right? For insurance. This is [00:37:00] gonna be great. I can give people discounts because they have food safety programs and all that stuff. And uh, people who are putting the math behind that are like, well, how are we going to show really, truly beyond just the certification that they are really minimizing their risk?

What other testing are they doing? What other stuff are they doing to show this that we can give them a discount or else it jacks up all the tables? If there is an insurance company out there listening to this that has figured that out. Totally. Great job. Contact us. Yeah, contact us. Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about you.

Actually. I would love to know, because I've talked to dozens now, when an insurance company comes and talks to me about this, the first thing I ask them is before I go into a long conversation with you about this, which, 'cause I've spent months with insurance companies. Trying to figure this project project out.

Before I do that, you need to have people who actually create the actuary tables in the room with us having this conversation because if or else, it's just a waste of my time. [00:38:00] But that would be awesome. People get rewarded for actually having food safety programs and their insurance product decreases in cost because of that.

That would be a great justification. I just haven't seen it. So if it's out there, let me know.

[00:38:13] Francine L Shaw: There's, oh God, there's so much involved in that. Because then they took the test, great. They took the test, they have the certification, but did they actually learn it or did they just test Exam?

[00:38:22] Matt Regusci: Exactly. And there's

just, and I'm honest with them, like the reason why I got out of this business is because there's a lot of certification printing shops out there that will just rubber stamp.

Something for

[00:38:37] Francine L Shaw: an outbreak two, two weeks later. I mean, it happened.

[00:38:40] Matt Regusci: And so those that actually, like when Almir and I were running WQS, like our goal was not to get into jail. Our goal was to not have an outbreak and our whole entire time running WQS, none of our clients had an outbreak. None of them on any of the certifications that we did.

And that actually is very hard to [00:39:00] do because you're failing your own clients. Right. And so there are a lot of companies that have a hard time doing that. I'm not saying everybody, but there are definitely enough out there that will undercut other companies. And also there's companies out there that want that.

I just need this certification. Remember, what was the story of that company that called, that was on that website or whatever and was like, I just need this certification. Can you just,

[00:39:25] Francine L Shaw: they wanted know if I to print certifications for them for what I've charged to print certifications for them. They just needed it in a, I forget what format they needed, like word or like something.

They just needed these three certifications printed and what would I charge to do? Then I'm like, you got the wrong person.

[00:39:44] Matt Regusci: I remember you sending me that message back and forth. It'd via text. This was years ago, and you were like, not only no, but f text back to

[00:39:53] Francine L Shaw: me.

No, you have to take a draft. [00:40:00] Oh, printing a certification for yolks. I never did an auditor or inspection where the pictures were not dated in timestamped because there was nobody coming back to me and saying. You just did our auditor inspection and somebody, this happened right at your right. That was never gonna happen to me.

Correct? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, again, off on another tangent. So, yeah.

[00:40:26] Matt Regusci: But similar. Hi. Well, on that note,

don't eat poop.