Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

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[00:00:00] Matt: The F FDA A should actually be renamed daf. It's like the drug administration and food. It's like food is an afterthought in the FDA. He needs food to love. Yes. So Bill Marler, you could make some more t-shirts. We won't take a cut instead of get the F out of the FDA. Just be saying change FDA to DAF Drug administration.

Oh yeah. And food.

[00:00:30] Francine: What's that other thing we're supposed to be taking care of? Oh yeah. Food.

[00:00:35] Matt: Oh yeah, that's right.

[00:00:42] Intro: Everybody's gotta eat. And nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil into 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 Reci for a deep dive into food [00:01:00] safety. It all wars down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.

Don't eat poop

[00:01:08] Matt: Hello hello Francine..

I guess we could start with like, we have a new sponsor.

[00:01:17] Francine: We do and it is so exciting. We've known them for a while. We've talked to them at a lot of conferences for several years and they are amazing.

[00:01:27] Matt: They're fun.

[00:01:28] Francine: They're fun. We like fun food safety people and chemical company people just are not individuals that you perceive as being fun.

[00:01:38] Matt: Yes. Alright. Yes, we are a lot of fun. So we went to that conference. We've been to a couple food safety conferences that are state, local, county inspector conferences. One of the dinners for that was one of my favorite dinners ever. It was like Blues Brothers and Dancing [00:02:00] on the patio that

[00:02:01] Francine: was in Illinois.

So not only did we go, we've been speakers at these conferences, which is a lot of fun. So, yeah, over the last year or so, we've just had a great time.

[00:02:13] Matt: Yes. Yeah. It's been fun. But yeah, so it's a chemical company, de vere chemical. The people there a lot of fun. They get us. When we were talking about doing like the mid-roll, we were like, well, do you wanna edit this stuff?

And they're like, no, you do you, we'll, we'll tell you what we, what we're, what we would like to highlight in the future. But in the beginning, you guys just do you. Sweet.

[00:02:36] Francine: I don't know, after the last episode we recorded, they may not be saying you, do you?

[00:02:42] Matt: Oh, that is so true. Oh my God, it's so bad. And then we're gonna talk about the FDA and the USDA.

So of course we're gonna talk about something political, but God, it could be the first, in the last week for.

[00:03:00] Probably not. Okay. So we don't usually say what the episode's name is gonna be, but I don't know. I really liked the name on this one. I

[00:03:06] Francine: desperately want somebody in Greenland

[00:03:09] Matt: to listen

[00:03:10] Francine: to us.

[00:03:11] Matt: In where? Greenland. Oh yeah. Francine and I were going through our map today. Francine was like, have you seen the map of the listeners in?

I'm like a numbers guy. So I always just look at the numbers for our podcast. And Francine's the one who always tells me like, have you seen the map? All these countries? So we basically, our show, we have listeners in like almost every country in the world, which is insane. And half of these countries, Francine and I couldn't pronounce, let alone knew existed, but okay.

Greenland is an easy one to pronounce and Francine and I, we don't care. You guys can stay yourselves, that's fine. But can you listen to our episode? There we go.

[00:03:50] Francine: There. I think you'd have to actually be stationed there.

[00:03:53] Matt: 56,000 people in Greenland, so I understand. Just to give you an idea, there [00:04:00] are more people in my neighborhood than live in Greenland.

[00:04:05] Francine: We're on almost every continent. Well, we are, except for one. We need you. Greenland.

[00:04:11] Matt: Greenland's. Not a continent.

[00:04:13] Francine: I know that.

[00:04:14] Matt: Oh yes. But we are on every continent. Although it's huge, the land of Greenland is absolutely massive. I guess we don't have anybody in the Antarctica, so we have, we need some scientists, I don't know, in Antarctica just to watch one or listen to one show so we can claim that we're in every continent of the world.

Yeah. Okay, so now can we talk about what we're supposed to talk about Francine maybe. So funny. Okay. Okay. So the title of this episode is FDA, spikes the Ball in Claims Success. So this was on food safety news. The FDA just came out July 10th, 2025 with a statement from the FDA, commissioner [00:05:00] Marty, the first 100 days of embracing Gold, standard science, transparency and common sense.

So we have Frank Gianni's quote, and he posted this on LinkedIn recently. I'm gonna go with, this is probably a direct response to this. Just given that he posted it the same day as the FDA posted their stuff. He didn't write anything else. So yeah. Okay. So let's talk about what the FDA is claiming their successes, and then let's launch into food under the food section of this.

'cause the FDA is Food and Drug Association, right? So there's one about food and there's one. Then there's stuff about the drug side of stuff. Okay. So on the food side, fixing American's food supply, and there's a bunch of bullet points underneath. One is petroleum-based food dye removal. Two [00:06:00] is improving infant formula, which I listen.

Everybody who listens to this podcast and knows that I have lots of children, and my wife and I do foster care for medically fragile babies, while my wife breastfed all of her biological children, she did not breastfeed our adoptive children or the ones that we foster. I actually think that's against foster rules.

We're not supposed to. So we get lots of infant formula. We have to sign up our foster babies for wic. Everything that they can get from Medicaid, we have to sign them all up for that so that when they do go home, which is always the goal of foster care, then the bio parents are set up for success with their kiddos.

So we get lots of infant formula. You and I have had multiple episodes on Formula. It's not the best. Okay. So I love that improving infant formula and where they're talking about improving infant formula is continued work of operations on stor speed, which I think is awesome by hosting an expert roundtable on infant [00:07:00] formula and exploring new ways to bring additional and healthier options without ingredients like seed oils and added sugars and heavy metals to the marketplace.

So of that. When we talk about food safety, there's a lot of stuff with Maha about these seed oils and stuff like that and how they're not good for our body over a long period of time. The things that are gonna kill you acutely are gonna be the heavy metals, kob backer, salmonella, e coli, that type of stuff.

My wife deals with this in the NICU with neck, the acronym for something that I don't understand. But basically if the babies. Ingest the bacteria in the infant formula, the pathogens, I should say. 'cause there's bacteria in breast milk. Then it just eats them alive with neck. It's pretty nasty. It's a terrible way to die.

[00:07:48] Francine: I'm missing the part where we talk about infants dying from formula.

[00:07:52] Matt: Yeah. It's not there in that bullet point. They left that one out. It's not in any bullet points. No [00:08:00] nothing with real food safety. Well, you and I say real food safety because we're thinking again about things, thinking ants. The pathogens that will kill you or the health side of stuff, which is also a safety issue, but it's a much longer, I'm

[00:08:18] Francine: sorry, you didn't even get through the bullet yet, but you went there when you started naming illnesses.

[00:08:23] Matt: It's just interesting. It's just not what you and I would think about in terms of food safety for the FDA.

[00:08:29] Francine: I'm not saying any of this stuff is bad. This stuff's all good. That's here.

[00:08:34] Matt: Yes.

[00:08:35] Francine: But they're sure as hell not priorities. When we have people that are dying from eating eggs this week,

[00:08:40] Matt: it's definitely a priority, but it's not what we would consider priorities, but it is.

It's what they ran on.

[00:08:47] Francine: Yes, these are priorities. In the grand scheme of things, they are important.

[00:08:52] Matt: These, what we're talking about here are definite, like long-term structural changes within the food industry, is what the FDA is focusing on. [00:09:00] Food Chemical Review is the next bullet initiated a robust, transparent review of chemicals currently in the food supply, such as B-H-T-B-H-A, an expedited review of chemicals currently in review, such as phthalates, parabens, and titanium dioxide.

So the things that we are talking about that are banned in like Europe and stuff like that, right? Mm-hmm. Like when we talked about the things that you can eat in the United States that are illegal in other countries is exactly that thing. So the titanium dioxide, for people that don't know, like on Skittles for instance, that makes the Skittles shiny, is titanium diox.

And then the packaging materials that could lead into food such as phthalates, paraben, and like BP X. There's like a bunch of different BPAs, different types of things. So there's like a lot of different chemicals that are in the food and we, I see it every day in my lab. There's a ton. It's not good and it's, I shouldn't say ubiquitous, but it's [00:10:00] common.

We definitely find these a lot. Okay, the next one is interesting. So grass reform. So grass is generally recognized as safe. That's what grass stands for. And exploring rulemaking to require, generally recognized as safe grass submissions to the FDA to stop industries. Longstanding practice of introducing ingredients to the food supply without the FDA's knowledge or oversight.

So right now, the way the process works is. Food scientists will find some new binder or some new dye or something like that that works really well. And then they do their own testing on this, and then they say, Hey, it's safe. We believe it's safe. And so that's why it's generally recognized as safe, and that's why we look at the back of an ingredient panel.

You'll see the ingredients listed are things you can't pronounce. A lot of those chemicals are generally recognized as safe, and so there's a whole [00:11:00] new rulemaking around that. I don't disagree with that. I think there should be a little bit more oversight into some of the stuff that comes on board, but it will completely change the food industry.

The next one is natural food dyes. So approved uses of three food coloring derived from natural sources, and then they're accelerating the review of other natural alternatives to like a blue. Al extract, blue butterfly pea flour extract and calcium phosphate, and they're looking at other natural alternatives for food dye, which is good.

Like, I'm not against petroleum, but I don't wanna eat it. It is supposed to be in my car. Petroleum is used in a lot of products, but yeah, I'm, I'm, I've been eating it. We all have been eating it for years and years and years, but if we can get rid of, that's fine. Horse spin of [00:12:00] Vaseline. You know what? I've never done that one yet.

Francine do use petroleum jelly on, on my kids' butts, but there's also pathogens there. So I wash my hands afterwards. I'm not sink it directly into my mouth. Okay. Began reviewing broken dietary guidelines. Launched the nutrition regulatory science program and partnership with NIH to better address highly relevant questions for America's.

Health does the impact of ultra processed foods and the effect of certain food additives. Yeah, that's a long road. And a lot of this stuff, like they're talking about, began the process of reviewing these things. 'cause again, like the conversation that you and I have had in the past, a lot of this stuff can't be changed without Congress.

Like they can't just say, you can't do ultra processed food anymore. The FDA. That'll go to court and it'll get knocked down because the Chevron law no longer in its existence. So the FDA just can't create rules. They have [00:13:00] to create rules that are based on regulation, which are usually form of rules based upon legislation from Congress.

And then the other one is defining ultra processed foods. We'll launch FDA USDA's request for data and information to help develop a uniform definition of ultra processed foods. An industry roundtable paving the way for additional study and action. Yeah. What do you define as ultra processed? Is milk ultra processed?

Uh, well, it depends on if it's raw milk or not. The pasteurization process is ultra processed or you just say it's processed, but is that, let's use milk for instance, and then saying, okay, we're gonna take away from the milk or cheese and the process for cheese. We're gonna take the WHE and then we're gonna use that and create protein powder.

Is that ultra process or does ultra process mean taking a bunch of ingredients that maybe process and then processing them again to create a protein bar, for instance? None of that's really been [00:14:00] defined well, what parts of these different processes down that line are we calling it ultra process? Well, that would be helpful.

I wondering what's gonna be left in the grocery store. Well, if any of this happens. That's an if, right? Because our government is not good at doing things quickly. If any of this happens, it will be a long time before this all changes. And the food industry has very powerful lobbyists. We joke the Food and Drug Association is literally like the two of the most powerful lobbyists are food and drugs.

So I guess good luck. It's been over a decade. Food Safety Modernization Act has taken over a decade. That's actual legislation. So the FDA's ruled and regulation that they've created over a decade to do so, we're talking about things that don't even exist in legislation yet. Okay, so should I read Frank Gianni's quote?

Yes. [00:15:00] Uh, I, 'cause I didn't, so I'm dying. Alright, so the FDA posted this and then the same Dayas posted this with no other contact. Just this quote, it's a big blue quote

[00:15:12] Francine: for those people who don't know who Frank Giannis is. Oh, yes. I can't, anybody that listens to our podcast has no idea who he is, but there may be people that don't know who Frank is.

[00:15:23] Matt: Yeah, so Frank Giannis used to, I think his exact title was Deputy Commissioner of Food Policy and Response for the US FDA. So he was like. One of the top guys on the food side of the FDA up until a few years ago and he, he's unique because he came from industry, he came from Walmart and Disney as like VPs of Walmart and Disney and food safety and then went to the FDA.

So it was really fun to see because he was trying to bring like real practical [00:16:00] experience to the FDA and I don't think they appreciate too much, but yeah. Business expectations and government roles are two very different things, so I know the FDA movement of tasks are monumentally slower than Frank was used to at Walmart, and when I say monumentally slower, Frank did a lot of stuff at Walmart and made their food safety program very innovative in a very short period of time.

So moving within Walmart, which is basically a bureaucracy, Frank was able to move that pretty fast, like brace, train fast. I'm not saying jet airplane fast. Let's say freight train Fast. Did he moves to the FDA, where things are like glacial speed. So I had to bring back Antarctica again. Okay, so Frank Gianni's quote, are we ready?

Yes. Removing contaminated food from the [00:17:00] marketplace is good, but it's not good enough. Investigating outbreaks faster, more thoroughly and revealing their root cause is essential to preventing similar reoccurring and future outbreaks. Frank Giannis. That's it. Mic drop. Yeah. Removing contaminants is good.

I agree with Frank Jannis. I agree with what the FDA wants to do. I agree that it is a good long-term goal over the glacial speed of the FDA for the next generations below us. But let's like kill off the current ones with the current outbreaks and the acute illness from pathogens and stuff, like. Can we also get that done?

I don't know. Can we do two things at the same time? Can we chew gum and walk? I don't know.

[00:17:42] Francine: So I just wanna point out that I had not seen his quote before I made my comment. Yeah.

[00:17:47] Matt: Yes. And it goes to show like Frank Giannis. I think, Frank, this is my opinion, I think Frank Giannis should have been brought back into the administration to run the [00:18:00] FDA for this stuff because he understands this.

Back to what you were saying, priorities. The priorities are not, let's not kill people quickly. It's how do we not kill people? Give them cancer and heart disease over the lifespan of their life, which is a great goal. We just did an episode on that poor guy who died of lister, oh, not died, who is dying of Listeriosis and bacterial meningitis because of listeria.

That really sucks and that shouldn't be in there.

[00:18:34] Francine: And in the meantime, what caused that could still be out there.

[00:18:39] Matt: Yes. They think it's potatoes from Mexico, right? But they don't know 100% that it's potatoes from Mexico.

[00:18:47] Francine: In the meantime, I believe they found, I think I saw another blog this morning that there may be more potatoes, so it's like, and cheese.

Do you remember the cheese just a few [00:19:00] months ago that there had been cheese that was contaminated many years ago and they just found out recently where that cheese was actually coming from. Do you remember that?

[00:19:12] Matt: Yes.

[00:19:14] Francine: Like it took years to figure out should we not get some of this under control and stop killing people from outbreaks where you know, you get sick and you die and have these lifetime ramifications.

I agree. All that's important, but babies are dying from contaminated formula. I want them to be healthy. I'm not diminishing that, but I think we also want them to live.

[00:19:40] Matt: That's a good goal. Francine, let's not kill babies. Let's not kill babies in a terrible way like neck is. Where's your parents? Oh my gosh.

I will never forget that episode that we just did a couple weeks ago with Listeria and the meningitis. [00:20:00] Yeah, that will haunt me.

[00:20:01] Francine: Well, and we did one a few months ago on Steria, where the woman had been married to her husband for decades.

[00:20:08] Matt: Oh yes. The guy who got it in the home. That's the priorities of the FDA right now.

[00:20:14] Francine: So instead of maintaining the inspectors and keeping the inspectors and the people that can help prevent this or not prevent, we're never gonna eliminate all of, but reduce these types of situations and help educate or just reducing budgets and getting rid of them.

[00:20:32] Matt: There is more stuff too, but it's, this is where.

Okay, so they're trying to modernize the FDA's model. Let's not completely beat them up, but like unleashing AI in big data, AI assisted review completed a successful first AI assisted scientific review plot demonstrating that internal AI tools can work greatly to reduce the time reviewer spend on mundane tasks and productive busy work.[00:21:00]

That's awesome. So that makes it their, the people that they do have for the FDA, which they may have less now that the Supreme Court just allowed the executive branch to just can people, we're gonna have less and less people, so that's good. They can, we can make them work better and faster, but can we use this, I don't know, for traceability.

That would be awesome. And the FDA has a ton of data, like a ton of data, and so much of it is just human brute force like. Getting, finding the data and utilizing it. And anybody who's ever worked with big data, like I, I've worked with Big Data for my whole entire career. So much of it is just figuring out how to utilize the data in a way that you can make decisions and that takes a ton of time.

[00:21:48] Francine: You can never eliminate the human element for some things.

[00:21:55] Matt: Yes,

[00:21:56] Francine: things AI is very good for. You can never [00:22:00] completely eliminate the human element. I'm a fan of ai, like for the majority of things. In fact, I have a test done fairly recently and it was so fascinating. They did the regular test and then it was reviewed by two doctors and then it was reviewed by AI and.

They showed me what was reviewed by ai. It was so fascinating.

[00:22:33] Matt: Was it good? Did it work?

[00:22:35] Francine: Yeah, it was. Yeah.

[00:22:36] Matt: It's prepping us to have AI basically do a bunch of stuff like they're already talking to you about this because they want you to see it and start actually trusting ai.

[00:22:48] Francine: AI has been doing this since 2020 and has gotten markedly better at it, but yeah.

Fascinating.

[00:22:56] Matt: Yeah. Okay, so back to this thing with the [00:23:00] FDA, the Food safety news. Did an article on this and then did the bullet points that are just food, right? Food should be split up from the FDA and have its own department. There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 bullet points for food. There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 bullet points for drugs expend so much more time and effort on the drug side, which I think is great.

We need to be making sure that our drugs are doing what they're supposed to be doing. They're not also killing people. It's a huge aspect of the FDA's budget. That food is just a Oh, that's right. We have food as well. Oh, it's the first letter of our acronym. Food [00:24:00] Drug Administration. And the FDA should actually be redeemed.

Daf. It's like the drug administration and food. It's like food is an afterthought in the FDA. He needs spiritual love. Yes. So Bill Marler, you could make some more t-shirts. We won't take a cut instead of get the F out of the FDA. Just be saying change. FDA to daf Drug Administration. Oh yeah. And food and what's that other thing we're supposed to

[00:24:32] Francine: be taking care of?

Oh yeah.

[00:24:34] Matt: Food. Oh yeah, that's right.

[00:24:37] Francine: Oh yeah.

[00:24:37] Matt: Food. Yeah. Test to monitor. When you look at these bullet points too, it's marketing, it's marketing. The food side of the FDA with Maha is marketing. They've changed it to a marketing effort of something we would like to get done in the future. Please Congress pass a bill to allow us to do all this [00:25:00] fun stuff of completely transferring the food industry into less processed and less chemicals

[00:25:09] Francine: that don't understand how it works.

Or that business has taken over 10 years, they're gonna look at this and be like, oh, that's great. They're taking care of all this stuff. We're gonna get this done.

[00:25:21] Matt: But then they don't take care of it. They don't do it anyways. Companies like me do it. By the way, this is like you and I are having these conversations about what the FDA is.

This would be fantastic for my business. Like what the FDA is doing right now is fantastic for my business. Being the certification and analytical testing arm of Clean Label Project. This is exactly what we do every day in and day out. And I understand that this is bad because literally I left an amazing job doing exactly what Frank Giannis is talking about 'cause Frank Giannis was on the board of that organization of helping people with [00:26:00] transparency for FISMA 2 0 4 to run a company that is testing these products for heavy metals, pesticides, glyphosate.

BPA phthalates, acrylamide and certifying companies that are clean. This is great for me, but I'm not sure it's great. Uh, it's great for the consumer. I 100% believe this is great for the consumer, but the FDA doesn't have real control over this right now. There's no legislation yet, and I'm wondering if they're just losing focus

[00:26:35] Francine: your wonder.

There's nobody to reel them back and say, okay, these things are important, and while these are things we need to put in, we also need to think about safety. We need to think about the American consumers and keeping their food safe because we don't want them to die when they eat their food.

[00:26:57] Matt: And so this is where I think the difference in [00:27:00] priorities are, because I know 100% because like.

This operation stork speed, we're helping out with that. So I know that they believe this as safety, and it is safety. Getting these things out of the food is going to make our food safer in one context, right? Which is you're getting these contaminates out of food, which should make it safer.

[00:27:27] Francine: Talking about two different types of safety,

[00:27:28] Matt: the secondary one is what kills you acutely And how do we make sure that product gets off the shelf as fast as possible so the less people die or get huge life-threatening diseases that are gonna kill them over a period of time faster, right?

Like that shorten their shelf life as a human. That's the other side of safety. So both of them are safety, but it's what, what is gonna kill you quickly versus what is going to kill you over a long period of time? And they're focusing on what's gonna kill you over a long period of time. [00:28:00]

[00:28:00] Francine: When they could focus on both.

[00:28:03] Matt: When they could focus on both. They coach could focus on they should. Europe does. Yes. Europe does.

[00:28:13] Francine: Many countries do.

[00:28:15] Matt: Yeah, Europe, a lot of countries in Asia, I'm not talking about China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, first world countries in Asia, they really care about this stuff. If you're looking at this playing catch up, which I agree is what we're trying to do is play catch up to other first world countries.

This could be a way at which they're doing all this research in order to ultimately enact. Legislation getting legislation passed, which then the FDA could then create regulations too. That is a lofty goal. It's a big goal. It's an awesome goal. Can we also focus on products that are actually killing people as well and getting those [00:29:00] off the shelf as fast as possible?

That's not on this list. Maybe they are focusing on. I don't think Freak GNI thinks they are. I don't think Bill Marler thinks they are. I don't think a lot of people think they decide. You know what, this is old news. We're just gonna leave that bullet point off. One bullet point would've been nice about bacteria.

[00:29:22] Francine: Well, it, I wanna say two. There's some companies out there that are gonna continue to do a good job.

[00:29:30] Matt: Oh yeah. There's a lot of companies out there doing amazing job. What? That wasn't too bad, Bob. I don't think we were too controversial. Francine. Okay. Devour Chemical, our new sponsor. Please don't leave us.

[00:29:47] Francine: I'm going

[00:29:48] Matt: to, okay, well, on that note, don't eat [00:30:00] poop.