Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

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[00:00:00] Matt: However, a number of these home caterers are unknowingly running a risk due to lack of essential knowledge. Good information is therefore important, so they're using, like Francine said, platforms like Instagram and TikTok to promote how to do this, how to make good food safety plans, how to cook the products with food safety, and has up expectations.

[00:00:33] 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 l Shaw and Matt Regus for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.

Don't eat poop.

[00:00:58] Matt: Hello? Hello Francine. [00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Francine: Good morning, Matt. Or good night. Good morning. What is it?

[00:01:06] Matt: Well, when you don't sleep for three days, I think it's all kind of rolls into one thing. I think everybody would think it's morning, afternoon, where you are. But yeah, we were talking, you and I last week. About all the different meals that you can get on like Facebook marketplace and stuff like that.

And my wife and I were talking about this and then I remember talking to you like at the same time with my wife, she like sends me these meals so you can get like a Facebook marketplace. And she, and I joke, you and I were joking, like who does this? And obviously a lot of people must because they keep marketing on there.

But what are some of the craziest things that you have seen on Facebook marketplace?

[00:01:51] Francine: There's so much crazy on there. I think probably the craziest stuff that I see is people that make stuff in their home and then ship it like [00:02:00] it's Blue Apron or something. You know, that's a whole different level of those places.

You at least have an idea what you're getting, that people are making things in their homes and it's like, well, I'll send it to you. No you won't. Or I saw one lady that was preparing. Meals in her home and her kid was taking them to school and selling them. Like how is that happening? Like it showed her, preparing them, this wasn't marketplace, this was a TikTok thing.

I saw it a while back and she was, had all this stuff lined up in her kitchen. She's preparing all these meals and are kids taking them to school and selling them. And

[00:02:46] Matt: if my mom did that as a kid, I totally would've done it. To me, like is it right food safety wise? Probably not so, but like I totally would've, I had to walk to school every day or walk my brothers and sisters to their [00:03:00] school, which was on the way.

My school was like two miles away. And on that route was a Thrifty's grocery store. And I would buy, I remember every day, like in middle school and high school, like my first two years of high school. I was stopped by that store and I would buy sodas at 25 cents a piece. I still, in my head, I had figured out like what the profit margin was, sodas, candy, and I bought Kool-Aid packets.

But anyways, so I would go and I take those and I would sell 'em at school, and everybody knew I had this extra bag of stuff that I would sell at school, and I would sell it. We had the lunch line, the school like really inflated their prices. It was like a buck was like a lot for soda. So I would sell my soda for 50 cents a piece, so I made a hundred percent profit on it.[00:04:00]

And candies, I would sell it at about a third of the price that the school sold it to, and people would just buy stuff for me. And I would also buy Kool-Aid packets and I would do people's hair. So this is like the late eighties. So people like write crazy hair and stuff like that. And I figured out, and this is before YouTube, like nobody knew this, you couldn't go research this, right?

Like you could go fight it online, but I knew that the, there was this dye, the food coloring dye would dye your hair. It would stay in there for a while, but it, it was like permanent. But I was staying there for a couple weeks. And so I would like dye people's hair as like a business, like in the bathroom.

And then the administrators shut that business down,

[00:04:46] Francine: I would assume. So

[00:04:48] Matt: well buy Kool-Aid packets and then sell like that as a service for five bucks or something like that. So this the Kool-Aid packets. You could buy like a box above, but they were like, I don't know, a buck for a box. And I would sell like for [00:05:00] five bucks to do people's hair.

[00:05:02] Francine: So this is the difference in personalities. You are dying hair and selling soda. I'm writing speeches for people 'cause they hated speech class. And doing homework

[00:05:13] Matt: on one on like, whenever I say this, 'cause I'm sure people have heard in podcasts all the time, like, like entrepreneuring, like I respect what this person is doing at the same time are they doing it right?

And so as a kid I just knowing my personality, if my mom or dad had some sort of like side gig of cooking and selling food products. I totally would've sold it at school as a kid, 100% would've done it.

[00:05:45] Francine: So when I was in elementary school, kids would bring these things and they were hard, really hard. I never liked them really hard round.

I think they were probably made in like cupcake tins. They were called moseys, and they [00:06:00] were made out of, it was either karo syrup or molasses, I'm not sure which. And they would sell them. 25 or 50 cents, but this is before there were any food code rules. So they're selling them on the playground. They bring 'em in little baggies and they would sell them.

I think you could make them out of either, because some of them were flavored, so some of them must have been made with karo syrup and others must have been made with molasses. But that's the extent of what was sold on the playground when I was in school.

[00:06:31] Matt: Yeah. And if it's just like molasses and stuff like that, like the risk is, and just sugar risk is really well low, but when you're on Facebook marketplace and you're seeing people selling dumplings,

[00:06:45] Francine: so,

[00:06:46] Matt: or salsa or something

[00:06:48] Francine: like

[00:06:48] Matt: that.

[00:06:49] Francine: We've talked about this before. You know, the place I get my nails done sells like pork rolls.

[00:06:57] Matt: It's happening a lot. And the, [00:07:00] so we're gonna be discussing something from food safety news, and this is like a Dutch survey on food safety news about home-based businesses selling food and them not knowing about the food regulation or just food safety in general.

It used to be like when we were. Before, like I've bought tamales, I buy tamales from my house cleaner. We were talking about that last episode. And then salsa, like I have salsa that's bomb in my refrigerator right now, but I know them right? I know them and I know how they, I know their house and know how they clean.

Like I remember growing up my grandmas, both of them would. Buy or like trade, whatever with friends and family that we knew we got sick from it. Then it'd be like, Hey, I think it was your stuff that made us sick. Or we might not say anything, but we [00:08:00] definitely wouldn't take that. Anything from that family again.

What if like you knew you would go over to, I would go over to their house. We would eat at their house. We saw what their house was like. It's different, but now. You can just buy food from like Facebook Marketplace, from TikTok. Remember that TikTok episode we had? We did the pink, what was it?

[00:08:20] Francine: Pink sauce.

[00:08:22] Matt: Pink sauce. Remember that? That was like exploding in people's houses.

[00:08:25] Francine: Yes.

[00:08:26] Matt: Like you buy this stuff off a TikTok marketplace and you don't know that. Person. You don't really know that kitchen, but you could just, it makes it so much easier to sell these products, and they're just popping up all over the place.

[00:08:41] Francine: And so many people assume if you can buy it, it's safe. They think there's some kind of regulations out there.

[00:08:50] Matt: Well, there are, but as we'll see in this article, not many of these people know it. And so this is a Dutch survey [00:09:00] from the Netherlands. You could equate this for the USA or any other place in the world.

'cause the Netherlands, although a much smaller country than the United States, is very similar in culture. Very similar. By the way, I love working with people from Netherlands. Oh my gosh. I've worked with like E either worked with people on projects or different companies or whatever from countries all over the world.

And I've worked with a lot of people from the Netherlands. Their personalities are very much like, this is what we want, this is what we agreed to. We're gonna do our part, you're gonna do your part, and then we're, this is gonna work out well, right? Like,

[00:09:39] Francine: and then we're gonna, I'll be happy. We're gonna get along and this is gonna be good.

[00:09:43] Matt: Yes. And if it doesn't work out, like if something doesn't go up, then you have a conversation about it. You go like, what's going on? Can you do this? Is the timing not right? What's going on? Yes, we've gotten these three milestones, we're stuck on this one. And you have a conversation before the deadline.

And then you're like, we're working this [00:10:00] out. And it's like, okay, cool. We'll give you a little bit more time. Just keep us in the loop. Everything's fine.

[00:10:04] Francine: Whereas a lot of other cultures,

[00:10:07] Matt: it's very, very different. Here you're like, no, we're gonna pay based on each of these different milestones. As you reach here, then we'll give you this and as da, da, da.

Yeah. So what I'm saying is we can equate what's happening in the Netherlands very similar to what's happening in the States 'cause it's very similar cultures. The Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands did a massive survey of 2000 different people and 2000 different home cooking type of entities that have popped up over there.

And according to the KVK, which is the equivalent of the Chamber of Commerce of Netherlands, so our Chamber of Commerce. The number of people starting a catering company meal, delivering service or baking business from home continues to grow. More people are doing this from their own [00:11:00] kitchen, often alongside regular jobs.

Like a side gig like you would do in the States in January, 2022, there were 4,332 part-time home caterers that were registered, but that has gone up to 8,000. 53 in January of 2026. So over the last four years, the amount of registered home catering companies in the Netherlands has doubled, which pretty law abiding people over there.

But I'm sure there's a lot of other people just like in the states that have not registered their home business cooking stuff on the side, and they're just like, it's just a cash side gig. Okay, so. Interviews with these new entrepreneurs revealed that many of them are not fully aware of the regulations that they must comply with, with working with food.

It is an estimated that nine out of [00:12:00] 10 are not familiar with the rules,

[00:12:05] Francine: so let's back up. Whenever I said they're arm to any, this is what I was referencing,

[00:12:12] Matt: right. When I was like, no, there are regulations. Yeah,

[00:12:17] Francine: there are. There are.

[00:12:19] Matt: If the entrepreneurs don't know that there's regulations and are just operating on the radar, then there aren't regulations.

Good call Francine. Okay. 100% accurate. Oh my gosh. Okay. So now they're like, the organizations that are managing this in Netherlands are like, okay. Now that we know that 90% of these 8,000 businesses operating at the house don't know that there are regulations, maybe we should educate them that there are regulations, which is also such an American thing, but I bet they'll do it better over there [00:13:00] because they don't have 50 states, thousands and thousands of different counties and municipal regulations that we have to deal with in the states.

[00:13:10] Francine: What starts with acknowledging there's a problem, they know they have a problem.

[00:13:15] Matt: Yeah.

[00:13:15] Francine: And they're publicly acknowledging that.

[00:13:19] Matt: Yes. That was a really good point. They're publicly acknowledging it and they're like, Hey, let's create some campaigns here. And they know who the registered businesses are 'cause they know it's 8,053.

So that's a very specific number. They didn't say like, oh, there's around 10,000 out there, 8,053, which means they probably have the email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers and everything like that of these operations.

[00:13:46] Francine: They're also, and I just filled out a survey and address this, they're also willing to say that, Hey.

Social [00:14:00] media makes it easy to promote this.

[00:14:02] Matt: Yes.

[00:14:04] Francine: My God. The government can use social media to promote food safety, what? To promote food safety with consumers so that when one of us say something, they don't attack us like we don't know what we're talking about. Would be great.

[00:14:22] Matt: Yes. And so what Francine is talking about is the second part of this article where they're like building knowledge before Operation stars.

So anyone who prepares processes or sells food is required to work with the SUP and food safety plan. New companies must also register with the NVWA, which is like their. Organization over there and the KVK, their Chamber of Commerce over there says that a large proportion of startups do not know about these obligations before starting their production.

A lot of 'em do not know that they have to follow a hass up and basic food safety and have a plan, [00:15:00] so they're like. Chamber of Commerce over there says you can start small from home without major investments. Consumers are also increasingly, uh, appreciating local, homemade and artisan food. However, a number of these home caterers are unknowingly running a risk due to lack of essential knowledge.

Good information is therefore important, so they're using, like Francine said, platforms like Instagram and TikTok to promote how to do this, how to make good. Food safety plans, how to cook the products with food safety and has up expectations. And so they're like creating videos and stuff to do this, which in the US federally would be like I, not impossible, but they would first have to do like a five year study.

It would probably take them like five years to actually have the data. And by the time the data came out, it's five years too late. Then they would have to spend another year putting [00:16:00] together some sort of. Plan on how to do this, and then they'd have to send it out for comments. And then 90 days later they receive thousands of comments and they'd have to reiterate whatever it is they came up with, which would take another 18 months.

Then they would have to then implement it, and it would take another year before something happens federally, it's like impossible. So locally, which Francie you dealt with? You could do it in a county, right? Like you could do this in a county basis pretty quickly, but all that does is affect your county or your municipal area, and someone from another county could be selling food, or another city could be selling food into your county and you have no control over overnight.

It's fascinating. I mean, I love Federalism as a policy, but when it comes to this type of stuff, it's like, come on, can we do things faster at a federal level? That [00:17:00] just makes sense. Can we just do something that makes sense?

[00:17:05] Francine: And it's not important until it affects somebody that you know or care about. You know what I mean?

Like the whole food safety thing.

[00:17:14] Matt: Yeah. Facebook marketplace. I, I'd say to anybody, let's listening to this, if you've never done this search for, like search for food or whatever on Facebook marketplace. I just see what pops up and it will blow your flipping mind. Things I know are high risk are being sold on Facebook marketplace and the pictures, some of these pictures look terrible.

You're looking at it going like,

[00:17:43] Francine: sometimes it's you think, oh, somebody's going to die.

[00:17:46] Matt: Yeah. Yeah, and I've seen pictures 'cause they're showing what they're selling in this kitchens and there's like all over the place, like literally stuff. And I'm like

[00:17:57] Francine: in the comments 100 Bill Marler. [00:18:00]

[00:18:01] Matt: Yeah. Put in the comment section that, yeah, yeah.

[00:18:05] Francine: We're laughing but it's truly not funny. But how do you control it? Do you remember one time there was that in the Facebook feed there was a question about eggs or a comment about eggs, and I answered it. And the personal attack was,

[00:18:18] Matt: yeah, when we're trying to help save people's lives on a comet and they'd be like, okay, nevermind.

We're not comet trolls.

[00:18:27] Francine: No, not at all. It was just innocently answered. A question,

[00:18:31] Matt: didn't you do about washing your chicken? Wasn't that the one, didn't you do like a thing about washing chicken?

[00:18:37] Francine: The comment that I answered in somebody else's feed was about eggs. I don't remember specifically. It was. I have posted in my own Facebook page for my company, things about washing chicken and stuff like that.

Not on anybody else's. No.

[00:18:55] Matt: My wife has friends that are like social media trolls [00:19:00] and they'll go on to different places and then talk about like why that's a food safety risk now. And my wife would send me text messages from them. They're like, what's the response about washing chicken? Where do I get a news article about that?

I'm like, just Google it. If you want specific ones here, if you wanna put like the link to our podcast where we've talked about this 40 times here,

[00:19:22] Francine: people used to text me. That's stuff too about the specifics and it's like,

[00:19:27] Matt: yeah, okay, well there you go guys. So and gals like,

[00:19:32] Francine: yeah,

[00:19:33] Matt: buy food from Facebook Marketplace at your own risk.

Maybe just take, start taking antibiotics right before you eat the thing. I don't know. Yeah. Should we do a teaser about next episode?

[00:19:47] Francine: If you want

[00:19:48] Matt: I, next episode we're gonna be talking about a young lady who has battled cancer twice and almost dies of a foodborne illness [00:20:00] for eating a unique product.

Very unique product at a friend's house.

[00:20:06] Francine: Yeah.

[00:20:08] Matt: Okay. I'm adventurous, Francine, and we're not gonna tell what the product is, although people Google this, which is what we said, and find out what it is. I'm adventurous. I'll eat just about anything. I don't think I would eat this. Would you eat this

[00:20:22] Francine: not prepared at somebody's home now?

No.

[00:20:25] Matt: I don't know if I would eat it. Just in general. And I've seen documentaries of this particular product and like. They, yeah. Well, we'll go into it there, because I have a lot to say about how they figured out how to get the poison out of this product. Yeah. Because people probably were dying eating this product before they figured out how to preserve it.

On that note, don't eat [00:21:00] poop.