Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

DEP E71
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Matthew Regusci: I think there's still slave labor happening in the United States. They wouldn't call it slave labor, but it's basically slave labor.

Francine L Shaw: That's one of those terms that's not politically correct. And it's

Matthew Regusci: no, but it's accurate. They're allowing people to come into the United States and Children are being trafficked for a lot of different things.

And part of it is slave labor. We're talking about this because it's been in the news a lot. I just posted this article on LinkedIn from food safety news. And I just wrote amen because it's so accurate. The meat and poultry sector needs to cease using child labor.

Everybody's

intro: 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 Ragucci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't. Eat. Poop.

Don't eat poop.

Matthew Regusci: Hello, hello, Francine! Hi, Matt. Hi, Matt. We have a very exciting topic today. We do. We do. Yes. Nothing is more exciting than child labor. Okay. You and I both started working very early, right? Like how old were you when you started working?

Francine L Shaw: My God, I started babysitting when I was like probably 11.

Matthew Regusci: Yeah. You and I both have the same, but also because we had younger siblings, right?

Francine L Shaw: But I started babysitting when I was probably 11. And then by the time I was. 12 or 13. They had these, it was called SEDA at the time, it was like a government work program for low income families. I had a job, the first one was, oh my god, I hated this job.

It was working for a college. We would take care of outside like mowing grass and trimming hedges and weeds and stuff like that. And then cleaning the college dormitories when the college students moved out. How old were you when you were doing this? 13, maybe 13. And then from there, the following summer, I worked in the school library Dewey decimal system.

Dear God, I hate to do it like filing books and all of that in the school library in the meantime, I can't even imagine them doing this now. There was a radio station. We had a program called hire it and you could call in. If they had a job that you were interested in and get a job working for whatever it happened to be.

So I got a job as like a nanny for these people that owned an insurance company. This woman's parents owned the insurance company. So a couple of days a week, I would go to their house and I'm like 13, 14 years old. I would go to the house and clean, watch the kids and cook dinner for the husband and kids.

Can you doing that today at that age, but I would do that a couple of days a week. And I did that for a while, probably a couple of years. And I also got a job through that program, cleaning houses. I did that for a few years. I also babysat then by the time I was, Oh my. So when I was in 10th grade, I got a job babysitting five boys overnight.

This is in my book, five boys overnight, their mother worked at Dunkin Donuts. I would get there at 9 30 10 o'clock at night and babysit till 6 o'clock in the morning. I did that for quite a while and then I'd go to school the next day. And then when I quit that job, rather abruptly, I ultimately got a job working in a restaurant at 15.

Matthew Regusci: Hold on. If you want to understand why she quit that job abruptly by her book, because the story is absolutely insane.

Francine L Shaw: Oh, it was very insane. Yeah. Cause I'm not one to just up and

Matthew Regusci: throw your first like food restaurant job. Or a fast food job was with the age of 15. So for me, it was very similar. So my family were all like blue collar entrepreneurs.

My dad owned a janitorial business. So I started working night shifts with my dad when I was like eight years old. And then my grandpa owned a series of different companies. One of them was a dairy consulting business and one was a tarp company. So it was a tarp company in Hanford with no air conditioner.

So anybody in California know where Hanford is? Yeah, it's called wind tamer tarps. Every summer from the time I was 12 to the time I was 15, I worked at this company called wind tamer tarps. I worked like an adult was on a shift, making tarps on a table and manufacturing tarps like an adult. Grandpa had me there before everybody else.

So I was doing all the jobs that would prep the TARP making stuff. And then I left after everybody else, because he was telling me, I'm training you to be an entrepreneur. You need to be there before everybody leave after everybody. And that was great experience. And then from there ended up managing a completely different job, managing a surf shop, California summer, baby.

It was so much fun. I hired all my friends and we worked at a surf shop on the beach. From the time I was like 15, the time I was 18 and they started restaurant jobs. So I was working two jobs and going to school, working as a busser and then ultimately a waiter and then managing Starbucks. So yeah, I mixed on this, right?

Because I think. It's good for children to learn how to work at a fairly young age, but at the same time, I don't think it's good for them to be working dangerous jobs. And I don't think that they should be working jobs that hinder school. It's interesting. I think you and I have a different understanding of school just from our life, right?

Like I tell my children all the time, go to college. If that job that you're looking for needs you to go to college for your college, if not, then go to a trade school or go into the military or learn a trade because going to get a degree in something that has zero use, there's no use going into massive debt.

But I think that helped when you're young and you have a skill already. College isn't just an outlet in order to go to college and learn what you're going to do. It's the opposite. You go to college because you know what you want to do. It's a different mindset. And I also, as a kid, we lived in agriculture.

We worked in agriculture. So I worked in dairy. I worked on an avocado farm when I was 12 to 18. Avocado, not avocado, sorry. Almond and walnut. Well, like that was all different because it was my own family's stuff, right? So I wasn't put in anything where I was in jeopardy. They were also utilizing it for me to learn skills and it was skills they were trying to teach me, which was.

More than just the minute tasks of the job, but also understanding management in general. But what are your thoughts like right now? Cause you and I were talking about this ahead of time right now, still in the United States, we have child labor in fields. And child labor in meat packing plants. And I've been in a lot of meat packing plants.

Children should not be in meat packing. Absolutely not. It is so dangerous,

Francine L Shaw: right? So again, I mixed very mixed feelings. I worked out in necessity, but I also wanted to work. I would rather work than go to school grades in school. Looking back at that point in time, ADD was not diagnosed. It just wasn't looking back.

That was the problem for me and I know that I was very bored in school I didn't know it then but that's what my problem was. I wasn't challenged enough. I also needed to work I was taking care of my siblings at a very young age in the book. It talks about when I was like Nine years old, taking my three siblings who the next one was four years younger to me to the grocery store buying groceries, walking home to beat the delivery truck home so that I could put them away my very first paycheck.

I took my two younger sisters to Sears to buy clothes. So that they wouldn't be made fun of in school for the clothes that they were wearing. So I wanted to work, but I also worked to try to help, not being told that I had to, but try to help my mom. I liked working. I think that There are situations where kids certainly, some are probably being forced to work.

Some want to work. Education's important. You need an education. Graduating from high school is essential. I firmly believe that graduating from high school is essential.

Matthew Regusci: Yes.

Francine L Shaw: I think that secondary education comes in multiple forms.

Matthew Regusci: Yes.

Francine L Shaw: And there are a variety of ways to get that, whether it be through the military, whether it be through trade school, whether it be because you want a profession that requires college.

Or it's on the job training. Not everybody needs a four year degree or an eight year degree or even trade school, but it depends on what you want to do with your life. If someone wants to be a housewife or house husband, by all means, there's not a thing wrong with that. Right. That's to do with your life.

Matthew Regusci: My wife got a degree in psychology and then was a housewife and mother for 20 years and then went back to college and got her second degree in nursing so that she can go work, just started working as a nurse in February. So that you could do that at any time in your life as well.

Francine L Shaw: And if there's anybody out there that thinks that's not work, that is work.

So I think that there's a whole lot of people out there right now with a tremendous amount of debt, doing things that aren't even related to the degrees that they got. So I, yeah, at the age of 18, do you really know what you want to do with your life?

Matthew Regusci: For most people. No, it was interesting. My daughter and I were having this conversation and they're both starting their sophomore year.

Her boyfriend went to massage school for a year and then took a semester off of UCCS and then started a university, then started a semester late. Quote unquote. And so then he was finishing up massage school and going to university for physical therapy type stuff. And he did that so that he could work.

As a masseuse and pay for college, right? And my daughter knew she wanted to go into medical field. And so she knew that took a degree, right? But she was saying to me, she's what's interesting, dad, like I'm at university with a whole lot of people who don't know what they're want to do. And they're very stressed because they feel like they need to figure it out while they're racking up a ton of debt because.

They're afraid that their parents, they're letting their parents down because they don't know if they want this degree. They don't know if they really want this job. And, but their parents want them to do it. And she said, that was never the case with you. You were always like, Hey, if you're passionate about what you want to do and you need to agree to do that, great.

Go get that degree. If you don't know what you want to do, then go do a trade school and go into the military or. Go figure out what it is that you want to do, go work a bunch of jobs, and then go back to school. It could totally happen. But in our family, she witnessed that, right? She saw that happen. The skills you get by working jobs that you may never have anything to do with your career, help you understand better what it is you want to do as well.

And so again, we're dancing around this subject. About child labor, and I want to put it in. You and I both want to put this context because you and I both grew up very poor. So a lot of times, people in our society, United States are looking at the their rose colored glasses at. How awesome their jobs are in middle class and appalled by child labor.

There's a lot of people where that has to be the case. Like their children have to work in order to put food on the table. The problem is we've set this up like that. We were child labor. We were child labor, right? 100 percent of your job. I was working graveyard shifts with my dad at the age of eight.

That was 100 percent child labor, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. By the time I was 12, I was helping my mom run the business. Doing shifts like I did a shift with an employee two or three nights a week. It's crazy to think about that, right? But at the same time, I just don't think they should be in a meatpacking plant.

And I definitely don't think that they should be child labor on somebody else's farm picking blueberries or something like that. And that was just a recent one was, Yeah, well in the audits, you fail the audits if you have child labor in there.

Francine L Shaw: You mean instead of going to school on somebody else's farm picking blueberries?

Matthew Regusci: Yes.

Francine L Shaw: Okay. Because if it's like after school,

Matthew Regusci: no, totally

Francine L Shaw: going to work for a couple hours picking blueberries with parents or something, I don't see a problem with that.

Matthew Regusci: No, I totally agree with you. And it's so funny because people would be like, you can't have child labor. You can't have people going, picking fruits and vegetables, but then they'll take their children on a weekend to a hobby farm to go.

Do you pick? Right.

Francine L Shaw: What would be the difference if our kids, if we had younger Children that were like 8, 10, 5, whatever, and they're out there helping for a couple hours. Working. It happened. All the kids around here,

Matthew Regusci: 100%. Well, and that's different. You're not getting paid . That's different too, because there are actually laws on the books that allow child labor if you own the farm.

So if you own the farm and that's what you do, right? You're out there, you, you're doing those chores with your family.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah. If that is your job. My job as a parent is that I work in the field. And I want my children to come with me for a couple hours in the evening. They're going to school. They're doing well in school, but I can bring them to work with me to help a couple hours in the evening and they're helping pick blueberries or they're helping pick strawberries or apples or whatever.

And whoever I'm working for is willing to pay them. Is there a problem with that?

Matthew Regusci: Yeah. No, I don't think so.

Francine L Shaw: I'm not asking legally. For

Matthew Regusci: me, I 100 percent agree with you. I would see no problem with that whatsoever.

Francine L Shaw: Now I'm not going to work in a meat packing plant. So

Matthew Regusci: that's where it gets interesting because I think that a lot of this stuff is also almost like, I think there's still slave labor happening in the United States.

They wouldn't call it slave labor, but it's basically slave labor.

Francine L Shaw: That's one of those terms. That's not politically correct. And it's

Matthew Regusci: no, but it's accurate. They're allowing people to come into the United States and Children are being trafficked for a lot of different things, and part of it is slave labor.

We're talking about this because it's been in the news a lot. I just posted this article on LinkedIn from Food Safety News and I just wrote, Amen, because it's so accurate. The meat and poultry sector needs to cease using child labor. Amen. According to the latest available data, More than 70 percent of 5 to 14 year olds in child labor worldwide were employed in agriculture in 2020 of the Children in child labor across the world that are 5 to 14 years old.

75 percent of those Children are used in agriculture. This is why social accountability audits are becoming so big. A bunch of major retailer food service brands and major brands across the world don't want to be associated with child labor. And. The only way they could think to stop it is through these audits.

I know it's happening in the United States, but not at the scale of what's happening in other countries.

Francine L Shaw: It is really bad. And I in no way condone. I condone slave labor,

Matthew Regusci: particularly of children.

Francine L Shaw: Slave labor is bad. Children's slave labor. That's really bad. You know how my mind works. I'm already on because finish that thought in my head.

I'm already on them My son has such a problem because his brain does not work like

Matthew Regusci: the engineer does not fill in the gap

Francine L Shaw: Someone in my next sentence Communication can sometimes be a problem for me. So anyway, what happens though in those cultures? And it's a cultural thing where that is acceptable.

That's just the way the culture works.

Matthew Regusci: Whoa, totally. And that's, yeah, you're absolutely right. And again, we're balancing the difference between you have kids, you may be poor, they're going to school, they're working, they're bringing in income to the family, and they're balancing those two. Are you allowing that to happen?

Or you're not poor, but you still want your children to learn skills? They're going to school. They are working summer jobs or they're working jobs in the afternoon after school, and they're like 14 to 18 perfectly fine. The problem is when it's children who are working in the fields, they can be still receiving income, but they have no ability to go out of their situation because they have no basic schooling.

They can't read, they can't write, they can't do arithmetic, that type of stuff. And then the next really big problem is then slave labor, right? Are we talking about these kids just being used? I mean, it could be slave labor in terms of pittance. So they're still making money, but they're basically making money and then spending that money in the company store and they could call it something else, but it's ultimately still slave labor.

Yeah, it is happening here in the United States, just on a smaller scale, but it is terrible in other countries when that's happening and they just can't get out of that loop.

Francine L Shaw: Right, and I am referring to other countries where it's just it's cultural and how do you break that cycle? And how do you, because the audits are being done, but are we going to put them in a position where I don't know what's going to happen?

You know what I mean? And I'm not. Condoning in any way the fact that these children are going and working in factories for Hours and hours on end and there's never any education

Matthew Regusci: And you have like food safety issues with all this as well. It's not just, yeah, food safety, you have occupational safety issues.

There's a whole lot of different, obviously, in terms of macro issues, just slave labor is not good in general. And then you're like, well, okay, well, who cares about the food safety issue? That's a micro issue. That's a niche within the bigger niche. But that is part of it as well. It's yeah. How do you train a kid to do something over and over again?

First off, if you're using slave labor, you're probably not thinking about other type of compliance. If you're breaking the law, in general, you're probably not thinking about, well, I wonder if I should worry about food safety. No, probably not.

Francine L Shaw: Well, and frankly, some of these families are more worried about feeding their families than they are their children working.

Matthew Regusci: This is not the families that we're talking about. This is the companies that are hiring, quote unquote, hiring.

Francine L Shaw: I understand that.

Matthew Regusci: Yeah, so it's a, it's It's a big

Francine L Shaw: issue. Yeah.

Matthew Regusci: It's such a exploitation. It's an exploitation of the family exploitation of the children. It's overall just exploitation. And we're talking about this because it's still happening in the United States.

Just not on a big scale, but it is outside of the United States happening on a very large scale. I don't know how we fix it outside of the United States, but in the United States, there should be a zero freaking tolerance on that. I would love to have feedback from our audience on any of you guys. out there have any type of stories about this happening in the United States or more interestingly as well, because the United States, if it's coming up, they're probably being prosecuted, but how is it happening in other countries that aren't being prosecuted?

Francine L Shaw: Did you hire individuals under 18?

Matthew Regusci: Yes. At Starbucks? Yeah. They

Francine L Shaw: had rules though.

Matthew Regusci: Oh,

Francine L Shaw: it

Matthew Regusci: was way more complicated for me to hire high schoolers. Than it was for me to hire anybody else.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah, I was gonna ask, what's the youngest person you ever hired, but Probably 16.

Matthew Regusci: Yeah, 16.

Francine L Shaw: Because labor laws are so tough when you get my child,

Matthew Regusci: well, well, oh no, on my, in the beach shop, when I was running the surf shop, my, my youngest employee was 14, but that was only in the summertime as well.

So the rules were a lot less restrictive.

Francine L Shaw: I hired one or two 14 year olds, not many, because the labor laws were so restrictive, and I was just so afraid of working them a minute over. Well, whatever the hour was at the time, it was because like the fines and the penalties for that were so ridiculous. And I feel like the restaurant industry, the retail industry.

Is looked at so much harder apparently than the manufacturing and process industries are because we lived in fear of the labor laws, like in fear of the labor laws. So we were very careful about what they were allowed to do, what hours they were allowed to work their breaks, all of it. I hired one or two 14 year olds and I would never have met more than one or two at a time.

And I'm talking about a staff of anywhere from 50 to 80 people. I would have sometimes in the summer, a couple 15 year olds that again, never more than one a shift because it was just too hard. It was too hard. My kids were 15 when they started working for me.

Matthew Regusci: Yeah, my kids work too. It's one of those where it's like, they don't have to, it's just that they want to, and they have fun doing it, so they go out and they work.

No,

Francine L Shaw: they didn't want to work. It was, well, in the summer months, they were involved in sports and stuff, so it was hard to, you know, in the school.

Matthew Regusci: Yeah, a lot of my boys, it's the same way. They have a ton of summer camps that are sports oriented and all that stuff, and I'm like, well, you're only going to do that once, so go do that.

Okay, should we end with a myth? Food safety myth. Correct. Alright, so here's here. Francine plastic and glass cutting boards don't hold harmful bacteria like wood cutting boards do. True or false?

Francine L Shaw: That's false. They tend to get these like craziness in them from being cut over. Yeah. And over again. And if they don't either resurface depending on the type of plastic or throw them away and get new ones and they never wanna spend any money.

To do that, even at home though, definitely they can harbor bacteria pathogens. So, and they need to make sure that they clean and sanitize those regularly. And not all good wood is good wood for cutting boards. They need to make sure that it's a hardwood while we're going to talk about wood, but yeah, they absolutely can harbor pathogens and

Matthew Regusci: bacteria.

I love the plastic cutting boards that you can wash, right. You throw in your dishwasher and I put that on top of my wood ones and there's like different colors. And so we wash the wooden ones every single time. But when I'm cutting vegetables, I'll actually use a plastic one on top of that. And I'll

Francine L Shaw: thin ones, the real thin

Matthew Regusci: ones, the real thin ones.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Cause I'm anal about that. So.

Francine L Shaw: I love pretty wood cutting boards. Oh yeah, me too. But I don't like to use them. I have a plastic one. I have two beautiful wood ones, but I don't often use them to cut things on.

Matthew Regusci: There was this guy that was a family friend of ours. When I say family friend, he was basically family.

And we were like, We lived in California and wine country, and he would take old wine barrels. If you lay it on its side, after you've broken a wine barrel down there, like moon shaped right, the wood, and he would push them all together and then glue them and combine them together and make cutting boards out of it.

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful cutting boards.

Francine L Shaw: I have a wine barrel table that my son made for me. Oh yeah.

Matthew Regusci: That's very cool. Okay. Well, on that note, Francine, don't eat poop.