Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

Matt 0:00
Well, I wonder if somebody could write and their whole entire platform be food safety. What do you think about abortion? I'm more worried about the kids that die from foodborne illness than that issue right now. Maybe I'll figure that out. If a bill comes in front of me. What do you think about funding wars? I'm more interested in having our youth die of foodborne illness than I have that right now. Maybe I'll deal with that but it comes up every single issue all you do is talk about food safety. Do you think you'd get elected Probably not. Probably not the forces to be behind the that are pulling the strings would say this guy's a quack.

Intro 0:42
Everybody's got to eat. And nobody likes getting sick. That's why he rose toil in the shadows. Keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Showing industry veterans Francine l Shaw, and met Rick goosey for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't eat. Don't eat poop. Hello,

Matt 1:07
Francine.

Francine 1:09
Hey, Matt. At first I want to start by saying congratulations to my granddaughter. And this spring for high school, their percussion group won a world championship and was it World Championship was it was in Dayton, Ohio, this past weekend, which is a really big deal. So congratulations to them. But fun fact, we were trying to watch this, my husband and I grandparents had paid so that we could watch my granddaughter leading up to this. It's some of the events. So I'm like, Okay, we'll just do a call. And we'll watch this together as they were performing. When we speak anywhere, or we do anything. I have it people like when we go speak somewhere there it people. When I do a webinar, I've got ITP me trying to do this with my kids. on the receiving end, you deal with it on their own all the time. was like a flippin nightmare. So they're like, Oh, my God, mom. And I'm like afterwards. I'm like, Look, I've got people.

Matt 2:24
You got people. It was a joke. It's not a joke. We do have people.

Francine 2:30
I know. But not exactly like that. Yeah, mean it to sound like that. But yeah, somebody always does this for us. And when I'm here if I have a problem, Melissa helps me. So it's a bit yeah, when you're on a stage somewhere or you're doing a webinar, people set this stuff up for you. We push a button and we're on.

Matt 2:54
We're on unless, of course the Cork Pops out of your mic and then shuts the whole time recording. Luckily, it was only 30 seconds into that that happened, Francine instead of 20 minutes it although we've gotten better, where we're like, okay, I guess at 20 minutes, this is the first recording and then we'll start it off again for the second one. But yeah, and I'm in a hotel room, anybody who sees our tic tock videos or whatever, I'm in a hotel room because my son got accepted into a university and they asked him to wrestle at this university. So we're checking it out. So he's out working out with the college team right now. And I'm here recording in the hotel room with amazing lighting. Yeah, it's interesting to see them by kids leaving the nest and seeing what they become. It's their amazing adult. Yeah. Well, we started the previous episode that you messed up Francine.

Francine 3:51
I did was pick up my mic and move it from point A to point B segments out.

Matt 3:59
So we started the previous episode with Fred C, and chastise me about discussing politics on LinkedIn. And so that is going to be the premise of this podcast. While we aren't going to be discussing individual politics. I did mention on LinkedIn, so we're Caleb is recommending Kayla is running the the food side of the FDA recommending getting rid of the FDA is funding for states inspections. There's about 5700 state inspections that are done by the State Department, about $34 million. He's come up with this whole new budget. That's $7.4 billion for the whole entire No, I think that's the food side of the FDA. But anyways, the FDA budget, his budget for qlf is like 7.4 to $1.2 billion, but he wants to cut $34 million in spending for the state and Real Estate's connection from state inspections, our budget our state's budgets, right. So the FDA gives the state's money so they can do these inspections, and audits, really the kind of like audit, and I put all the posts on LinkedIn, how is it that we can come up with billions of billions of dollars to fight somebody else's wars. And yet, we can't find $34 million or 5700 audits in the United States when we keep having all of these outbreaks. In France, he was like, that's probably not the best way of putting it. So I agree. Okay, let's broaden this out. Okay. Let's not talk about war or anything like that. I'm a military family. My son's in the military, I have other sons, my daughter might go into the military. I'm not anti military in any way, shape, or form. Fact, because of that, I'm probably more interested in how that money gets spent. But Francine had a really good point. And I would love for you to make that Francine. So

Francine 6:02
my point is this. And this isn't the most eloquent way of saying this, but they pull money out of their ass for everything else. Literally, everything. Everything. You can't find money for food, safety, anything. It's ridiculous.

Matt 6:18
How many funding bills that we have. They're like, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to trillions of dollars of just crap work projects. It

Francine 6:29
infuriates me, it just absolutely infuriates me.

Matt 6:33
Yeah. So regardless of where you are in politics, regardless of anything, we can find money. Everywhere for all these different types of things. Why isn't food safety a priority? I get like everybody has their pet projects. But we're talking about saving people's lives. We're talking about like, legitimately creating things that we fund, for instance, how plastic on islands disrupt mating activities. For tortoises. I'm pulling that on my ass, but I'm pretty sure we probably funded a project. So we fund so much bullshit projects, you

Francine 7:10
make it to something, it's not gonna get us in trouble.

Matt 7:14
I don't know what. That's the problem, though. Everybody has their pet project, right? So you could look at this conversation and yours and my rant. And people could say, well, food safety is your pet project. It's your career. Yeah, but okay, I get that. And that's a perfectly fine argument. But it is really, truly people eat every single day. And when people eat, they don't want to get sick, and they definitely do not want to die. So this is a universal conversation.

Francine 7:41
And it's one of those things that like, it doesn't affect you until it affects you until you get sick and infects you for the rest of your life. Or until your mother or your aunt or your child gets sick, and it affects you for the rest of your life. There was a story. I don't know if I posted this. I don't think I did you and I discussed it. But there's a restaurant and I'm not gonna say who it was. But they're being sued right now. Because a kid went to the restaurant after a ballgame, ate some food, got sick, and now she's impacted for the rest of her life. And she's never going to be the same again. And I'm not saying who it was because the outcome has not happened yet. You know what I mean? I guess they're being sued. But I don't know if I it hasn't gone to court yet. As far as I know, I don't know if there's anything definitive on that yet. But it can affect any one of us at any given day. Fact of the matter is most of us have had food poisoning at one time in our lives and just have not been diagnosed that all of us have, and have not been diagnosed. So you don't know you would have had. If

Matt 8:47
you looked like neuro man at any point in time in your life. You had liquid flying out of either and or both. And simultaneously, you probably got food poisoning

Francine 8:57
when it's coming out of both and simultaneously. Odds are, it's from something you ate, or you've come in contact with somebody that ate something that made them sick. That's what it is. So let's get back to what we were talking about. We were talking about the FDA cutting funding for food safety.

Matt 9:21
Right and they're moving funding around I really think Caleb is really trying to figure this out. I really do if you look at some of the stuff that he's definitely trying to modernize the FDA ticularly on the food side of things, like really modernize it. So a lot of the stuff where he is putting funding I absolutely 100% agree with and so I don't want to I don't want this to be a Caleb bashing, right? It's more why can't we find more money for this type of stuff. I just don't understand it. And here's the other thing too. If Caleb is modernizing the FDA, and he's adding a lot more towards technology, and a lot actually, this is a lot of the budget an increase The use of 115 million is going towards salaries to fight inflation. So a huge portion of this is just going towards salaries, the increases. So he's trying to find money somewhere to offset these new costs, because inflation is rampid. And if a inflation is compounding, actually, Let's rephrase that. So you have 8%, inflation, 9%, inflation, 7%, inflation and 3% inflation, this year being 3%. Inflation. That doesn't mean all of a sudden, over the last five years, there's only 3% inflation. No, it was 25% inflation over the last four years. And this year, we just have 3% inflation. So everybody is impacted, particularly middle class and lower class is impacted significantly. And a lot of these government employees, they're not making that much money. So I do understand why they're trying to increase salaries due to compounding inflation. Okay, so where they decide to cut are these state inspections, again, like 5700, or 5700 of these audits are being done by the state. So this makes me think of a few things. One, why isn't there money for this? Why can't we just go get $34 million, or $50 million? Why don't we increase this a little bit more, and to if this is where they're deciding to cut, does that mean the FDA does not see value in actually auditing individual companies. And that to me, when I was reading that opened up a broader conversation that I wanted to have with you, but really, truly the industry. Right now, a huge portion of food safety is wrapped around audits and inspections, global food safety initiative, GFSI audits, restaurant inspections, the FDA is supposed to do a ton of audits, inspections, they only do I think, 10% annually of what they're expected to do something along those lines, and the vast majority of them are outside of the United States, not in the United States. So does the FDA not believe that auditing and inspecting companies is valuable? And if that's the case, is that where the industry is going? And if that is where the industry is going? What is going to backfill or replace some of these things. And I just wanted to have a broader conversation with you about this. And this would be awesome for our audience to go into. But yeah, this is a lot of audits that no funding for what are the state's going to do? Are they going to backfill that funding? Are they just going to go? Well, the FDA obviously doesn't value it. So maybe we should do something else? And what is that? First of

Francine 12:39
all, we both know, that's a tough job. Auditing is my God, it's a tough job. And there's not enough auditors and inspectors to begin with. There's a shortage as we speak. So yeah, cut funding, my thought is, there's going to become a more significant problem. I agree with you, there's going to be a more significant problem. Maybe in their minds. They're not thinking, well, it appears we don't place value on audits and inspections. But it certainly works that way. It appears that way. To me, I

Matt 13:17
actually did projects with the State Department's in my previous company, and I thought that they were very valuable. For instance, well, maybe the FDA doesn't think they're valuable, but LGMA, leafy greens marketing agreement, audits, every single lettuce company out there, in not every single one, but all the major ones in California and Yuma, Arizona, those type of things are part of the State Department's audits. I don't know if the FDA is funding them, but that's part of the projects. So maybe the FDA is looking more towards doing a rifle approach as opposed to a scattergun approach, because it's not like the State Departments are going out nodding, everybody. It's just part of what they do. I don't know. What are your thoughts, Francine?

Francine 14:02
I honestly don't know. My biggest thought is the audits and inspections have got to be done. We've got to find a way to do that. What happens with the funding has to be a way to do the audits and inspections because the audits and inspections, independent audits and inspections are important. I believe that they're important. Prior to starting, we were talking about how many outbreaks there are per year. So

Matt 14:31
so give that statistic because you you looked at up how many were there 2022 2023 And today at

Francine 14:37
the CDC website to see how many multistate and these are just multistate outbreaks, right?

Matt 14:43
Supply chain outbreaks and large ones, multi state ones.

Francine 14:47
And 22 There were 13 multistate outbreaks. 23 there were nine and so far in 24, this is April. For context. There have been four one a month. So, right now we're on target for at least well, this year.

Matt 15:04
Yeah. So we're on target to match or beat 2022. Yes. So that's not what I say match or beat the competition. Exactly. It's like golf, right, you want a lower score, not a higher score Gabon people, we don't want more than 2022 is not a good thing. We

Francine 15:27
have to remember that each podcast we have new listeners need to understand this sarcasm, we want to improve, we are supposed to theoretically have one of the food or as far as food safety, we are supposed to be one of the best in the world. Now we work in the industry. So our perception is sometimes a little skewed. And it is good compared to a lot again, it is very good. But my God, there's certainly room for improvement. Okay, so

Matt 15:59
looking back at this, again, there's 5700 audits being done by the State Department right now $34 million in funding from the federal government, which was the State Department or backfilling that funding. We talk about how there needs to be audits, inspections, I agree with you, like facilities need third party audits and inspections. Regardless of whether or not you agree with GFSI. Or if you disagree, we could definitely get into arguments of if the way things are being done right now for food safety inspections, if that's the right way to do that, I totally can understand and get into an agreement with you on that. But there is a value towards food safety, third party audits, and second party audits, your clients auditing you. First party audits, you auditing yourself. And then inspections on the restaurant side to say things are not found, it would be ridiculous things are always found somebody's eyes coming in are very important. I think every company should have a third party audit at least annually. You could say okay, Matt, when you were in that business, of course you did. Sure. But I'm not in that business anymore. So I still see value in it, even though I don't longer make any type of money on it at all. There is truly a value towards companies getting audited every single year. But they're not. The vast majority of companies are not being audited food companies are not being audited. The vast majority of restaurants are not being audited, maybe by a health inspector. Occasionally fencing, you would know that more than I do

Francine 17:38
supposed to inspect it at least once a year by a health inspector. And so every restaurant

Matt 17:42
in every state across the nation are not Yeah, or they are they're just being pencil whipped, which I assumed

Francine 17:49
if then when I came in off inspector and experienced that situation. It was like, Oh, my God, this is true. Sometimes they aren't really doing inspections in these restaurants. And that just in itself boggles my mind.

Matt 18:07
So I would see if the FDA if if Caleb is like, Hey, listen, this just isn't working for us like these, this money going here. It's not working for us, but then broaden it out towards what would work. Like how can we audit? least a good audit? Maybe not GFSI? Global Food Safety Initiative audit? Fine. How can we have some sort of third party? GMP preventive control has a type of audit in every facility that the FDA manages across the world? How would that look? How could the FDA work with private industry and maybe not even funded just require it? All of a sudden things would happen pretty quickly. The funding side of things I think is important for smaller companies, because we were trying to everybody talks about not wanting so much consolidation in the food industry. And I agree huge consolidation, like companies like JBS, for instance, owning 33% of the meat supply. We saw that wasn't very good. During COVID, when they got attacked by Russian hackers, and they shut down our meat supply, right? Or having something like 60% of the formula or 70% of the formula in the United States provided by two or three companies. That type of consolidation is not good. So by FDA mandating audits across the board and not providing some sort of funding for companies that aren't as profitable or not profitable yet, I think would be a disservice to the industry because then you could drive the industry towards consolidation to the point of negatively impacting the United States. But how would we get to that? Fritzie like how I don't know, I don't even know if

Francine 19:50
before you say, Okay, we're not going to do this anymore. You have a new plan. Okay, so what are we going going? Yeah, what are if we're not going to do this, what are we going to do before next year, we have 45 outbreaks and multistate outbreaks, because we're not doing anything.

Matt 20:08
Right? I mean, they do have a lot of stuff that they're adding more for testing. They're adding more for salaries. They're adding more for technology. But okay, technology equals data, what are you planning on doing with that data, if we're shutting down the infrastructure for you to go tell state departments to go audit somebody, maybe that should be what the FDA does, but then the FDA should explain that, hey, with all of this new diversification of funding towards technology, and towards testing, what we're doing is we're collecting a lot of data. And now instead of just telling the State Department's here's money to go audit, shotgun approach to whoever wants part of this funding, we're going to change the funding towards here with this data, we're now going to use the State Department's to pinpoint companies that need to be audited, and then you just go audit them. If they just did that, I would be like, dude, that makes absolute sense. Your data saying this company has high risk, or all their little variables that they put together for their database to define what high risk is, and then they use the State Department's as an arm to go check it out. way different, but they're not saying that they're just saying they're just gonna get rid of funding.

Francine 21:16
A logical planned approach to all of this would be great. If it maybe they have fun. Maybe there's just

Matt 21:26
no, you're you just said plan, logical approach. And then that made me realize we are talking about the government. So you're right, Francine, it's not gonna happen.

Francine 21:38
It doesn't appear that way to us. It just the way it's coming out. Now, we all know that everything in print isn't exactly what is always happening. It's not all real. You know what I mean? It's sometimes it's things are missing. What?

Matt 21:53
I know, everything you read on the internet is not true. No, nobody is 100% accurate. everything you hear on this podcast. So we're the one source of truth.

Francine 22:06
As much as we know it to be a new way. I'll be trying to,

Matt 22:09
no, we cannot we cannot say that at all. We are an opinion show. This is Red Seas, is my opinion that we get our new sources from the same place you do. So

Francine 22:21
it is 100%. Our opinion, which differs from time to time? Oh,

Matt 22:29
yeah. I think that's obviously what makes the show interesting. And what we do

Francine 22:32
agree on is that cutting the funding is not the best approach take,

Matt 22:36
oh, he's just going through and be like, well, we need money from somewhere. I don't think this is really working out. You were saying earlier that auditing is a hard job, it's hard to find auditors. And I think that's true. To an extent, I think the GFSI Global Food Safety Initiative has made auditing so complicated, and the different standards have made auditing expectations so high, that we're trying to find people to do a job that is very hard, right, you're out traveling, you're meeting with companies, then you have to do reports, you have to follow up on corrective actions, you have to do all these things, right? It's the job itself is complicated, and hard. But we've taken out the ability to allow people who have industry experience to offset College, I'll give you an example. You and I could not be global food safety initiative auditors, we can't, we don't have the education to do it. So we spent our whole entire career we're experts in this field, but we don't have a college degree in the food sciences. And so because of that, we can't be a GFSI auditor. So that's made auditing really complicated. And I just I don't understand it, some of my best auditors before these applications, and they're getting more and more stringent. So the expectations for auditors are becoming more and more stringent to the point that we're trying to find people to do a very hard job in a smaller and smaller pool of the population of people that can do it. And we're basically eliminating a lot of women because a lot of women aren't getting the scientific degrees. What am I female auditors be like, Why can't you find more women? I feel like this is just like a man dominated field. And I said, because there's a lot more men that have chemistry and scientific degrees than women. And so if we can open it up and just allow people that have a lot of experience in the field also be these auditors. That'd be very different. We're

Francine 24:39
eliminating a lot of people that would be very good auditors. 100% for no real reason.

Matt 24:46
No. So we're valuing a college education more than the person who knows where the skeletons are hidden because they helped hide them. Right? Like if you've had 20 years of food safety, you've hidden a lot of skeletons

Francine 24:58
and 100 And no, not that I've had in a lot of skeletons. Were friends. I'm 100% work for people that had a lot of salad. I worked in joking. No, I know. But I know, when I worked in the industry, by God, I knew where they were headed. Yeah, people that I work for God, some of the stuff that I've seen done was insane,

Matt 25:23
right? Insane. And smeta is a perfect example. So social accountability is huge. Nobody wants to have their food made by slave labor, right. And slave labor is an issue in the agricultural industry. And it has been since the dawn of agriculture. So it is not a new problem. So the retailers and food service companies are obviously and the major manufacturing brands, obviously do not want their brand hit because one of their suppliers is using slave labor. So they've gone out and they've pushed smeta and other types of social accountability audits, but smeta being one of the big ones. So all these retailers and food service companies want every single one of their suppliers to do these spared audits. The problem is, you can't find smet auditors, because smeta has made the process so complicated and hard that there's so few of these people. So then the costs go up astronomically for a lot of purposes. One, the smeta auditors know that there have a very small pool. And so the supply and demand is huge. So they're charging more, but you have to fly these people in from all these different places. So the travel expenses themselves costs as much as the audit does. And there's no solution, because the expectation from the retailers and the food service companies, you have to do these audits. And the standard has made it so painful to do them, that the audits have become so expensive. So we have to find some sort of solution between opening up the auditor pool that allows good qualified auditors without these huge expectations in terms of education, and have the ability to have work experience so that we can actually fill these jobs that need to be done. Because the auditing side is not going away. Unless the FDA says you know what? Maybe it is, that's what really is driving this question in my head. And then how was it replaced? Oh, no, by data by risk. So we're only auditing companies with the highest risk that even that's scary. Because how do you define the risk? It's like finding a needle in a haystack. Well,

Francine 27:34
and low risk doesn't mean no risk.

Matt 27:36
I mean, you and I would have thought that infant formula would have been low risk. Right dried powdered food in an airtight can. That's killing babies. Because they add back to your fee. And it was ridiculous. So you and I would have thought that would been flour. You were talking about that the other day, Francine. Well, who would have ever thought

Francine 27:57
that you're getting sick for me? Wow, and what's to come? What's next? What's the next thing that's gonna make somebody sick that has never made somebody sick before? Right?

Matt 28:07
It's just like that previous episode that we had a couple weeks ago when we were talking about that. But Dan Detweiler, his article, where's the next big one?

Francine 28:16
Right. It could be one of those things. There's never made anybody sick before. And all of a sudden, there's a whole country of sick individuals, because they can't figure out what it is because it's never made anybody sick before. Well,

Matt 28:34
you and I should run for politics.

Francine 28:36
Francie, fix this word was enough for me, wondering if

Matt 28:41
you and I are both never going to run for politics. But well, I wonder if somebody could ride and their whole entire platform be food safety? What do you think about abortion? I'm more worried about the kids that die from foodborne illness than that issue right now. Maybe I'll figure that out. If a bill comes in front of me. What do you think about funding wars? I'm more interested in having our youth die of foodborne illness than I am with that right now. Maybe I'll deal with that when it comes up every single issue all you do is talk about food safety. Do you think you'd get elected probably not probably not the forces to be behind the that are pulling the strings would say this guy's a quack.

Francine 29:20
People don't take it seriously enough. I think they think we were crazy. whomever they would think we're crazy

Matt 29:27
because of the heat. A lot of people think we're crazy.

Francine 29:30
It's legitimate. Yeah, people already think we're crazy.

Matt 29:35
Just say they want to run for politics and that be their only issue. I'll give you money. What are percent I don't even care Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, communist, fascist. Whatever if you all you did was run for food safety. really more

Francine 29:51
of you in there. Really good at brand building.

Matt 29:54
That is true. You are amazing at brand building. By the way, everybody who's seen a Even has to do with the brand of Dodi poop. That is all Francine 100% The only thing I've done for brand is repost what she posts.

Francine 30:09
Yeah. That and sadly, food safety and yeah, I can build a brand. Well, I can advise them on building the brand. Let's do this. Let's find somebody to run on food safety issues. We don't have enough on the government to care about food safety.

Matt 30:26
No, we have more people who are interested in gutting food safety, like the bill that just came up to got FISMA 204 The new traceability rule. So Congress is more interested in making food less safe than making food safe. That is sick and sad. Okay, I think we beat this. You know what we haven't, we'll probably have to have a few more episodes. Definitely going to have more episodes on the crazy politics of this type of stuff. We beaten this episode because it'll just it's gonna spiral downhill. It's gonna be dark. I don't drink anymore, but maybe start drinking. It's not going to be good. Not gonna be good. Talking to our audience about running for politics, if that's all there issue is we don't care what party? Yeah, that's not good. We're getting shots during the recording. I hear alcohol kills foodborne illness.

Unknown Speaker 31:25
Times that has been sent to me.

Matt 31:28
Oh, what does it matter? I can eat whatever from wherever. As long as I drink shots of tequila. Oh, my

Francine 31:34
God. Over the years, how many times that has been said to me? Yeah, no, it does not work like that.

Matt 31:43
Work. Okay. Okay. So what do you have for us next?

Francine 31:48
So what I want to talk about, I thought, let's talk about one of the things in this book to wrap this up. And one of the experiences that I had people ask me all the time, you know, what's one of the craziest things that's ever happened to you? And I don't think you and I've talked about this, but I've talked about it at conferences and things like that. But like one of the craziest thing that has ever happened to me when I was doing an inspection I had I was training a new inspector that day. And first of all, inspectors never wake up in the morning thinking, God, I hope today's a bad day. I want to shut down a restaurant

Matt 32:22
much. Probably are let's be serious. There may be a few inspectors out there that are

Francine 32:28
a lot because there's oh my god, it's first of all, there's a lot of paperwork involved in that. Oh, yeah. I don't like paperwork. I hate paperwork. It takes a bit of an emotional toll to do that. There's a lot of emotions that go through doing that now, every now and then you run into a real jerk. And it's you know what, but that doesn't happen that often either. I just don't have the personality for that. And I'd rather help somebody figure it out. And let's not do this. Let's just make this a learning experience. See what we can do to get through and correct this. You know what I mean? But sometimes you walk into a place and it's my god, I just can't believe this is going on. So anyway, I met this guy, and I picked a place that I thought small restaurant. Going to try and make this an easy day for him. We're going to training we're gonna have a good day. We walk into a small restaurant, my God, it probably the whole restaurant probably wasn't 1000 square feet. Walk in, introduce ourselves, Shalimar it, walk straight back to the kitchen to do the inspection. And you could tell just you can feel the tension sometimes when you walk.

Matt 33:41
Yeah, they're like, oh, shoot,

Francine 33:44
a pass through walk and meaning that you'll walk through the cooler before you get to the freezer. So when we walked in, we walked straight back and we head into the walk in and we walked through the cooler to get to the freezer. And I opened up the freezer door and closed it and just stood there for a second and he says to me, Francine, are you okay? I said Yeah, I'm fine. And I opened it again. And we walked in and on the floor or several legs like little it first thing looked like I can remember the area where we do a lot of hunting. So they look like baby deer legs is what they looked like they just strewn all over the freezer floor like Somebody's at the door just further which is I think what happened and my all these thoughts are like racing through your head. It's and this is seconds, just seconds that this is happening. Even when I shut the door and stood there it was we're talking two three seconds. Because I'm just like trying to gather my thoughts. What is that? And clearly this is not going to be easy. You're like oh oh My God. So I, again have these legs are all over the floor. And if I look to the right, straight ahead and I look to the right, there's this box beside me. And it's the high, maybe foot and a half high and maybe two feet long. And it has a black trash bag in it instead of the trash bag, or these legs. That was and he's behind me. And coming in behind him is the owner of the restaurant. And he's already started taking pictures because he has a task.

Matt 35:37
You like, Oh no, we need again, the paperwork side of things. This is not going to be good. We're gonna have to show but the pictures of why we set this restaurant down. This he's a big

Francine 35:47
guy. He's He's, we've known each other for a long time, even though this person dag working for me. He's taking pictures and the guy behind us trying to push his way through because we clearly need evidence. And that's the purpose of the pictures. And as I know that I've got to lift the lid off this box and I still am not sure what kind of animal this is. Oh my god, I gotta take the lid off. I don't want to pull it off. I've got take the lid off. I lift up the VAB and there were carcasses of baby goats in there just the carcasses of baby goats in that box. And just on the ground. It was sitting on Metro shelving just never shelves. So the baby goats

Matt 36:26
in the bag in the box. Is there anything wrong with that? Or is there more the issue of the carcasses on the floor?

Unknown Speaker 36:36
All of it.

Matt 36:38
Oh of it. And they buy the baby goats from like a this is a very sorry guys for this is dark. Well. They buy the baby goats from like a distributor. This is what they're serving.

Unknown Speaker 36:52
What? Yes.

Matt 36:55
Oh, so it's like their baby goats just that they just

Francine 36:58
they brought them in from a farm. There was nothing USDA certified about these. The first thing they say and this is always the first thing that we're told is there for home use.

Matt 37:07
Right? Oh, I see the restaurant was saying that this was for home use? Yeah, the owner of the restaurant and you're like, Ah, so where's the baby goats that I see on the menu. It

Francine 37:18
was on the menu. I'm like, okay, so show me your USDA go. There were multiple issues anyway, they can't have this in there. Okay, show me your USDA go. But there's none in the store. Show me your invoices for your USDA goat that you've been purchasing. They have no invoices for anything in the store, no invoices for anything. And then

Matt 37:41
I just imagine you opening the refrigerator door and closing it like how bad that scene had to have been, like a murder scene in there for you to because you've seen so much like for you opening that up and having to close it again, like that poor trainee behind you is probably like, Oh, crap, this is not good. Yeah.

Francine 38:03
And normally I don't react. Right? Or that his question was because he knows me know me very well, you know, and it means so for me to have opened it and then just shut up for just a second just to stand there and just gather my thoughts just for a second. I saw the look on my face. Because you know what my face is like? Yeah, so yeah. And then he's like, I don't know what else the gentleman said. But I like the way I've also problems here because I just walked past the buffet out there because he said it was for home use. There's no USDA go in the establishment. So

Matt 38:41
for those you guys who don't understand how the food supply chain works, you've talked about the FDA, we've talked about the USDA, USDA owns the meat side of the world. The FDA owns everything else in terms of food safety, there has to be a USDA Meat inspector in every single meat packing plant in the United States. And so the USDA certifies the grade of the meat. And so when she says let me see the USDA Meat go it's illegal to sell goats to be used for a retail establishment you could buy as an individual or a family. You could buy beef you could buy go to goodbye pig buy chickens, you buy rabbit you buy whatever you want from an angel farm that you yourself are going to eat. But if you want to sell it retail, it has to be from a USDA inspected facility. Now again, we could argue whether or not that needs to be done all day long, but that is the law. So she's asking where are your USDA goats? And this guy can't provide it so it's just bought from a farm lurking

Francine 39:49
at invoices and even if they were for home you should can't bring them into both in restaurants, right?

Matt 39:55
Just Just chillin on the floor too. That's disgusting. Because or at least a drain Like two

Francine 40:01
pathogens, whatever, you just you can't do that. So if he's telling me that I'm like, Look, then we have another problem because you've got no approved meat product in here. And I just passed something labeled go on the buffet. So what is that?

Matt 40:19
He's afraid. See, that was actually the last human inspector or that last health inspector, that game here. That's what we're certainly out there right now. So you don't get to be the next meal.

Francine 40:30
We've got a lot of problems. Yeah. Yeah, we need to sort out my easy day. And the tubes. Fast. This is day one. I don't even know if he's going to come back because we've got to shut down this restaurant. So all these problems out. He's calling his attorney. We're taking fetchers getting the doors. Yeah. Wow.

Matt 40:57
Okay, so this goes back to the auditing, right. So these restaurants knows we are did once a year. How long could this just been going on? There's? Yeah, it's the power and the value of inspections.

Francine 41:11
Well, I discovered that the inspector prior to me had not accurately or thoroughly, if at all been doing inspections for a long time before I had taken over, because I went into this job so excited because funny is that sounds but I'm just looking forward to doing this. And very quickly discovered that I was really up for a challenge because these people weren't used to having any person of authority and charge.

Matt 41:40
So I guess it goes back to the value of a good health inspection and a good supply chain, GMP gap, good agricultural practices, GMP, good manufacturing practices. Audit, right, a called cGMP, which is Current Good Manufacturing Practices. Yeah, instead of just pencil whipping it, like just saying yes, right down the line, and sending it in any

Francine 42:04
plan. So the whole nine yards, all of it. Oh, so that's one of the stories that I talked about.

Matt 42:11
You should get the book. It's very entertaining, guys. It was fun day. Fun Day. All right. Well, on that note, don't eat poop.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai