Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

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Azure: [00:00:00] The aspect that I think notices and falls a little flat is the normalization of cutting corners to try to really just push the end goals, to push the product through. And when people are in a situation where they have to make a decision, it's gonna be the one that's gonna give them the result that they need, and oftentimes that's just getting it out the door and keeping their job

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 Elshawer and Matt Regusci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule: don't eat poop.

Don't eat poop.

Matt: Hello, hello, Francine.

Francine: Good morning, Matt. Is it still morning?

Matt: [00:01:00] Yes. Well, for me. I guess it's still for you, too.

Francine: It is for everybody.

Matt: Yes, yes. And even if it wasn't, we don't know when people are listening to this, Francine, so- Ah,

Francine: good point ...

Matt: it could be evening, could be afternoon, could be whatever.

But we are excited because we have Azure Edward here, and we have been talking about her for a while. I think there's been a few podcasts that have mentioned your name over the last few months, and we're so excited to have you on 'cause you are an absolute prolific writer in the food safety world. And links down below to both all the articles that you've written for Food Safety Tech and also for Food Safety News, and you have some articles coming up- You have some series, so there's gonna be more to come as well.

And we'd love to talk to you about these articles, 'cause they're so well-written. So introduce yourself.

Azure: Like you said, my name is Azure. I am an independent consultant working with food safety [00:02:00] systems, and my whole background is in this space that I write about.

Matt: You've had a long career. How did you start, and where has it propelled you to where you are now?

Azure: So my undergraduate work was in, like, molecular virology. I was a microbiologist, and I thought I was gonna go into research Ebola at the CDC kinda direction. When I finished my degree, I decided I was gonna be a detective and go into law enforcement, so I started studying criminal justice and practicing to be a law enforcement officer and interviewing and stuff.

Matt: Oh my gosh, you and Francine. The more we are talking with you- ... the more I'm like, "You two are cut from the same cloth."

Azure: I know. I can tell. I think we're a couple peas in the pod, for sure. But after a while, I realized that I probably didn't have the strength to see that much pain and suffering, quite honestly, as a daily role, so.

Matt: So you chose food safety?

Azure: Yeah. [00:03:00] Turns out there's still pain and suffering.

Francine: Different kind of death.

Matt: Wow.

Azure: But I think what I loved about it is that it brings in so many different aspects of my personality and the way my brain works and my interests, and puts it towards something that I can have a direct impact on.

That impact affects everybody. Food, it's food. It's one of our basic needs, and we should be able to eat without being afraid of blowing out both ends at a minimum. So yeah, I just, I really love it, and I've, uh, most of my career has been spent on the production floor, so I really enjoy the manufacturing environment and being able to see what's under the hood and get it dialed into a nice, smooth-running machine.

Francine: So having read your articles, I can tell what makes you such a good writer is that you live in the world. You can always tell- True ... who, [00:04:00] when you read somebody's articles or books or whatever the case may be, you can always tell the people who have lived and worked in the world and the people who have not that are writing.

The people who write from experience speak from the experience when they're writing. And we first came across you when we read your article on training, and so it just resonated because we're both from the industry, different aspects of the industry, but the industry. And I believe, among other things, that is what makes you such a good writer- Yeah

because you just bring your experience to the writing, and you can tell that you know what you're talking about.

Matt: Yeah. Well, thank

Francine: you.

Matt: In fact, we're gonna link that episode where Francine and I basically read your article. We didn't read it word for word, but we read it and then talked through that about training, which is a fantastic article.

So we're gonna link that in the show notes a- [00:05:00] as well as the actual article itself so that people can listen to that as well because that article was, oh my gosh. So I'm not gonna rehash the whole entire episode. You can listen to that, but where do you see the biggest gap? I know you wrote about it, but love for you to talk about where do you see the biggest gap between training that is being done right now in the industry and training that should be done in the industry?

Azure: I think for me it, it's less about the method of training. There are lots of options for that, and people have to find what works for them and their operations. I think the biggest gap is between the training and what's actually happening on the floor, the reality of being in those roles and the conditions surrounding the training requirements.

So it's one thing to say, "We require this," but then you get on the floor, and the [00:06:00] resources aren't there. The... I don't like using the word culture. I think it's a great catch-all word, but I- the aspect that I think notices and falls a little flat is the normalization of cutting corners to try to really just push the end goals, to push the product through.

And when people are in a situation where they have to make a decision, it's gonna be the one that's gonna give them the result that they need, and oftentimes that's just getting it out the door and keeping their job.

Matt: To bring up another article, so you touch on this in the hidden cost of repetition for food safety tech, and you gave a really interesting scenario in that, and I think those two coincide with each other.

Do you wanna explain what that article was about, the hidden cost of repetition, and how that links with training and food safety culture in general?

Azure: I think I just became aware that my writing has actually followed a track. It started with the [00:07:00] training. This is the people, and the people aren't the problem.

And so the next step up is looking at how do these food safety systems fit into the way the business is conducting the operations, and where are those gaps between the work that they say they're doing and the work that's actually being done on the floor. And then moving into what does that look like?

What are the repeated patterns or points of friction that can be addressed that will improve the conditions for kind of these downstream event level issues that businesses find themselves putting out fires over and over and over. What changes can be made to minimize the time, money, and just friction, mental health of the people that are having to be right there on the floor.

And then when you're looking, you know, and what impact is that having on the business? How much money is being spent? How people can be supported in their roles. And so it's [00:08:00] all following this Sort of start, you know, bottom-up kind of track. Does that answer your question?

Matt: Yes. And so like you have a series right now, the food safety as business structure, and that's kind of what you're talking about.

Azure: Correct. So the series is structured so it introduces the idea that when you're thinking about business operations and making business-level decisions, the impact it's going to have on the food safety programs and ultimately the safety of the food leaving the building. I mean, this includes capital investments, equipment, adding another building down the road, process flow, all of those things, and usually food safety and quality are the last to hear about these decisions and are expected to implement them Without having had the opportunity to provide input into the sort of downstream things that need to be considered before these projects are initiated.

Francine: [00:09:00] What she was just saying reminded me of the recording that we did last week for Food Safety Family.

Matt: Yeah.

Francine: Doesn't it sound like exactly what we were talking about?

Matt: Exactly what we were talking about.

Francine: I'm sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt you, but my thought, the ADHD kicks in sometimes, and that I can't stop myself.

I'm sorry. I'm right there with you, so

Matt: Francine and I have been working on a project for a very long time. I think we- think I brought up this idea of trying to define food safety culture into actionable items, right? Like right now, it's this nebulous thing, and there's a whole bunch of journals that have been written about it, full, whole bunch of different studies.

GFSI has a great whitepaper on it. There's a lot of different things that have been done, and there are great minds that are helping to implement these in huge companies, but there's this big disconnect between companies that can afford a food safety culture person, like a [00:10:00] VP- Right ... of food safety culture, and those that just need to understand, how do I implement this?

How could this be broken- Right ... down into actionable items and implemented? So when Francine said that, we're literally right now recording, like, training modules for this. There's like 36 training modules. It took us forever just to figure out how to break it down into 36 actionable items. Right. And so that's what she's referencing- Okay

last week's recording when we were, when we were talking about this. And what you're saying 100%, Francine. It, it tracks, which is good because we're on the right track. Well, and

Francine: you're saying that, and I'm thinking, "Oh my God, we just recorded this last week for one of the modules." Was because you're right.

What, I, I mean, and you know that. But what you're saying is correct.

Azure: Yeah, so this is exactly what I've been doing too, so we should probably join forces. But you're absolutely right because... And to your earlier point, Francine, about being able to tell the difference between someone who's been on the floor and really lived it and someone who's observing the issues that we're having from a higher level, and I think there's a space for both of them.

There [00:11:00] absolutely is. But again, to your point, that gap is how do you implement, how do you operationalize the steps that need to be taken to address that layer? And I think for me, the biggest change maker has been creating a sort of feedback loop within the organization. So I think we've been collecting all these data for years.

Francine: I think that's like the first part of the title of what I was

Azure: my presentation at the consortium. We've been collecting data for years, and what I see over and over is that- The way the data's being interpreted, there's a place for it the way it is right now, absolutely

Matt: I want to emphasize this, that you're doing a talk on exactly this on Food Safety Consortium, and when Rick Biros told us that you were doing this talk, we said a couple things.

One is, "This is fantastic idea. I think people will go to Food Safety Consortium just for this presentation," number one. Number [00:12:00] two, "Does Ajur know this yet? I know you receive a whole bunch of things. He's already talking about it, but have you- has she figured if you told her yet?" Because this might be something that you wanna tell her before this episode goes live.

And then third was, we have to have her on just to talk about this particular talk because I think this is something that the industry totally needs, and will embrace. So with that segue, go back into what it was you're saying. Data is already there.

Azure: Right. We've been collecting all of the data, and we have some incredible technology that's giving very valuable insights into what that data is telling us.

But it stops there. It's not being interpreted into another layer of viewing what that data's telling us about the story of operations in real time. The, when a change is imple- and SQF10 is moving into this with their requirements of food safety culture to actually start to [00:13:00] evaluate. When they're talking about trending, you can see this again from this, the high level.

We realize something's wrong, and we need to do something about it, and the operations on the floor are saying, "We're struggling outbreaks." And how can we bring those together in a way that the system and the business are talking to each other continuously, and are able to see, maybe not necessarily in real time, but be able to understand the impact of the changes?

'Cause when you can see change, it motivates you to continue doing better. These small things that often get overlooked, that the people are carrying, that your responsible parties and the ones with the go to jail certificate are implementing. It's difficult to see the impact that it has, and I think the businesses need to have a better understanding and be able to really see what's happening, and how those changes are improving their systems.

I feel like that's the [00:14:00] next phase of food safety culture, 'cause that culture is understanding the conditions that you're operating under, the impact the decisions you're making, and when you can bring those two together, I think it could be unstoppable.

Francine: And I agree with you. Right now we're to the point where everybody's starting to realize there's this gap, and several of us are trying to operate within that gap and pull that gap together.

And when food safety culture has been a buzzword for the last many, many years, and- We need to find a way to close that gap, and that's... You're working on a program or something to do that?

Azure: Well, basically been formalizing what my experience has taught me into a way that can be for this exact sort of, you know, how can it be taught, how can it be understood, and how can it be implemented in a way that will affect change?

It's not just a piece of paper [00:15:00] or a checkbox, but a living, breathing system that can adapt to any number of things that... I mean, it is a language thing here is, but it's a shit show. And so the stronger your system is, the better it can adapt to the, these shifts, because if you understand what you're doing, then when these things hit, you better understand the way to adapt and pivot and-

Matt: And so the, the talk at Food Safety Consortium is here's all the data you're collecting, here's how to use it for application at the floor level.

Is that how it is?

Azure: Kind of. If there's a bunch of numbers people wanting to come to this, they'll probably get a little disappointed because I'm not the data analyst. I would say it's more of a patterns and system functioning. So I have separated things out from my internal system, and the tools that I [00:16:00] use that I've built for my own work.

I have separated things out into different types of conditions, different patterns I see on the floor, even the way people talk about their food safety systems. A lot of the time, I can look through a food safety program, get a sense for what's on paper, walk the floor, get a sense of, you know, how those are to separate, and then depending on the patterns of these reoccurring issues, you can point towards areas of improvement that can have a stronger downstream result.

So I'm looking at the overall picture of the trends over time and through the lens of what's actually happening on the floor. And then when you can see that bigger picture, it can be better translated to executive leadership so that they - I think we have a problem with the reality of what's happening on the floor being...

It's like the game of telephone. The [00:17:00] bigger the company, and the more silos you have to go through to get to the people making the actual decisions, the more diluted down that information gets. We want to make things look good. We're doing our job. We're following the compliance. We pass the audit. These sort of moment in time captured of how things look.

That information's not gonna land upstream if they can't really see what's happening on the floor. And so it's just structuring those issues into The patterns that they fall into so that the patterns can be better communicated. Does that make sense?

Matt: That makes absolute sense, and I call it paralysis by analysis.

So as a CEO in my company, I talk to my team all the time about all the data that we're collecting. So we can get overwhelmed by data, and so a lot of what I do is talking to each of my individual teams and saying, "Okay, what moves the needle [00:18:00] for you? And what is going to better whatever it is that we need to better?"

And then under that, how does that talk to the certification team? How does that talk to- Right ... I mean, my data team, what is it my lab team needs? Then from that data, what is it my certification team needs? And then from that data, what does the executive team need in order to manage by exception? What's going really well?

This is awesome. We need to go give some kudos to people. And then also capturing what all of a sudden is an anomaly that we need to dive into to ask more questions about. And so I was just having this conversation yesterday. I had a board meeting, and I said to my board, like, "What data do you need?" And we need to be able to provide that in some sort of dashboard that we can report to.

And then I said to my COO, like, he's like, "Well, I could be in this data. I love being in this data all the time." And I said to him, I said, "Yes, but I don't want you in that data all the time. You being knee-deep in all of the data all of the time [00:19:00] is not the best use of your time." Right. Yeah. But having some sort of dashboard that then you can see, oh, something's off here in maybe not real time, but within a day, a week, and then being able to dive into that data and seeing, then that's the best use of your time.

So you're looking at it at the forest level and saying- Wisdom ... "Here are the things that I see when I'm looking at data. Here's what I can then go to the floor and find out that something's not off, and I can pinpoint where that is." Is that what you're kinda saying?

Azure: These structural conditions, they're just inherited over time, legacy for talking companies that have been around for a while.

I also think this applies for startups. I think anyone who wants to start a food business needs to be having this conversation with the small business center when they're even having the idea of running a food business, because you can't avoid it, right? Like this is a structural integration [00:20:00] that is necessary.

So I think what can happen is you have the data coming in, and you have maybe your... Whoop. Alarm. You have your preventative maintenance data coming in, and you have your sanitation data coming in, you have holds and things like that. I think being able to see where these reoccurring problems are centralizing, instead of looking it at as a preventative maintenance problem, where is that feeding in with, say, operational efficiency on the line?

Now, do we have, if you fix the equipment, could you solve like 99% of your problems? But it's difficult for companies to decide where to put that investment, and so I feel like if we can give them a target, and this target is going to touch all of these different smaller systems in a way that will help them integrate and, like you said, that sort of pathway of communication so that [00:21:00] everyone that needs to be part of it is a part of it, and making sure that information can flow in the direction that it's designed to flow, and capture the information as it actually is instead of sugarcoating it and trying to look at the bigger picture.

Matt: One of the things that Francine and I talk about all the time is, 'cause you had mentioned this previously in talking with us, that food safety quality should be involved in a lot of these decisions early on. And in my previous experience running auditing companies and stuff like that, I would have conversations with the operations executives, and the owners and CEOs and stuff like that, and I'd be like Did you have food safety involved in this before you decided to do this?

And they're honest with me because I wasn't the auditor, and they'd be like, "No." And I'd be like, "Okay, why? What was the reason why?" And they-- Because these people just say no all the time. And how do you see that with the culture? 'Cause I think that [00:22:00] there is a problem when food safety quality people just stop everything all the time, then they just become white noise that nobody listens to.

But their job is to find risk both as it's happening and before it happens. So two different things, two different processes, same type of thing, minimize risk. How do you coach food safety people on how to communicate to executives on not just saying no, but this is an idea, but have you thought of doing this or this or this or this instead, or something like that?

How do you coach people in that?

Azure: I think it's important to, you know, first thing is kind of being able to step into, you know, understanding what the priorities are. Know your audience. What are their priorities? And being able to say- I mean, wouldn't you want to get your no earlier on rather than after you've already dumped a bunch of money into it and you're cutting the walls down so you can fit it into your floor?

That's a [00:23:00] really bad time to find out that there were limitations. And the thing with food safety and quality is that we're- of course, there's a lot of intuition and risk and being able to have the foresight to see, be proactive, be able to pay attention to what's going on and see how that might impact your system.

That's another weight that food safety and quality people are having to carry. So it's you- that's why you need to build it into the system, so that your system is built in a way that can hold that and not put all the weight on someone whose skill set may be technical, or it may be just training or in- especially as food safety and quality and regulatory grows, and we now have many different hats people wear within that space.

You need a diverse set of skill sets for that. And then to put the added pressure of you need to build the system, maintain the system, you're [00:24:00] also responsible for changing the culture, but we have all these sort of conditions that we operate under in real time that make that very challenging. So if they don't have the skill set to be able to get the message to executive leadership of the way that they can minimize risk in their operations, if you can't do that, it has to be built into the system so that you're not putting that weight on people to carry.

This is, it's a difficult job. It's a really difficult job.

Francine: And these things, they're not

Azure: being

Francine: negative. They're being realistic. That's right. They're being helpful. Right. And that's, that's what they've learned. Mm. It's what they have the ability to do, and they're really trying to save you.

Matt: Let's not lump everybody into this, because there's a lot of negative food safety people, and there's a lot of pe- food safety people that are not negative.

And so there's- I've come across a lot- But again- ... of food safety people- When you say- ... in my career that will say no

Francine: to

Matt: everything ... "

Francine: Look, if you do this, if you do this, this, this is what could happen."

Matt: Yes. Things

Francine: that could happen. That's not negativity. That's [00:25:00] real world. That's looking at what the end result could be.

Maybe they're not saying it in a positive manner. Maybe some of it's frustration.

A lot of it's frustration. I think a lot of it is. A lot of it's frustration. But that's what I'm saying. I'm not lumping them together, but this is what I'm saying.

Matt: Yes. Here's where the frustration is, and I, I think, Azure, you'll agree with me as well, is- Okay, so let's say, let's use your situation or story of now they're opening up a second building.

And so now that food safety manager that is in charge of the whole food safety and quality program, he or she may have a team of people, but their whole job is to manage food safety and quality in this one building. And then they're like, "Okay, we're gonna open up this second building, and now we're adding this job of you having to help us with the risk."

And they're like, "This is not my skill set." So th- they may just say no, but that's where the skill set should be, we should bring in another resource. That, that is somebody who can, that is a food safety professional that [00:26:00] understands how to open up and build another building or add on to the building that we have, or remodel the building that we have, and can see all the different potential risks in that while it's being developed.

And it's just, it's a short-term resource that is added to my team to help with this process. Yeah.

Azure: I think a business needs to understand what their limitations already are. If you've got people that are wearing a lot of hats, what are all those hats? And when are they wearing them, and how do they know which hat to wear?

If all of those things are documented and integrated into the system, then when you come into a situation where you're like, "We've reached our internal capacity to solve this problem," you know, like you said, the next natural point would be rather than trying to pressure people whose skill sets, time, and resources are limited to solve this problem- Find a temporary stopgap to be able to just, [00:27:00] to get the job done so that it's done right and you continue operating smoothly.

So I think a company has to even know what their own limitations are. They need to know what their people are really capable of. It is phenomenal when people are empowered, they come up with so many amazing ideas. I could not do the work I do without the knowledge and skillsets of the people that are doing it, and they love it when they're seen, they love it when they're heard, and they love being able to contribute to the company.

And I think that is where you, you know, back, kind of back to the training point, this is whatever methodology it takes for you to give people what they need, give them the authority to make the decisions that they are responsible for in their roles, a space for them to contribute and bring ideas to the team, then any training you apply is gonna stick because it's gonna integrate into their actual roles and [00:28:00] contributions.

So it's... You know, and training's another one of those things where a company often is limited there. The person responsible for the training doesn't have any formal training. So they struggle. Adult learning is very different, and we're not all built for it.

Matt: So in your career, I mean, you've, you've worked with produce, you've worked with beef, you've worked with seafood, you've worked in seasoning.

You worked for a lab? You worked at Genesta? I did,

Azure: yes.

Matt: Which is in San Jose, that lab?

Azure: Correct. I tried business development out for a spell there.

Matt: Yes. Isn't that fun, business development?

Azure: Well, it got me out of the facility. I got to go to conferences for the first time. Like, whoa, my people. This is my people.

And it exposed me to a lot of other companies and the types of issues that they were having, so my whole goal was to eventually do what I'm doing now. There's always more to learn, and business development [00:29:00] had a very consultative element to it. It was a lab that I was familiar with and had used, and so I was able to work with people and solve their problems from that standpoint.

And you know, every step takes you closer to wherever you're gonna end up.

Matt: Yeah. So of the lab side, I mean obvi- Genesta does... W- were you doing, like, a bunch of pesticide testing and stuff?

Azure: I was working with facilities to get their testing programs in order. So I mean, there was... The lab does a huge number of different types of testing, so it just depended on the company, what they needed.

They're in San Jose, and so there were companies on the other, on the East Coast that would still use them, and so just getting their testing programs aligned and stuff. I did that for about 10 months, and yeah, they got me out of my shell- ... to talk to people.

Matt: I actually outsourced to Genesta, so. Oh,

Azure: okay.

Matt: Yeah. I know Abraham really well. Some of the [00:30:00] peeps, so, uh, early in my career started at Primus Labs, bunch of Primus Labs people moved over to AGQ, bunch of AGQ people moved over to Genesta, and I just followed them around. So I was like, "Who's Genesta? Why are my peeps that are, like, Primus and AGQ moving over there?"

And it's a small world. That's what people don't realize in the food safety world, is that it's a very big world. You look at the, just the TIC industry globally, testing, inspection, and certification is massive. Yes. But there's really, there's really some key few people, and I say hundreds of people, that have, like, worked at a bunch of these differ- it's just like a family.

Azure: It is very niche. And we all know each other or someone that knows someone. The networking is strong in this industry, for sure.

Matt: Yeah. Like Abraham, for instance, I love Abraham, but I met his dad 24 years ago at Limoneira, and his dad was like, "I've been the operations manager for [00:31:00] Limoneira for 20-something years, and my dad worked at Limoneira, and now, like, my job is food safety now.

So what do I do?" I call, he calls me up and I'm like, "All right, I'll go meet you over there." It's the- And then here's the trainings you need to go to, here's what you... People forget food safety is not, has really started being implemented really- Right ... widescale over the last 20 years. So a lot of key people in food safety had to really learn from the ground up.

It wasn't like they got their degree in biology or chemistry or something like that. A lot of them got their, a lot of them didn't even get a degree, and some of them are, like, the best food safety people I know. They have their PhD in hard knocks.

Azure: Yes. I feel like somebody should give us an honorary hood or something for that.

It is well-earned. If you haven't worked 24 hours 'cause you had to do the overnight CIP and sanitation, [00:32:00] you haven't really, you haven't really gotten in there enough.

Matt: Yeah, and then you had, first off, you had to go, "What is a CHP and sanitization?" Google. "How do I go to get the resources to figure out how to do this correctly?"

Training. And then, "How do I convince my executive team to allow me to go do this training to learn how to do this and then implement it?" That type of stuff was happening 20 years ago, 15 years ago. Now, there's a lot of companies that are like, "Oh, what is an SQF?" Right? "I, I need to do this SQF thing, and I need to have an SQF practitioner."

And they're like, "Well, we have 20 people on the team. We don't have an SQF practitioner." And it ends up being, like, the executive assistant that's been there for 20 or 30 years that runs the whole entire ship in the background, and the CEO is like, "You're gonna be the food safety person now. Go figure out how this is done."

And she or he goes and figures it out and comes back and then gets it done because everybody loves this person, but also is [00:33:00] deeply scared of this person. Y- those are, like, the best food safety people.

Francine: When I started, they were sending us to Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, and we were learning from whoever they brought in to teach us whatever it was we needed to be taught.

Azure: And everyone was learning at the same time. Even the people that are responsible for doing the audits and things are learning in real time. What does this even mean? What does it look like once it's implemented? And I would say we've gotten so much better with guidance. And people

Francine: that were creating the audits.

Azure: Right.

Matt: Yeah.

Azure: And now- We were literally creating the audits ... I think we've just got a lot of people that are catching up, and that they didn't fall into any of the formal programs, and we're just adding more and more formal programs, so we still have people That have been doing it for 40 years that are just now coming up into the point where if you want to keep doing that, you're gonna have to, to make a change.

And th- and that's much [00:34:00] harder to do than if you have the opportunity to start with it

Matt: Now we're getting to the point where it is becoming sophisticated. There are still companies that are coming on board that really don't know what to do, which is fantastic because they're learning as opposed to just keeping their head buried in the sand.

But there's also a lot of companies that have been doing it for now 10, 20 years, and they're needing to get to that next level. So we have collected all this data. What does it mean? After what does it mean, how do we use it? And that whole entire just getting better and better, that's where I think the food safety culture comes in.

It's like, okay, we've been doing this to- for like SQF. It was like we needed a tick box to sell to Walmart or Costco or, or Sysco Foods or whatever. We had to tick this box, and now we've been ticking this box for a long time, and now it's like, how do we change this to just ticking the box to really truly how do we know we're not killing [00:35:00] people?

How do we know we're not getting people sick? How do we make this part of that culture, and what does that mean? And that's an evolu- the next evolution.

Francine: How do we know we're not gonna make 10,000 people sick tomorrow?

Matt: Yes. Just as an example, Francine.

Francine: For example. Just saying. It could happen. Just throwing that out there.

And now we have AI coming into the audits, and that's just gonna be... Just when we think we know what we're doing and what is going on, AI comes along.

Azure: It's kind of like hiring someone that doesn't have the skill set. You still have to have- the person that's using AI still has to have a very solid and thorough understanding- I

Francine: agree with you.

Right? They need to be able to make sure that what they're using is correct.

Azure: Right.

Francine: And it's- if they're gonna use it to create, like say flowcharts or whatever, they need to know how to do that. So they can't just grab an AI platform and say, "Let's go to work." Doesn't work [00:36:00] quite like that.

Matt: Yeah. How do you see AI?

What are some practical things for AI in the food safety world?

Azure: I think it's probably one of the easiest things. Well, it's starting to replace Google and like our typical search engines. Even the search engines are using AI to give you an answer, at least seems that way for that. I don't know. Not a fan.

But I think what's going on right now, people who don't have a lot of time to sit down and read food safety news and food safety tech and like look the FDA warning letters and all the resources that we have that can tell us what's going on, I think AI would be a really great way to sort of summarize current events so people can have that, continue having that looking ahead, what's coming down the pipeline, what potential issues could be coming our way so we're prepared.

I think it has a lot of benefits, potentially synthesizing data and creating the trends. And I think I've heard conversations of people using AI to put those individual trending in to kind of get a better, bigger [00:37:00] picture. But I don't think that's going to give the detail that would be necessary to really focus efforts.

I don't know that AI's there yet, and I've noticed even AI seems to struggle with the feedback loop, and if you're implementing change, how can you see that it's been effective? I was in a webinar for related to SQF module 10, and they were talking about if you have a sign, like a food safety sign on your wall for your people, that's one of your things that you're doing for food safety culture.

How do you know it's working? 'Cause we all know you walk in a room, you don't see the lady HD pile of stuff that's been accumulating on the corner of the counter 'cause you just ignore it as eventually it just becomes part of the background. If you can use it in a way that helps you bring out what's actually happening in the background so that you can bring visibility to some of the things, again, that have been normalized and you just don't pay attention to anymore, AI could be valuable for that if the [00:38:00] user could guide it well enough.

Right. So I think there's a space for it, but I don't think it's gonna replace anybody.

Matt: I don't think so either. We will make people more efficient, so how I've said it with my team is we're implementing AI. We've been implementing AI for a while, training my team on how to do it, and I said to my team, "Listen, this is not designed to replace you at all.

But it is going to be designed to scale." So as we are looking at what are things that you do that human error could be replaced by a machine, and so now we can have better, more accurate data, more accurate reports because there's no human error portion of it in there. And then as we scale, that will then, because when you have human error, when you start scaling that then all of a sudden it becomes a scalable problem, right?

And also, how do we then implement AI to be able to use our own internal data [00:39:00] that allows us to then go in deeper dive into something that then allows the human to see that and then make a decision, because it's not going to change any of the decision-making process. Let me rephrase that. It is going to change the decision-making process.

It's going to speed up and make the decision-making process by a human more accurate.

Azure: I love that. Yeah, it's kind of the workflow, really, and that's that communication pathway if you can... And I think AI is probably a beautiful way to integrate that to help get that flow from person to person, the workflow, so that it gets to the decision-maker faster.

And can be acted on sooner. I agree, because I think the kind of work that this takes for a company to really look under the hood and see what's going on can take a considerable amount of time, and AI could certainly benefit them in being able to identify things faster, for sure. But they have to be willing to probably swallow some hard [00:40:00] pills and look at the decisions that are being made and understand the work that it's gonna take to kind of reframe their perspectives, which is why I keep pointing up back to the be- everyone says follow the money.

You keep going upstream It's gonna come down to the person that decides whether or not it's worth the investment, and what's gonna be the ROI. And I think AI and all of this data that we've collected and being able to look at it as a whole is gonna better inform those decisions so they can be made faster.

Francine: Right. Well, and the output of AI is only as good as the input.

Matt: Right.

Francine: Right. Yes, garbage in, garbage out.

Matt: Right, right. Where I could see this going is right now there's a lot of dispersed systems. You have an ERP, you have a, a warehouse management system, you have... And some of those are integrated, some of them are not.

You have food safety data systems, you have maintenance systems. You have all these different systems at which data is going into which are siloed, and your [00:41:00] name is now changing the world. Microsoft Azure.

Azure: Where are my royalties? I was here first.

Matt: I, a lot of these companies use Microsoft already, and what I'm doing internally is building a s- putting everything into an Azure system, gonna have all of our data into there, and then being able to put AI on top of that, which allows then dashboarding and all this different type of stuff.

So now you can a- see all the data in one place, and you can, and Amazon has, you could use the Amazon server, whatever, and it's not that expensive. It really is not that expensive. And then you connect via API, it pulls the data into that system. Now you can have everything into one place, and then with those dashboards, you can also then put a chatbot on top of that.

And then you're like, "Okay, within this," start asking it questions with your own internal data, and then it starts spitting out results based upon what's all in there. The whole, all of your data from many years ago now could do, and then you could [00:42:00] start really putting trending reports. When we moved from this product to this product, did we see a bunch of customer complaints?

And that's another whole system that marketing uses. And so that could be put into there. Why did we see customer re- complaints? And you start asking it these cust- these questions, and it starts pulling up data from there. And now you can make, and that's where I said, like, it is going to change the decision-making process, but it's going to be a human now that has the ability to look at all of these different systems and then start making decisions based upon that, and then making ultimate change within the facility based upon that.

Azure: I love that. Yes, absolutely. Because like you said, it's all fragmented, and you have one department focusing on one thing and another department focusing on another thing, and it's really difficult to see that you might have Three out of five departments struggling with the same outcomes from a decision that was made earlier, and you would be able to have that [00:43:00] all in front of you to be able to see, "Oh my gosh, we did this, and then all these people went up in flames.

So what about this decision had this effect and how..." Yeah, so I think that's where it's going. It's the systems mindste- set. We've been very individual and isolated, and it's kind of siloed, and bringing those things together to tell the wholer story, I think is gonna be what it takes to really implement change.

Matt: I love it.

Azure: Yeah.

Francine: I do too.

Matt: All right. Well, we're coming to time here, and this was exactly what Francine and I thought it was going to be, which is a fantastic conversation. And so I am going t- to end this with this is not the end. Azure, I don't know if you know this yet. You probably don't, 'cause I haven't said it.

This is not going to be the last time you are on our show. We will be bringing you back again. I don't, we don't know why or when, but if you have something that you wanna talk about that you, like some new segment that you're gonna be [00:44:00] writing about or whatever, just let us know and we would love to have you back and discuss that, and we will- Yeah

be letting you know when we wanna talk to you again too about something that we're gonna be doing and we want your input in, 'cause it's fascinating.

Azure: Sure. I would love to. I... Well, you know, it's necessary. I mean, I've, I really enjoy listening to your guys' podcast. I've been following you for a while, and it was certainly weird to hear my name the first time.

I was like, "They're talking about me." But flattery, but I- what matters to me is that it, that it's resonating, and the more of us that it resonates with, the more... And then again, collecting the skills and experiences for everyone who's really trying to put w- work into this, we can do great things and we can implement change.

So I'm happy to be a part of it.

Matt: Amen. Beautiful. All right. Well, on that note, don't eat [00:45:00] poop.