Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

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Matt: Dr. Bob from PMA was giving a training one time and he said that he had helped companies with multiple outbreaks and he said not one company wasn't a mom and pop family owned company. It could be a very large family owned company, but they are still mom and pop family owned companies. And I thought that was interesting because in the food industry, we think this could be this big company with 4 million pounds of chocolate being recalled.

It could be a family owned company, right? This snap chill LLC. With the coffee roasting, it could be a multi generational family company, and they could be just trying to scrape by and just trying to make ends meet. And something like this happens and it ruins everything for them.

intro: And nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans Francine L. Shaw and Matt Ragushi for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't. Eat. Poop. Don't eat poop.

Matt: Hello, hello, Francine! Hi, Matt. I just realized something. We're about to talk about something and I'm drinking it right now today.

Francine: Somebody said last week, well, they said to my husband, that stuff's not good for you. And I'm like, so I'm not drinking coffee much at all at this point. I don't drink that much soda.

I do need to drink more water, which I have here as well. 1 can a day, I don't think it's really going to hurt me.

Matt: No, I don't think so either. You're at more

Francine: risk right now than I do.

Matt: But I do have more risks than you do. That is correct. So I'm going to keep drinking my coffee because I'm addicted.

But for people out there, we have a very interesting topic for you today.

Actually, we have two. So instead of doing something crazy at the end or talking about a food safety myth, we actually have two outbreaks that are happening simultaneously right now that are intertwined, but completely different. And this will be interesting. So intertwined due to supply chain stuff.

Completely different due to product and the pathogen. So do you want to open us up, Francine? What is the first outbreak?

Francine: Well, I was just thinking for me it could be a double whammy because if you're drinking like a mocha latte, it could be a problem.

Matt: That

Francine: is

Matt: true. Or it

Francine: is

Matt: chocolate covered coffee beans, but I guess it's not full beans that we're going to be talking about.

Francine: So, yeah, two of my main. Loves here, chocolate and coffee,

Matt: chocolate and coffee. Yes.

So the two outbreaks, one is the coffee and it's canned coffee products sold under 128 coffee roaster names. And the company who does this is snap hill LLC in green bay, Wisconsin. So they're like the manufacturer of these coffees, their coffee roaster.

And they have it underneath a whole bunch of different company names, which is a lot. And we'll go through that in a sec. And then the second one, which is happening simultaneously is chocolate and the confectionery is class and quality chocolate of Madison, Wisconsin. So Wisconsin got a double whammy.

This is not good. What's going on, Wisconsin. And they recalled Almost 4. 4 million pounds of chocolate.

Francine: I can't even begin to fathom how much chocolate that is.

Matt: Yeah. That's a lot of fricking chocolate. Okay. So Francine, obviously if you had your choice, I know what it is, but I wonder if anybody else can guess what would Francine choose?

Chocolate or coffee?

Francine: There's not a choice. There's, I'm obviously going to eat chocolate, any kind of chocolate. It doesn't even matter. Just chocolate.

Matt: Like early on in our podcast, Francine brought up the five second rule and she was like, yeah, so do you abide by the five second rule? And I was like, Francine's mad.

No, you do not eat things off the ground. And then I went into a whole entire like scientific discussion about why I would eat something off the ground. And then, Francine, what is the one thing that you would pick up off the ground and eat?

Francine: Chocolate. I would probably dive in the river after a piece of chocolate.

Dive in the river? Maybe even the airport floor, I don't know. Just kidding. That's disgusting.

Matt: Yeah, so 4. 4 million pounds of chocolate.

And what's fascinating about this and why Francine and I were wanting to put this together was, This is very similar to like the Peanuts Corp of America outbreak.

Francine: You can't think about this and not think about the entire Peanut Corporation of America situation because so many products were affected by that recall.

And once that happened, it was like product after product came out, it was peanut butter and the ice cream toppings and then peanut butter filled pretzels. It just kept rolling because all the byproducts of the peanut butter paste. Were affected.

Matt: Yeah. And so when, when we're talking about this is like the Peanut Corps of America, we're not talking about the criminal aspect of that organization or even maybe how bad the facility is.

We don't know anything about the facility right now given the information that we have, but yeah, you're absolutely right. Francine. This is like that due to just, there's chocolate in so much stuff.

Francine: You're right. That's exactly what I'm referring to. It's just the ramifications of something like that, or just, well, like I said, at the beginning, you've got mocha coffee, you've got the chocolate covered, everything, you name it, we can put chocolate on it.

Matt: Yeah, so here, I'll give you some numbers and then you can riff on what would each of these things be in. So I'll just name off the different product. codes or the product information and how much quantity is being recalled of that product and you name off what you think that could go into. Okay. Milk, chocolate, crunch, bulk 844, 740 pounds.

Francine: Wow. Candy bars, ice cream toppings, right? People that are buying things to make homemade candy. The raw material itself.

Matt: Yes. Caramel flavored confectionary drop. One pound of that.

Francine: They recalled one pound.

Matt: One pound of this caramel flavored confectionary drop. I don't know where that was. It was a drop in the bucket compared to the four million.

That's for sure. Melt chocolate flavored confectionery coating bulk 87, 000 pounds. Wow.

Francine: Coating

Matt: coating.

Francine: Think about all those ice cream cones that you go to get where they dip the cone.

Matt: Oh,

Francine: that's the first thing that comes to mind for me is where they dip the cone.

Matt: Any bar protein bar or anything like that.

They have the coating on.

Francine: Would it be the same type that they. No, those are probably usually just regular melt chocolate. I was thinking those melting the chocolate fountains, the milk chocolate fountains, but that's probably regular milk chocolate. That wouldn't be a coding. Right?

Matt: But here's another coding too.

milk chocolate flavored ic coating 2 million 667 280 pounds

Francine: what in the world is that milk chocolate

Matt: milk chocolate flavored ic coating i'm gonna find out

Francine: that ice cream

Matt: oh it might be ice cream or ice cap coating. Yeah. Our milk chocolate confectionery coating is ideal for making chocolate bars and chocolate cakes, et cetera.

So it could be ice cap coating or ice cream coating, but yeah, like the dipped ice cream with a stick and they would stick that in there. Yes.

Francine: Yeah. The ice cream with vanilla in the center and the chocolate on the outside.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Francine: Yes.

Matt: Yes, exactly. But so much chocolate covered pretzels would be that like a coating around it.

And so just anything that you would think that would be chocolate covered.

Francine: What if they've gotten it all back? Well, I know the answer to that. Well, they're never going to get

Matt: 100 percent of it back, but whether or not all of their clients are stopping using this, like how is that recall being managed? We should just have Roger on speed dial for these things and just have them in and be like, put them on my phone on speaker and be like, Roger, did you do with this recall?

Crazy. Can you imagine how many suppliers they have for 4 million pounds?

Francine: And this is the thing about Roger's business. Like he's got the capability to deal with this. How many people have that product aren't using any type of system to even know that they have a product that's part of that recall.

Matt: So we have, yeah, or there's the assumption.

I'm sure that a lot of people on this that are listening to this, there's the assumption that this company is selling directly to the processor that is making this product. Well, that may be a lot of their business. It could be the bulk of their business. They're probably also selling to other resellers.

Right. What you were saying about this could be a home cooking type of a thing. So some retailer or some online store where you would buy confectionary stuff, they may be repackaging it, this stuff and selling it on their store too. So it's not like it's just one off recall. You go, you call them and they're like, take this stuff off of your shelf.

Don't be utilizing this in your manufacturing. Send us this stuff back. You're good. No, it could be sold, resold, resold, resold multiple times.

Francine: Well, what if there's a bake sale going on and somebody's making chocolate covered peanut butter eggs or chocolate covered coconut eggs or any number of things when they've purchased a quantity of this from some reseller somewhere and they have no idea.

Matt: Okay, how sick am I that we're talking about a recall for salmonella for chocolate and every single time we mentioned some other product, I get hungrier and hungrier. I'm beginning not to phase me anymore. Like chocolate covered peanut butter. Oh, that sounds so good.

Francine: We do so much of this that I don't think it, I mean, we could talk about chocolate covered rats and it wouldn't affect us.

Matt: I've had chocolate covered bugs. So maybe chocolate covered crickets.

Francine: Okay.

Matt: Going down the list some more, cause there's still a lot more white chocolate wafer. Yeah, that actually sounds really good too. 74, 000 pounds white confectionary wafer, 37, 675 pounds milk chocolate flavored confectionery drop.

There's a lot of different versions of this. This is called 10 M. I don't know how they distinguish it. Oh, and it's also in bulk weights too. 25 pounds. The other one, they sold in the 50 pounds. So that could be the difference too. Yeah, they're selling this in bulk, huge bulk. So white chocolate confectionery wafer, milk chocolate flavored confectionery drop 18, 000 pounds.

Snow white chocolate. What is, she dipped the seven dwarves in this or what?

Francine: You know, this is the second time the seven dwarves have come up in our conversation in the last three days. What is up with you and snow white?

Matt: I have sons that have dwarfism of different types.

Francine: In front of me again.

Matt: Wow. No, you're just short.

It's a different genetic issue. I

Francine: never know what's going to happen.

Matt: All right. So snow white chocolate, this is 178, 460 pounds. And then another white milk chocolate flavored confectionery in bulk anchor 474, 120 pounds, which if you were to add all that up equaled. 4, 000, 383, 201 pounds. And that one pound at the end was just their car.

Francine: One pound. I know that's, it's crazy. I give them credit for even knowing that existed. Quite frankly, you

Matt: know what? They probably didn't even know if there's like

Francine: over 4 million pounds where the product missing and you've got one pound of something, Give them a lot of credit for even knowing it's there.

Matt: Or like you should just drop the caramel flavor confectionary drop off of your item list. If literally you recalled, Oh, you know what? It's an R and D sample. That's why.

Francine: Oh, now that makes sense.

Matt: It's an R and D sample.

Francine: Yeah, that makes complete sense.

Matt: Wow. So I'm guessing this is going to go on for a while.

Francine: God, how long is it going to take to even figure all of that out? Does it say where they sent it?

Matt: Yeah. And I'll explain after I say this.

The recalled products were distributed through California, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Washington.

Francine: We're getting all of it here in Pennsylvania.

We've got the cucumber. Just send everything to PA. We've got it.

Matt: Send all your pathogens to Pennsylvania.

Francine: I read somewhere that we're the only state in the country that refers to our state by two letters.

Matt: That's true. That's true.

Francine: Nobody else, like Maryland, would never say MD.

Matt: MD, they should.

Francine: If you're from Pennsylvania, you just say PA.

Matt: And in California, it was four letters. We would say from Cali. Yeah. So are all the products only in those nine states? No, because they are distributed through those nine states. So that means that they're probably working with Other resellers of the product that then could be shipped out into multiple other states other than those.

Francine: So, because we don't know yet, I don't want to go into mentioning Brand names, but we've got several large candy manufacturers in the state of Pennsylvania.

Matt: Yes. Like the largest in the United States is in a town named after the company or vice versa. The company was named after the town, something other than they're the same name.

Francine: And then there's another one. Remember the guys jumped into the chocolate vat.

Matt: Out on

Francine: the other side.

Matt: He wanted to be chocolate coated.

Francine: And then there's some smaller companies as well. And then California has some very like niche chocolate companies.

Matt: We would go to the plant in San Francisco all the time.

It's been around there forever.

Francine: Yeah.

Matt: So wow. Yeah. Very interesting.

Francine: So part of my look. When I'm thinking that is, first of all, that 4 million pounds of chocolate in a week. I can't even imagine.

Matt: Yes,

Francine: the expense.

But now what is the impact of that going to be? Because I don't know that I've seen any of those brands do any recall.

So was it caught or early enough that they won't have any recalls or they're not impacted? Are they still trying to figure that out? Or because the chocolate is melted down to such a high temperature, it doesn't matter.

Matt: I guess it would depend upon the process. Does the chocolate. Manufacturers, not this chocolate manufacturer, but the ones that are utilizing this chocolate to create other products.

They're manufacturing other products, chocolate cover product products. Does their process create an expectation of a 5 log reduction of any potential level? And that's what pathogens that are coming from that chocolate. I assume they're not thinking that there is any problem with the chocolate. And so they, some facilities, if not a lot of them, or even most of them, may not have that expectation.

Are they bringing it up to a certain temperature over a certain period of time, or are they just quickly melting it and sending it out? I don't know. That is a very good question, and one we're not going to find out.

Francine: Well, I would think that we almost have to assume because there haven't been any recalls that I've seen on chocolate product that they must either that or they hadn't started using it, which is hard to imagine.

Matt: Yeah. With our current six sigma purchasing and process, I'm sure a lot of this has already been used. Right. That is a good question. And Yeah, are we going to see secondary recalls, which I think probably are going to be seen?

Francine: I think there have to be some, but maybe not from the people that we're most likely to suspect that they would be, for example, those candy manufacturers, maybe not from them, but I can't imagine that there won't be any.

Matt: Yeah. And I guess this is different. So it's not really an outbreak. It's a recall for a potential of an outbreak. Yes. Thanks.

Francine: And we talked about this several episodes about the number of recalls this year, and my heavens, they're not flowing down.

Matt: No,

Francine: they are not slowing down

Matt: about the next one that's happening right now.

Right. And this I'm looking at a fast company article. It was on food safety news too, but I'm looking at a fast company article that came out this morning.

A nationwide coffee recall is here to ruin your morning with fears of potentially deadly toxin. Man, does our media know how to create some insightful taglines.

Then the next one is Dab Hill has recalled hundreds of coffee products sold under dozens of different coffee roaster names under concerns of botulism toxin. Here's what to know.

Francine: Sounds like a great time.

Matt: Yes, right? Coffee lovers beware. Hundreds of coffee products are being recalled due to fears that they may have the perfect breeding ground for a potentially deadly toxin.

The coffee products are produced by Snap Hill LLC of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Man, poor Wisconsin. It's a bad month for them.

Francine: Doing there. Did they already pull their inspectors? Kidding. Sorry.

Matt: I think it's a different thing when it's a supply chain versus a restaurant. They're sold under different coffee roaster names.

Here's what you need to know.

Snap Hill has initiated a volunteer recall of hundreds of his products after they were found to potentially be harboring grounds for the toxin botulism, which can cause botulism. Yes. A sometimes fatal form of food poisoning, which is actually. Really nasty.

Francine: Well, and we've talked about different cases of botulism over the course of the last 15 months or so.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's not a good thing. No. Paralysis. Yeah. It's not good. Didn't we talk about this? California.

Matt: That lady who, the mom who got the cheese nachos and stuff. Yes. The nacho day when you get botulism from nachos. Nacho

Francine: day.

Matt: Nacho day.

Francine: What is wrong with us?

Matt: Yeah, our spouses ask that question every single day.

At least mine does. According to the recall notice posted on the website of the Food and Drug Administration, the manufacturing process used for the products led to low acid levels in the canned food. Low acid conditions can lead to the growth of botulism. No, if you don't already know, botulism isn't the actual pathogen.

Botulism is a toxin created by the pathogen, and the toxin attacks the nerves of a person's body, which can cause muscle paralysis, trouble breathing, and this other side effect called death. It's a medical emergency. Yeah. Not good. Not good at all.

Francine: So this is one of those things where, you know, it's dry coffee, right?

It's ground coffee. This is one of those things where people say coffee can't make you sick.

Matt: Oh, that's true.

Francine: Clearly, coffee can make you sick. In fact, it can kill you. This is another argument that I've had over the course of my, not argument per se, but disagreement over all my years in, Business.

Matt: Okay. So we'll post all these articles down below on the FDA's website.

It has a list of all the companies. And this is why we're combining these two together, the chocolate recall and the coffee recall, just to give you an idea of how big some of these things can get. These recalls could get there's 250 different brands of coffee that are part of this recall. Those 250 brands are nine pages.

That's insane. Single space of all these coffee names. It's crazy. And some of these brands you would know. Have you heard of Brandywine Coffee? Cape Cod? Coffee Hound? Donut Plant Coffee? Haven't heard of that one. Dreamy Coffee? I guess botulism could make you dream for a very, very long time. Euphoria? Okay, so Firegrounds?

I know that coffee. Yeah, there's this list goes on and on. It's crazy. It's just fascinating.

And this would be what a lot of people would call like a co packer, right? Like you have a co packer and this is one of the issues with the co packer. Like, I think co packers are great. I think co packers are like serve a huge purpose within the food industry.

Not everybody can have their own manufacturing plant. So you have to go find a co packer. I would just say, if you're going to use a co packer, I would go visit them. Look at the facility, understand their food safety practices, see if they actually have a third party food safety audit, see if they actually care about food safety before you put your brand underneath that copackers.

You're handing your brand off to these people.

Francine: I would say that about any supplier.

Matt: Absolutely accurate. Any supplier

Francine: there's Publix is right now having a recall for, I think it's four ounce packaged. It's produce. I'm not sure what it is, but some kind of produce and the perception with, if you don't read the article is that it's a Publix problem.

And while it is a Publix problem, because Publix is selling the product. It is their supplier that has the problem that perception is reality. And I got a few text messages and emails because that's people do text and email us when there's a problem about, Hey, this is happening or we get LinkedIn messages, whatever, and I started to do the research and it's this stuff came in and plastic containers, four ounce plastic containers, this, this isn't.

Necessarily it's you eat a burger at McDonald's or any restaurant and get sack. Nobody wants that restaurant to say, Oh, I'm sorry, this is a supplier problem. Our supplier gave us bad beef is the one that faces the problem. So, yeah, it's just I wish companies understood and cared more before the problem actually happened.

Before the outbreak or the recall actually happened, that company that's recalling 4 million pounds of chocolate cares more today than they did in April. No doubt. But you know what I mean? And I'm not being sarcastic. It's 100%.

Matt: Yes. Yeah. Well, they're like, I understand what the ROI of food safety is. This is just a way of you to spend money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

4, 300 pounds later. Oh,

Francine: Wish I'd maybe taken your advice or can, how do we fix this now? Well, now what's your expense? You know what I mean? 4 million pounds of a recall later, negative press insurance and everything else that goes, what's your cost now?

Matt: Yeah. And, and that copack, by the way, you're talking about arugula sold at Publix, right?

It was arugula. Yeah, and it was Green Life Farms of Lake Worth, Florida that had the recall.

Francine: Hey, this is what I've seen. This is the harm that it's doing right now. I would legitimately like to help you. And some of them offered to help just legitimately help. You know what I mean? And they always think there's an alternative motive when sometimes really just you want them to understand or don't want somebody, any, any people to get sick because some of them are very small companies.

I don't want to throw it out there that I'm working for free for everybody. That's not what I'm saying. Uh, however, there are occasions when I have done that.

Matt: Yes. Yeah. You and I both done things for free for people. Yeah. Again, it's our M. O. But yes, you and I both put a lot out there to help people knowing that is the right thing to do.

And we would want that help back to when we need it. So we do that. But one of the. Right.

Yeah, Dr. Bob from PMA was giving a training one time and he said that he had helped companies with multiple outbreaks and he said not one company wasn't a mom and pop family owned company. It could be a very large family owned company, but they are still mom and pop family owned companies.

And I thought that was interesting because in the food industry, we think this could be this big company with multiple outbreaks. 4 million pounds of chocolate being recalled. It could be a family owned company, right? This Snapchill LLC with the coffee roasting, it could be a multi generational family company.

And they could be just trying to scrape by and just trying to make ends meet and something like this happens and it ruins everything for them. So yeah, I find that interesting in this industry because everybody thinks the food industry is this massive conglomerate and there are huge companies within the food industry.

multinational billion dollar companies, but there are a lot like 70 to 80 plus percent of the companies are just small mom and pops.

Francine: They're just really small companies that it's some of them don't even know what the right thing is. I can think of one that I'm super concerned about locally. And there's a lot of questionable things that I know that they're doing and going to approach them.

I know it's not going to be taken. I would like to help you because I'm concerned that you're going to get in trouble, but I know it's not going to be received well because the perception is always that you're just not minding your business and you're trying to make a quick buck or something. And that isn't at all the case.

Like I like this place. And I like the people, but I'm super concerned. They're going to end up with a problem if they don't stop some of the practices that they're.

Matt: Yes. And actually, truly the opportunities that you and I have within this industry, helping a small company is not the best use of our time in terms of time to money ratio is

Francine: not at all, not at all.

But I just, I don't want to see them fail when I just, I don't know. Anyway, I'm sorry. My human side.

Matt: That was an interesting riff.

Francine: I saw something this morning that made me think about that. It was another post that they made on Facebook of something that they're doing.

Matt: By the way, that is Francine's biggest pet peeve, is posting something on social media that shows you having food safety issues.

Most of the time we know that there's a food safety issue, at least one or two, something's going on. In any great facility, there's always going to be something. That's why they have staff to help make sure things are better. But don't post it on Facebook, don't post it on LinkedIn. Then

Francine: you do make somebody said, you've got all this freaking evidence out there that yeah, we were doing that.

Sorry, the attorneys, the insurance companies, and when your insurance companies looking at you, they're looking at your social media. It's my God hire people that know what they're doing. The problem is the people doing this don't know what they're doing.

Matt: Well, the problem is that a lot of times when they're creating social posts.

They're not bringing their food safety team in or quality team in to make sure the posts are correct. They're bringing their marketing team in, or even for a lot of companies, they're bringing an outside PR marketing firm in that definitely knows nothing about food safety. And so then they're filming like bad stuff.

Francine: 100%. And they don't even realize that the things that they're posting are concerns. They just so need to be trained in those areas. And they're not.

Matt: So if you're using a co manufacturer, Or any of your suppliers. Go check on their social media and see if they're posting wrong food safety practices. That might be a good starting point to see if that would be a good company to go with.

Okay. Well, that was a very, at least I thought it was an interesting topic.

Francine: Yeah, I think it's very interesting because I don't think a lot of people understand how one small error impacts the great big picture. Who knows what caused that?

Matt: You're only as good as your weakest link. Always. You could be the greatest brand in the world.

You could have the greatest suppliers in the world. And then your co manufacturer could mess it up. You could have everything be awesome. And then you can have one supplier buy one item that their sub supplier, and then jack your whole entire brand up like with lead poisoning. You're only as good as your weakest link.

So not just your own food safety and your own four walls, but making sure that food safety down the chain and up the chain too. If you're dealing with somebody up the chain. Making sure everybody is actually doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Francine: You can also have a company that's stellar and doing everything right.

Everything's fantastic. And then that key person leads. a key player in that company leaves.

Matt: Yeah.

Francine: And you don't have anybody to fill that position for whatever reason. So now you're left without somebody filling that position for a couple weeks, couple months, six months. And now what's happening. That's oftentimes when you have situations like this.

Matt: Yeah. That is so key. Absolutely correct. Yeah. Which is why you need to have a deep bench in staff. Not five or sixty, but at least two. That whole if they die in a car crash tomorrow type of scenario. What will happen?

Francine: Training your replacement should never be perceived as a threat to yourself. That's a good thing.

You want somebody to be able to do your job for a variety of reasons.

Matt: Okay, well, I guess let's not eat poop or botulism or salmonella. But definitely don't eat poop.

Francine: Yeah. Stay healthy.

Matt: Stay healthy.