Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

DEP E120
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[00:00:00] Matt: And this fusarium, it's a head blight. It's a disease that devastates wheat, barley, corn, and rice leading to billions in economic losses annually. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the USDA estimates that FHB, it's fusarium head blight. So in our world, we have to make an acronym about it. So it's called FHB.

USDA estimates that FHB causes more than 1 billion in annual damages to the US wheat and barley alone with nearly 3 billion losses in 1990s.

[00:00:44] 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 Regu [00:01:00] for a deep dive. A food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.

Don't eat

[00:01:08] Matt: poop. Hello? Hello, Francine. Hey, Matt. It's a change of a venue. It's a hotel. We were just telling people that we've recorded podcasts in hotels and stuff like that.

[00:01:22] Francine: Oh, yes. I'm loving that mattress behind you without the sheet.

[00:01:28] Matt: Yeah, I was just telling Fred, see, I'm traveling on quote unquote vacation with my family, which is more like a trip.

We decided that when you go on a vacation with your family, particularly me, like I have nine kids with me right now, it is not a vacation. It is a trip. Semantics is very important with this because it is not a vacation. I probably need a vacation from my. Vacation slash trip when you [00:02:00] have that many people, like my wife researches months in advance.

I think we booked this hotel room, we booked these hotel rooms months in advance. 'cause we're here for a graduation. So I. It's graduation time in California. So my wife knew like all these hotels are gonna be booked up. So she researched what is going to accommodate us with the least amount of rooms. And then we booked those rooms.

Francine, like you travel a lot, or at least you traveled a lot in the past and like you could book for vacation, you could book using points. Or you can book using money. Well, when we do this, we like buy the suite so that we don't get kicked out or downgraded or whatever. We don't use any extra stuff because when we're out with our family, we need to have two rooms.

I. With lots of space because we have so many kids, well, they have a construction going on, so like our rooms got all jacked up. Ultimately, I was able to talk them into getting our rooms, but one of those rooms, the [00:03:00] reason why it got all jacked up was one of those rooms happens to be in the middle of their construction zone, and so they're delaying our room for a couple days.

I don't know if you've ever noticed this, Francine, but I can talk people into things pretty well. I got a room in the middle of the construction zone, so nobody is around us for this. This whole entire hallway is creepy actually. But one of the construction people left the physical lock. You know that metal lock that you could lock your door with?

They left it so the crack in one of the doors was open. So instead of bothering my family with recording this podcast at God awful hour in the morning, California time, I just accommodated a. Room that's under construction. So there, yeah, there are no sheets on the bed. There are no towels in the room, there's no coffee, there's nothing which is good 'cause I'm not supposed to drink coffee.

There was no temptation. [00:04:00] Borrowing the space is what you're doing. You're just borrowing the space. You're borrowing the space that that, that is technically what you do when you book a hotel room. I accommodated somebody else's vacant space for this

[00:04:15] Francine: Caught endeared.

[00:04:17] Matt: Commandeered Commandeered. Yes. It's early in the morning.

I haven't slept much in the last few days, so on my vacation, it's a beautiful vacation

[00:04:28] Francine: to go back to work. Vacation. I'm stopped

[00:04:32] Matt: working.

[00:04:35] Francine: Yeah. Well, it's our business.

[00:04:38] Matt: Okay, so this what we're gonna be talking about today is crazy. Francine, you and I gave a talk. We gave, Francine and I gave a talk at the NIUs webinar in front of a whole bunch of people about the potential the world could be falling apart type of a talk.

[00:04:59] Francine: It was a global [00:05:00] webinar that we did about two months ago in the future of food safety and the current state of food safety, the problems that it could present. Future basically.

[00:05:11] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And we probably spent, what did we, probably of that 45 minute webinar, hour long with questions. We probably spent what, 10 minutes on potential bioterrorism?

[00:05:25] Francine: Probably, yes.

[00:05:27] Matt: And all the things to look out for because with the world kind of catching on fire and Francine is great at putting presentations together and she literally had on this webinar, like the World on Fire, flames, flames coming off the world, which is hilarious because our world is like 75% water, but that's how like exploding it is.

It's got fire all over the place and. We were talking about with all the crazy that's going on and the new [00:06:00] tariff wars and all that stuff that people should be looking at, potential bio-terrorism within their supply chain and also within their own facilities because somebody's brother, cousin, mom, whatever, could be picked up by ice, and now they're ticked off and they want to do a bunch of harm, and so they can do it within your facility.

Suppliers could be upset because of things going on, and then they can try to do something for bio-terrorism or some sort of food safety, terrorism, chemicals, heavy metals, whatever.

[00:06:36] Francine: Many times these things are internal rather than extra.

[00:06:39] Matt: Yes. A lot of times they are. Right. We saw with, few weeks ago, we did the podcast about the guy who added a bunch of chemicals to the chicken processing, right?

[00:06:50] Francine: Yes. The chicken. Manufacturing.

[00:06:54] Matt: Yes. And so then over the last week, we get this thing about [00:07:00] the Chinese guy who gets picked up in the, I think this is Denver Airport, is that right? Francine?

[00:07:09] Francine: Yes. Or Detroit? Detroit. I believe it's Detroit. Yeah. Not

[00:07:12] Matt: Denver. Sorry. That's, that's my airport. The Detroit airport.

Right. For trying to smuggle a biological weapon. An agro terrorism weapon is what we can call it. It's a, a fungus that attacks the crops in the United States, and it's been around for a while, but not really a lot in the US and the, yeah, you guys gotta check this out. It is crazy. It's so hard to pronounce these words, but it's gram, I think.

It's a fungus classified as a scientific in by scientific literature as a potential agro terrorism weapon. Yeah, that's not good Francine. [00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Francine: No, and you know, there've been actually three individuals from what this article says, that it had been arrested within the last, and I don't know when this is gonna air, but in the last two weeks, all students.

[00:08:17] Matt: Right. All students, all like doctoral students, they're supposedly trying to bring this in so that they can do research, but they're not supposed to have this there, and so it's so crazy. One

[00:08:32] Francine: was a researcher, which is working at the university. One was a student and I'm not sure actually about the other one.

Yeah, and, and anyway, there were three individuals that have been arrested in the last few weeks.

[00:08:51] Matt: Yeah. And this poster, it's a head blight. It's a disease that devastates wheat, barley, corn, [00:09:00] and rice leading to billions in economic losses annually. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the USDA estimates that FHB, it's fusarium head blight.

So in our world, we have to make an acronym in about it. So it's called FHB. USDA estimates that FHB causes more than 1 billion in annual damages to the US wheat and barley alone with nearly 3 billion losses in 1990s. So it's, it's around, it's something that we deal with. Now if their researching this and do what type of.

Stuff have they done to this? FHB that is now makes it even worse, right? Because they can manipulate and splice genetics to make these things that are around even worse, like COVID, right? COVID was [00:10:00] most likely manufactured and created in a lab in Wuhan and. Sent all over the world on accident. I don't think it was, I don't think it was malicious, but got out of a lab and then infected the whole entire world.

So what are they doing to this? Why are they bringing this here? And my question is, Francine, like if they've caught these three people, how many people did they not catch

[00:10:30] Francine: well in this test in September? This individual sent four shipments from China containing sealed biological material to staff members at the laboratory at the University of Michigan, where she planned to spend a year completing a project like you just said, what's being shipped to other places that we don't know about, and how many shipments of other materials were shipped that we don't even know about?

[00:11:00] Scary when you think about it. These are researchers. They're graduate

[00:11:04] Matt: students. Yeah. And they're like doctoral students. This is, yeah. It's not like you're seeing your project in in university for your bachelor's degree or your master's thesis. Like these are doctoral students like doing hardcore work on biological fungis that do already over a billion dollars in damages to the United States.

What are they doing with this? Why are they trying to smuggle this in? Because when you're a research student, you're getting product in to do research on, you're not smuggling it in. There are procedures in, in all this processes and procedures to get the right stuff to then be able to, to research it within your laboratory.

Like you're not supposed to be just playing around with. Fungus that could do damage without the proper procedures. So I'm not saying that they're not allowed to play around with [00:12:00] this stuff because there's a lot of studies that are done in order to how, how do we fight this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But to be smuggling it in, obviously this is nefarious.

[00:12:11] Francine: Now I will imagine that there are certain things that they're not supposed to bring in. Yeah.

And like the protocol I'd imagine is very stringent. I know it is. And again, I am sure that there are some things where you don't study here. You may go there to study, you don't bring it in to the country, you go to another country to study whatever it is.

[00:12:40] Matt: Yeah. Or if it's already doing a billion dollars of damage to our agricultural economy here in the United States, I.

Why do you smuggle it in? Just go to the farmers that are having this issue. Take some samples and play around with it in your lab. So there are so many questions, [00:13:00] and it'll be interesting to see if we ever hear anything about this or is this one of those things that people are just set back to China, don't come back in here again.

And then we never hear anything more about this because we. I wouldn't say cover it up, but let's say hush hush it because this could be a, this, they want to, they, the ubiquitous day in the CIA or FBI or whatever combo of them want to figure this out and then not scare a bunch of people. But it's, it's, it is scary.

It's a, it's, we're in a completely different world. If there was World War iii, I don't think. I don't think we have to have a nuclear war in order to kill every human being in the United States. A bioterrorist of war would do it, and they're like, all of our different countries are for sure studying all these things.

[00:13:58] Francine: Our food supply [00:14:00] could take out the country and like, oh,

[00:14:04] Matt: not just our country. Not just our country. Well, right. Right, because we're such a huge exporter of product internationally that if, let's say the Western Hemisphere, let's say that there was some sort of bio weapon that was contained in the United States, Mexico and Canada, United States and Mexico.

That would take out a huge chunk of the food internationally. 'cause we feed. Austin, Mexico Feed the world. If this got to South America and it was the whole entire Western hemisphere and you knocked out Brazil, Argentina, Peru, all of their agriculture. Oh my gosh, that would be devastating. 'cause Brazil's largest customer in agriculturally is China, so they, I don't think they wanna do anything to the Chinese food source, but who knows?

Maybe it's collateral damage. But man, [00:15:00] if some sort of agricultural bio weapon were to knock out the food supply in the United States and the Western Hemisphere, that would be food shortages on a global scale, absolute global scale. It's not just, oh, okay, so knocks out my wheat and corn, so you know, I can't have bread and I blah, blah, blah.

No, no. Our animals eat that as well. So if it knocks out the grain supply in the United States and Mexico, then what do we feed our animals? Some people may not like how our animals. In the feed lots and all that stuff, like some people listening here, they don't care. I've worked in that industry my whole entire life, so it's.

Whatever, but it's very efficient. Like whatever you say about it, it's very efficient. They're not out grazing, right? They're in feed lots. Chickens are grown in huge metal containers. Pork [00:16:00] is raised and slaughtered in huge metal containers. Cattle is fattened up in huge lots. All of that takes a lot of corn and a lot of grain.

And if that's gone, I. That whole entire industry shuts down

[00:16:19] Francine: and you don't realize how much is affected by, for example, just wheat. How many products we use that are affected by just one ingredient, like Yep. Wheat.

[00:16:34] Matt: Yep. Huge. And I mean, that's like the whole entire plains of the United States is wheat, corn, soybean.

Yeah. It doesn't have to be a bio weapon. I guess what we're saying is if World War III were to ever happen, it doesn't have to be a human grade bio weapon, all it has to do is be a [00:17:00] supply chain bio weapon, and we're a host, like 50% of the population of the world could starve to death if that were the case.

[00:17:11] Francine: Boy, this is not the fun thing to listen to. Eight o'clock learning when the podcast,

you're just taking out half the world.

[00:17:22] Matt: Yeah, or more my grandpa, God rest his soul. Brilliant man. I changed my last name to him. He did consulting for Alltech. Alltech is like a, a mineral. I don't wanna boil it down to just as low as common denominator, but it's basically like a food feed additive supplement company for the livestock world.

They do some crop stuff as well, but mainly livestock. And I was helping my grandpa with different presentations many, many years [00:18:00] ago, and we were talking about how are we gonna feed. Billions and billions more people, right? And you cannot feed billions and billions more people. As the world population increases.

We we're, we're in a decline, which we're gonna hit peak population probably by, I don't know, in the 2000 thirties, which will create a whole nother problem. But the thought was that the population of the world is going to continue to increase, and theoretically it will. And if it continues to increase, so too does the efficiency of our food product production capacity, right?

We just have to continue to feed more and more mouths. But we're talking about in this episode is the potential to do the exact opposite, which would be devastating. It's like Malthusian. So people who don't know, there was an economic concept created by. Some [00:19:00] British philosopher slash economist called the Malthusian Effect, and it basically, it was like populations will increase in good times to the point at which the food production hits critical mass.

So like when the food production hits a point at which more population could be. Created more population will be created. Then if something dramatic affects the food production or if human beings outpace food production, then there's some catastrophic event that happens and the population decreased significantly.

So like the Black plague, the mini ice age that happened, you look at like different times in world history. And there's been huge populations and there's been huge decreases in populations. Like [00:20:00] over a generation, 20% of the population dies, 30% of the population dies. And it could be because of famine, it could be because of some sort of famine, which then makes people sick, sicker, or their immune system decrease.

Then some sort of plague happens, knocks people out. Or huge wars in which hundreds of thousands of men die in like huge battles because they're trying to get more resources because they can't grow enough food. So they're gonna go out and steal it and steal it with like guns, bullets, knives, swords, whatever.

Then they go out and they do that, and then huge populations are taken out because of that. The Malthusian effect is that the population will continue to increase until food supply cannot match that.

[00:20:56] Francine: Feast and famine. Feast or famine.

[00:20:58] Matt: Feast and famine. Exactly. [00:21:00] And the, we have been able, with the agricultural revolution to completely jack that philosophy up, right?

Like the more the population increases, humans have been able to figure out how to make more food more efficiently. Utilize the soil to get maximum results, et cetera, et cetera, create new pesticides, create new innovations that make it more efficient. We just keep doing that. This type of a thing, this type of bio weapon would be, or I'm, and it might not be this, but let's just use this concept, would be, would turn us back into a Malthusian type of environment.

[00:21:43] Francine: You'd need a garden of your own to.

[00:21:48] Matt: I would need acres to survive

[00:21:50] Francine: for my family to

[00:21:51] Matt: survive.

[00:21:53] Francine: We, we have a lot of land. Send some kids

[00:21:58] Matt: I know. I'm like, Hey [00:22:00] hon, maybe we should go buy a farm. Create a compound with my kids. Yeah. I'm like. Just being in the industry and understanding the supply chain, I know how fragile it could be.

I'm supply chain consultant. I understand the fragility of the supply chain. This type of stuff scares me. I'm like, this is not good.

[00:22:20] Francine: Well, it's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying.

[00:22:24] Matt: Yeah.

[00:22:25] Francine: It's not like a Dr. Pepper recall 'cause they put too much sugar in the Dr. Pepper zero, which is bad enough. The ramifications of that can be severe enough.

This is different.

[00:22:35] Matt: Yeah. A little bit different than putting someone in a diabetic coma, which,

[00:22:39] Francine: which is, again, I'm not making the light of that. That's bad enough.

[00:22:42] Matt: No, no. But it, yeah, this would be not getting enough calories, not the issue of getting too many calories,

[00:22:51] Francine: which can also choke somebody, which is bad.

[00:22:55] Matt: Yeah. So what would, how would like our audience [00:23:00] protect against something like this? I, I guess they wouldn't, this particular thing. This is what

[00:23:06] Francine: so true defense, you know? Well, I mean that particular thing is we're talking about. I mean, how would they, how are they gonna use that? Okay, they brought it into a lab.

How are they going to use that?

[00:23:20] Matt: I don't know. And so that, that would be like if they were to create some sort of bio weapon, let's say somebody were to create some sort of bio weapon, bio agro terrorism weapon. You could just go drive down the freeway in any state and you have access to all the farms. If it was something that would spread pretty quickly, all you would've to do is in infect one big, huge farm, and then it would, the wind would do the rest.

It was just spread it across.

[00:23:56] Francine: Say they put it in some kind of chemical that they use for crop [00:24:00] dusting or something.

[00:24:02] Matt: Yeah.

[00:24:03] Francine: Now they're spraying multiple fields with that or to stick it

[00:24:07] Matt: in the water supply if you were to stick it in a canal. And the canal then goes and fills up a bunch of reservoirs. And if assuming they don't shock the reservoir, then they could just spread it on all the crops that way.

[00:24:21] Francine: So how do you print prevent those types of things from happening? Well, I suppose you should be testing the chemicals that you're using.

[00:24:31] Matt: Yeah, I don't know.

[00:24:34] Francine: Do they do that?

[00:24:36] Matt: Well, I mean, this is your world. 'cause the chemicals are in concentrate. They're it. It would be more, if they wanted to spread it, it wouldn't go into the chemicals, it would go into the water or it, they would just open up a big package than just drive down the freeway and then let it fly.

They wouldn't have to put it into chemicals. That would be a harder thing. The water or wind would do it.

[00:24:58] Francine: But none of those chemicals are made [00:25:00] with any type of moisture.

[00:25:01] Matt: They are, but they, they're at concentrate, which you're adding water to it. So the easiest way to do it would just be added to the water supply and the water supply for agriculture.

And there's a lot of wells, but most of it is, is just canals. Even if you have wells, you're pumping wells into a reservoir most of the time, and then from the reservoir, you're irrigating your crops. So. Obviously well by, well by well doesn't make sense because wells are capped and supposed to be fairly sterile.

At least not have. Yeah, but the reservoirs are not, unless it's absorbed through the ground, it would be impossible. I'm trying to rack my brain on how would you prevent this from happening? I don't think you could, if someone got in. Got some sort of agro terrorism bio weapon that was gonna knock out a bunch of crops and they wanted to spread it through the wheat supply.

You just drive down the freeway in [00:26:00] Kansas and open up a package, or you infect the Mississippi and the Missouri and the Colorado River. Oh, would take a lot to do that. It would take a lot. But let's say that that fungus was designed to be pretty, you can. You can jack with genetics now, like with the crispers and all this different type of stuff where it only takes like a spore to infect a reservoir and if it can breed, if, if you design it to have the capacity to breed within a certain proper elements, then in a reservoir, if it could take hold, then it will go through all the crops.

But if it was like an airborne type of thing. You just drive down the freeway and open up the container and let it fly.

[00:26:47] Francine: You know, I say that, but then look what happened with COVID.

[00:26:50] Matt: Yeah.

[00:26:50] Francine: You know, and like so many people got sick and died. Yeah. For, they died for a variety of reasons, whether they had an a weakened immune system and it killed them [00:27:00] or whatever.

[00:27:01] Matt: And that's what I mean, like this world is crazy because you can genetically alter, now you can create a GMO Bioterrorist weapon. You def def. I'm not saying this is easy, but there are a hundred really smart people that could totally design it to meet the maximum thresholds of whatever it is they want it to be and let it fly.

Yeah. This is definitely something we need to protect ourselves from because that would be devastating. I don't know if you, how you would control it. There would have to be a bunch of scientists then to figure out how, what is this new thing? And then probably a new GMO would have to be created. If this were to happen, love or hate Monsanto, they would probably end up being the organization that would save the world because it would be all hands on deck.

How do we create some sort [00:28:00] of GMO that is protected against this new bioterrorist weapon that is. Creating a head blight on all of our grain crops, we now need to splice genes to protect against that like they did with Roundup for glyphosate and stuff. Obvi, that's a chemical, so it's a little easier because the chemical formulation doesn't change where diseases change pretty frequently.

But you would, yeah, there there'd have to be something that was created.

[00:28:33] Francine: So we just spent 35 minutes talking about, well, probably 30, the first 10 minutes were, it really happened with those individuals talking about hypothetical aspect of what could happen. But they're very real because two months ago we talked about hypothetically this could happen with everything that's going on in the world and in the last.

We've talked about the realities of [00:29:00] those hypotheticals that we talked about two months ago, right? 'cause since that we've seen

[00:29:06] Matt: Right, right. These incidents. And it is what it is we're, uh, history. People say history repeats itself. I think history doesn't always a hundred percent repeat itself, but it looks really familiar.

We have two empires. Whatever you say about the United States, we're an empire. China is an empire. Both are colliding right now in different ways. Not a hot war, but it is co. We're colliding and when you see two huge empires colliding in a cold war, which is what we're in right now, a lot of crazy stuff happens.

And so I could totally see. China doing this, and I can totally see the United States doing this as well. I'm not saying the United States people like, [00:30:00] just like, I'm not saying the Chinese people, but the powers to be doing nefarious things in the background to try to win this war without bullets, but it could be more devastating than bullets.

[00:30:15] Francine: The risks for our students to be doing that in China are much more severe than their students to be doing it here.

[00:30:21] Matt: Oh, the American students would've just disappeared in China. There would be no news report of this happening unless it was for propaganda purposes. And this could be propaganda purposes too, in the United States.

I'm not saying the United States is like, we definitely have propaganda in the United States. But yeah, it would be totally used for propaganda in China and the students would disappear. We've never heard from them again. I'm sure these students are gonna, are lawyering up in the United States 'cause that's our society and they're gonna have a perfect, good excuse.

And, and they'll probably go to jail for, if they get convicted, they're gonna [00:31:00] go to jail for 10 years and be there for three months and then back in China and, and then trying to buy a ticket back in the United States probably. 'cause that's how we do things here.

[00:31:08] Francine: 40% of their terms. So they should be there for at least three years.

Even of good behaviors. Yeah, sure.

[00:31:14] Matt: Yeah. But parole for good behavior. 'cause they're doctoral students, whatever. Why do we have these nerds here? What? What? This is fine. Yeah. That was a real uplifting, enlightening conversation F into sleep. Well, everybody,

[00:31:31] Francine: yeah. Oh well. The people will start dropping off about, what is it, the 12th minute or?

You

[00:31:37] Matt: don't get to this part. Yeah, this is gonna be like our least listened to show. Or the most one where they're like, start and then they're like, no, this is depressing. I'm not

[00:31:48] Francine: like minutes 12.

[00:31:50] Matt: Okay, so what we talked about two months ago is literally happening, or at least not happening. I [00:32:00] It is happening.

No, it miss ends. Whoa, my gosh. Yeah. Okay. So just remember. Our job in food safety is not to think people are like us. Our job in food safety is to understand most people are not like us and we somehow have to do two things, brain our team to be more food safety conscious. One, the good people that work with us just are ignorant of what's going on and they just need to know.

And two. Protect from evil people that are going to figure out some stupid way of jacking with our systems and stuff like that. And just be cognizant that while the vast majority of people are good, like I, I, I don't know, I believe the 90 plus percent of the population are just good people. They just don't know what, they just don't know what they don't know.

But there are a good at less than 1% [00:33:00] that are evil. But those evil people, some of 'em are stupid. Some of them are very, very smart, and it's our job to protect against those really our companies against those really smart, very small percentage of the population, like 0.001% that could do some terrible things to the food supply.

[00:33:20] Francine: I say this all the time. When I worked in operations, I always thought everybody operated like I did. I truly, truly believed that everybody just operated to the best of their ability and cared about what they served and how they served it. It was so eye-opening for me when I became. An inspector and realized that that was not the case.

I just mindboggling for me. So yes, it's not everybody thinks corroborates like you do.

[00:33:52] Matt: No. Okay, well on that note, sleep well. Safe dreams. Don't eat [00:34:00] poop.