Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

DEP E165
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[00:00:00] Matt: Why does a FDA Salmonella Mango report look like a page out of the Epstein file? Laughing emoji, laughing emoji, laughing emoji, laughing emoji. No context.

[00:00:13] Francine: None. None at all. None. That's all I, that's that, that was it. Nothing else.

[00:00:18] Matt: So I look at this and I said, huh, I haven't seen it. Is it all redacted? And then she writes, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot you don't read my mind.

I should have given you more information. Here's Bill Marler's blog's headline, and then she says it over to me. And it's literally the headline for Bill Marler's blog. Why does the FGA Salmonella Mango report look like a page on the Epstein files?

[00:00:49] 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 [00:01:00] sale. Join industry veterans, Francine l Shaw and Matt Ucci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't.

Eat poop. Don't eat poop.

[00:01:14] Matt: Hello Francine.

[00:01:16] Francine: Hi Matt. We are full of all kinds of fun stuff today, aren't we? For those that don't know, we often record multiple podcasts on the same day, so

[00:01:28] Matt: I'm positive maybe, maybe not You and I know like our energy level obviously wings and doing this now for. Just over three years.

This is three years in a month. You and I know the quality changes depending upon our, our energy level. And usually one of us is not tired at the same time. But there was a couple [00:02:00] months where you and I were doing a lot of things at the same time, and both of us were just kind of tired. And this is like absolute commitment.

You and I doing this almost every week for three years.

[00:02:13] Francine: It's total commitment. It is. People, I don't know that if you've never done anything like this, you can't possibly understand the magnitude of commitment that it takes to do it and do it. I wanna say well, but yeah, I mean, I think we do it well. And you're right, there are times, for whatever reason, travel schedule, and typically it is the travel schedule, work commitments, whatever the case may be, where you're just exhausted.

And it doesn't matter.

[00:02:46] Matt: It doesn't matter. And

[00:02:49] Francine: there are times

[00:02:51] Matt: for you and I to first off, we've known each other for a decade or longer now, and we've been doing this together for three years, [00:03:00] and we have other projects that we do together. To say there isn't conflict, that everything is rosy and perfect all the time is unrealistic.

Usually it's because I dropped the ball on something and so Francine has the utmost patience and stuff like that, and I could tell, like, I'm like, I, I know Francine, you are annoyed with me. And, uh, my apologies. I, uh, what? So I drop the ball. You don't even have to say anything. I know you're annoyed with me and if it was me, I'd be annoyed with me too.

[00:03:36] Francine: Matt, what? Why are you saying this?

[00:03:41] Matt: I'm saying this because I feel like the last month of episodes you and I have been both have had on point and it showed like we could see in our data. March was the best. Month we've ever had. [00:04:00] And usually what will happen is we will see a spike when Francine and I go and talk at a conference, and then we get, like, we gain a whole bunch of new listeners and then they download a bunch of new episodes and we'll see the spike.

And that's generally like, we're like, oh, okay. When we go to a conference, when we speak at a conference, we get a spike in listeners. And so we can, we can correlate that directly to that. Right. There's nothing like that for March. We just gained a whole bunch of listeners, so thank you as well. For our listeners that have endured us sometimes where our energy is lost

[00:04:37] Francine: and we're human, we're we're human and we're working on a lot of other things that people don't even know and that also is complicated and takes time there, there's that as well.

But we're human.

[00:04:51] Matt: Yeah, but there's no other reason for March to have been literally our best March, other than, well it could be too, that you [00:05:00] all listening to our show have just, have just kept listening and kept telling people and all this different type of stuff. But it's, it's really amazing. And that's the type of stuff too that gives Francine and I the energy to keep on going where we're like, oh, it's really growing.

There are listeners that keep listening over. Our subscribers keep growing and that's a lot of fun. So I was just saying that just to say thank you.

[00:05:25] Francine: Thank you as well. We do this together. It's both of

[00:05:28] Matt: us. Yes, yes. Okay. So we, this is the type of text messages, and this is not a bad one, so I'm gonna show it.

This is the type of text messages that I just, I just

[00:05:40] Francine: don't send bad text messages.

[00:05:42] Matt: We do not send bad text messages, but we do say things that I probably wouldn't wanna say on air.

[00:05:48] Francine: Well, okay. Okay. I thought you meant like mean. No,

[00:05:53] Matt: no, no, no. But I get this text message from Francine early this morning.

'cause I work really, I start working really early. So Francine, [00:06:00] when it's, you know, normal working day time for Francine, she'll be texting me, which would be considered really early. And I'm up. And so she sends me this, but

[00:06:08] Francine: I knew you were up. Yes.

[00:06:09] Matt: Yeah. 'cause I wake up really early, right? Why

[00:06:11] Francine: does

[00:06:13] Matt: a FDA salmonella mango report look like a page out of the Epstein file?

Laughing emoji, laughing emoji, laughing emoji, laughing emoji. No context.

[00:06:24] Francine: None at all. That's all. I, that's that was it. Nothing else.

[00:06:29] Matt: So I look at this and I said, huh, I haven't seen it. Is it all redacted? And then she writes, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot you don't read my mind. I should have given you more information.

Here's Bill Marler's blog's headline, and then she says it over to me. And it's literally the headline for Bill Marler's blog. Why does the FGA Salmonella Mango report look like a page on the Epstein files?

[00:06:55] Francine: So wait a minute. So then we start talking about this before the podcast and Matt's like, [00:07:00] whatcha talking about I didn't respond to your text.

I have no idea what you're even talking. I'm like, yes you did.

[00:07:06] Matt: We've known and worked with each other so long that Francine will just send me text messages that have zero context in it and to say to her like, I feel sorry for Tim. 'cause I have the same conversation with my wife for t almost 25 years now, and we've known each other since we were like 15, 16.

I cannot read my wife's mind as much as she thinks I can read her mind, I cannot read her mind and I'm positive Tim cannot read your mind. But for some reason you think via text messages, I could just read your mind.

[00:07:41] Francine: It's everybody in my life. It's a, it's a personality thing. I did just everybody in my life and they, they all.

Understand, but every now and then Tim will just look at me and be like, it doesn't happen a lot, but every now and then, he'll, I also change and I just did it subjects, [00:08:00] med sentence every, and he'll look at and say, what the hell are you talking about? I've already had part of the conversation in my head.

[00:08:12] Matt: Okay. Answer the question that I had asked her and then she responded with, oh, that's right. I forget. You can't read my mind. Yes. So in Bill Marler's blog, which you know, in normal Bill Marler way, his title is, why does an FDA Salmonella Mango Report look like a page from the Epstein files? And yes, my conclusion was correct.

It's all redacted. And so he shows it on his blog, which is hilarious to see. It's crazy how anything gets stuck. And the poor FDA like,

[00:08:49] Francine: wait a minute, it's not just the redacted FDA file. You go down below and the Epstein file is right underneath it.

[00:08:59] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So he [00:09:00] gives an example of the redacted on the Salmonella St.

Paul Mango. Thing from November, 2025. And so he is showing it and he shows, here's a page for the Epstein file. And there there's a link in here. 'cause everybody should see this. It's hilarious. And it's it's gonna take you five seconds to look at this. That's the, the only thing in the article is he answers his question.

Good question. Here's the mango report. And he shows the redacted file and the mango report and he's like, here's a page from the Epstein file. Then it's like all redacted, and then that's it. That's the blog. That's it. So it'll take you like two seconds to see the context.

[00:09:38] Francine: On the Epstein Fowler's page, there's five words, moreover, in that same vein, that's it.

That's all. Everything else on that page is redacted.

[00:09:50] Matt: It's full black line five times. Moreover. Full black line. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, [00:10:00] 9, 10 times in that same vein. 1, 2, 3, 4, and is the whole rest of the page so sad. You have to laugh at it or else you'll just get depressed.

[00:10:10] Francine: Well, well Ray, and so this is why we love this nan bar.

Sarcasm is like real, and he is right there like this. It's so ridiculous. It's like, you may as well just call it out because it is what it is. I mean, why provide us with the information that you, we can't do anything with?

[00:10:32] Matt: Right.

[00:10:32] Intro: And how is the industry supposed to get better when everything is fricking redacted?

Well,

[00:10:35] Francine: you, you, you can't, you can't like what supposed do with that.

[00:10:41] Matt: Yeah. I'll just read. On November 20th, 2025, FDA's Office of Coordinated Outbreak response evaluation Emergency preparedness Core was notified by the CDC of a Salmonella St. Paul cluster investigation on PulseNet. Everything's redacted. On [00:11:00] November 21st, 2025, state and local health departments began interviewing ill people with the CDC questionnaire By the end of December, CD.

C notified Mango as a vehicle of interest. On December 19th, 2025 FDA Corps initiated trace back on mango exposure of six cases from redacted points of service POS, including redacted trace back legs with redacted separate supply chains redacted. The trace investigation identified redacted common mango importer redacted.

Next sentence, lower line. Redacted firms could explain all cases. Exposure of timeline of interest redacted, identified the exact source, not possible due to the absence of brand information and detailed product information of shopper records, case confusing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then it goes, increased screening was implemented for redacted suppliers of mango to redacted samples were not [00:12:00] collected due to the timing of identification of the firms at the end of the harvest season in redacted.

Due to a strong epidemiology call, association of Traceback versions of this outbreak was confirmed to be associated with the mango from redacted. This outbreak results in 56 cases of reported in redacted states redacted.

[00:12:21] Francine: You might as well not sent anything out to the public. I mean, what

[00:12:26] Matt: I, maybe this wasn't public, actually, this is, this may have been something that was just pulled.

[00:12:30] Francine: Did he get it from like the Freedom of information somewhere? Yeah. Or something, or, I don't know. It

[00:12:35] Matt: could been that, but it looks like it was, looks like it was from the FDA, I don't know, but it's either it's Freedom of Information Act that Bill pulled or it's, it was publicly available, but regardless, it's useless.

Absolutely useless. It's hilarious how his brain works though. He pulls things together

[00:12:56] Francine: that are associated, that are similar in ways that nobody else will make up. [00:13:00] It's hilarious. Sad, but hilarious. It did.

[00:13:04] Matt: On food safety news, which again, the link will be down below to this article, GAO, which is basically the government's auditing R, right?

So the GAO is the government auditing arm. GAO says FDA needs to give attention to conflict of interest policies. You think

[00:13:21] Francine: that's a novel idea?

[00:13:23] Matt: Okay. And again. Francine, and I know a lot of people in the FDA, the, uh, the majority, the vast majority of people in the FDA, they,

[00:13:32] Francine: they're good people.

[00:13:33] Matt: They're good people that are trying to do their job, and they are literally hands strung by so many different things.

So many different things. And one of them is people in the D don't want other people to know about things because there is conflict of interest. And I'm not saying a lot of them, but enough of them that it makes a difference, right. So in the article it says the FDA relies on more than 30 advisory committees to provide expert advice on [00:14:00] numerous scientific topics, but does not publicly share how conflicts of interest for committee members are determined.

That's a problem. That is a problem. So the GAO is literally, and by the way, the GAO stands for Government Accountability Office. It, it's like the auditing arm.

[00:14:19] Francine: Auditing, arm auditing in quotes, arm may have huge conflicts of interest theirselves is what we're saying.

[00:14:27] Matt: Right, because the, the,

[00:14:29] Francine: I mean, that's what we're saying.

[00:14:31] Matt: Yeah. The GAO also is run by committees,

[00:14:34] Francine: so how can we audit with conflicts of interest? Yeah. Think about that.

[00:14:41] Matt: I'm so conflicted on this Grine, and you and I, I think, feel the same way. I mean, we differ in a lot of our opinions about the government, but on this part we are pretty on point. At one part, we want the FDA to be able to do more things and be able to make life [00:15:00] safer or food safer for right consumers worldwide.

And, and that, and there's a lot, we were just talking with Rick by, from Food Safety Tech and Food Safety Consortium about the white paper that he published. From many really knowledgeable people about how to combine everything into one entity that makes things more efficient. But on the other side, if they're just gonna redact everything and there's gonna be conflicts of interest, it's very frustrating.

'cause how do you get a win-win win out of this thing? How do you get a win for the government, a win for consumers, and a win for industry on making everything safer. When if I wanted to design something. To make sure that no consumers could find out anything about what's really happening. This is exactly how I would decide it, have it so dispersed and in so many different government entities, arms that they can't work together and get anything done.

But on the flip side, if you combine everything together [00:16:00] and there's conflicts of interest and you can't get anything done anyways, it's,

[00:16:04] Francine: this is just like, you know, we have what, 15 governing agencies that oversee food safety.

[00:16:10] Matt: That's the federal.

[00:16:10] Francine: Yeah. That's why we have no idea what we're doing. Right.

Which is why we have no idea what we're doing.

[00:16:15] Matt: Yeah. But then if you combine everything into one big government entity and then it protects people or it, it, it protects companies because of conflicts of interest, then you're consolidating everything into making sure nothing gets done.

[00:16:31] Francine: Right. Right. But there's gotta be some middle ground somewhere.

I mean, there just, there's got to be, there has to be an answer. There. There just, there's got to be some middle ground and an answer. I mean, and let's talk about a conflict of interest, and I'm gonna go here right now, we have an outbreak with the unpasteurized milk products, and we've got Kennedy

[00:16:54] Matt: Raw milk.

Raw milk is another way of saying it. Yes.

[00:16:56] Francine: Raw milk. Okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. And we have [00:17:00] Kennedy Secretary of Health and Human Services, who's a known consumer of the company. That is allegedly responsible for this refusing to recall the product. Is that a conflict of interest?

[00:17:19] Matt: It could be, but there's a difference between being a consumer and then also being financially.

[00:17:24] Francine: Right? Right.

[00:17:25] Matt: Or being friends and being financially tied to a company. Is he

[00:17:29] Francine: only a consumer?

[00:17:31] Matt: I dunno. I dunno.

[00:17:32] Francine: I mean, I dunno either. I dunno, either.

[00:17:35] Intro: Yeah.

[00:17:37] Francine: If he's only a consumer, how do we all know that he's a consumer?

[00:17:41] Matt: Right. What I'm saying, do you know what, what

[00:17:43] Intro: kind of milk I drink?

[00:17:45] Matt: Yes. I'm not defending, no, you don't Kennedy at all.

But I am saying there is a difference between a lot of my clients. I consume their products, but if they an issue with the product. I'm going to let them know there's an issue with the [00:18:00] product, right? And as an entity that is certifying products. And before that, doing system certifications on brands and companies and, and facilities.

While I may consume their products, I never invested in their products even though I really wanted to. There were like, if I had invested in some of my clients' products when I thought I should invest in some of my clients' products, I would be way wealthier than I am now. Because I look at some of these, I'm like, this is absolutely genius.

I wanna invest in this. But I never did because of the conflict of interest.

[00:18:36] Francine: I understand, and I agree. The farms founder previously stated he was asked to be policy advisor on the raw milk at the. Health and human services under Kennedy as well.

[00:18:48] Matt: Yeah, and that's the part where you have conflict of interest.

You have a lot. And that's where it gets hard because on one side you want these committees, so there's 30 [00:19:00] advisory committees. You want companies that know what's really going on in the industry to be able to explain to the FDA, what's going on in the industry. Right? Like that is helpful. Right. And there's a lot of different committees with that.

The problem becomes when one of those companies is in the middle of an outbreak and things get redacted or not told, and you and I and Bill Marler have had multiple conversations of at least. One company in particular that is in a lot of these, or at least one of these committees, and is very, very active with government and industry that has recalls.

And for some reason, like we all know who it is. We, you and I and people in the industry know who it is, but for some reason they, they rarely get onto these reports. That is totally a conflict of interest. And if [00:20:00] things are like wic, WIC is very difficult to get into Women Infant Children program and there's not a lot of entities on wic.

And for years they were able to get away with a lot of stuff, some of these, and they build like a monopoly. And until like something huge happens where you can't hide it anymore, now all of a sudden it becomes this big thing. Right.

[00:20:26] Francine: Right. Well, and then it's like, why didn't we know about this before? Well, you know, you should have.

We don't know. We don't know, but you should have. And now it's a problem,

[00:20:37] Matt: right? Oh man. Yeah, it's, it's crazy. So the ga hoe kind of, kind of go out further. The FDA relies on more than 30 advisory committees to prepare expert advice on numerous scientific topics. Government-wide requirements prohibits committee members from taking part in meetings that should affect their financial interests.[00:21:00]

[00:21:00] Francine: That should happen.

[00:21:03] Matt: The GAO review found that the FDA relies on self-reporting by committee members to disclose financial interests. Regulations require FDA to check for issues that could give appearance. A committee member lacks impartiality. The GAO found that the FDA has waited more than a decade to act on those requirements about conflict of interest for committee members.

It's there. It's in writing. It's what the rules should do, but they literally haven't been doing it for a decade. This is a quote from the GAO report. FDA uses a combination of government-wide requirements and internal policies to guide its conflict of interest review process. However, FDA does not publicly share information on how to determine whether members have financial conflicts of interest and whether they should participate in committee meetings.

This is because FDA has not yet finalized [00:22:00] required guidance on a matter of more than 13 years after the law required it. According to the GAO report.

[00:22:07] Francine: It's complicated, Matt. It's complicated.

[00:22:11] Matt: It's complicated, right? You're using my words now. It's complicated. You're making fun of me, Prezi.

[00:22:16] Francine: I'm not.

[00:22:17] Matt: You're mimicking what I said.

Literally Rick Byers is like, what do you think? Prezi? Do you think this has been good for consumers? Or do you think this has worked? And then you're like, no, and nothing pans over to me. And I'm like, it's complicated. Well, yeah. So the Senate Appropriations Committee report on a provision for DAO to review how the FDA addresses conflict of interest for advisory committees.

The report describes the FDA's advisory committee, conflict of interest, policies and review policies to examine the extent of which the FDA public shares its conflict of interest policies for advisory committees. That is a whole lot of words that are like, you still haven't done your job.

[00:22:59] Francine: And [00:23:00] we don't plan to anytime soon.

[00:23:01] Matt: So here's the gaos recommendations to the FDA. There's three recommendations, which basically are like, Hey, you've been needing to do this for 13 years. Why don't we just give you three bullet points of things that you should write up real quick, get your committee together and do this for us please. So the GAO made three recommendations.

One. The FDA should establish a timeframe for issuing publicly sharing required financial conflicts of interest. Guidance. That's number one. Can you please give us a timeframe for which you're gonna do this? I know we, you've been needing to do this for 13 years, but can you let us know like when this is gonna get done?

That's number one. Okay. Number two, the agency should make public how it determines these conflicts for committee members. In the interim. One, give us a date of which this is gonna be done. Two. How are you gonna handle this until you have those rules completed for any conflicts of interest between that timeframe And then [00:24:00] three, the agency should make public how it determines conflicts and appearance issues for guest speakers.

Oh yeah, that would be a good one.

[00:24:10] Francine: Interesting. So this is the thing, when I was on the school board every year we had to turn in our financial information for the school board.

[00:24:19] Matt: Oh, well that makes sense. 'cause you guys. On a school board determine, uh, curriculum, right? Like do you vote on curriculum and stuff or no?

[00:24:28] Francine: Yeah, everything for the school. Everything. Right. But my point is, at that level, we're turning in financial information, but these people aren't, and that, 'cause that's one of the things here is the financial conflicts and that like they control a whole lot more than school board members do.

[00:24:52] Matt: Oh, way, way more.

Way more.

[00:24:55] Francine: That's my point.

[00:24:57] Matt: Yes. [00:25:00] Yes. Way, way more. Again. So like what the GAO is asking for is like, not even like, here's what we want you to write down in your rules to make sure that you're abiding by the law. Just when are you going to get this done? What are you gonna do in the interim? And then, oh yeah, you guys have a lot of public speakers that come in and talk.

I mean. Team, we are, right? Like we've talked at government conferences, how do you turvy conflict of interest for appearance issues for guest speakers? That will be fascinating when we get invited to a docket that we have to provide financial records

[00:25:38] Francine: and they're, they're paying these people to speak. You know what I mean?

So it's like how do you determine who you're inviting? Like what? What kind of, you know, what relationship do you have with them?

[00:25:52] Matt: By the way, our records are really clean government entities. Just letting you know, Francine and I do not get kickbacks from the industry at all. [00:26:00] I'm sure the industry would love to give us a kickback, so we would stop talking crap about them, but we don't.

We don't get anything.

[00:26:06] Francine: We get nothing. I think that's probably evident.

[00:26:12] Matt: So there you go. The files for the FDA looks similar to the Epstein files and the GAO is asking FDA, whatcha gonna do about conflicts of interest? When are you gonna get this done? Why is it they didn't ask? Like, why is this taking 13 years to get done?

Maybe they did behind the scenes, but

[00:26:33] Francine: think about how long that's been. Is that longer than fisma?

[00:26:37] Matt: No, it's not. Well, within fisma, FISMA has been 15 years and they're still getting that enact itself.

[00:26:43] Francine: Oh, so I see another few years longer.

[00:26:45] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. This probably was part of fisma. I'm not positive that it was, but I could see if it was like, I could see like FISMA was 15 years.

They had a timeline to get this done within two years. 'cause it [00:27:00] takes them above for the FDA to do stuff. It's now 13 years beyond the timeline. And the GAO is like, dude, seriously, what's going on here?

[00:27:08] Francine: You know, this is like policies and procedures. If you're not gonna implement them, don't write them.

[00:27:14] Matt: It's probably what Congress told them to do so

they

[00:27:18] Francine: didn't write well, you know, so well, again, somebody did.

[00:27:24] Matt: Yes.

[00:27:24] Francine: Yeah. And they didn't follow up. There was no follow up. There was no execution. So why bother?

[00:27:32] Matt: And we all know, I mean, you and I have had. A few podcasts on, I mean, there's no conflicts of interest with legislatures.

None. Congress, the Senate, the president, and the cabinets. The judicial judges, zero conflicts of interest. They don't even have to take bats. They're, you know what? When they use the restroom, that even smells good. They just permanently smell like [00:28:00] roses. Everything is clean. It's like Jesus. And legislatures, the executive branch and the judicial branch right up there with them.

No conflict of interest.

[00:28:13] Francine: Uh, I'm not even gonna all those redactions in the Epstein files, I did not just say that.

[00:28:21] Matt: Okay. On that note, before we get into any more trouble.