Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

DEP E81
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Dr. Darin: I've seen some plants. I recently saw a plant where they had three different colors of gloves. They have one color glove that was for sanitation. They had one color glove that was before they put the, like the seedlings and the stuff in to grow. And they had a third color glove for when they were taking the completed product out and putting it in for packaging.

Clearly different roles. Clearly different gloves for each role and the colors helped indicate that was the company that was talking about how no, they don't want different colors of gloves. They just want black gloves. Okay. Why do you want just 1 color? And why do you want just black gloves? What was their response?

Francine: They don't share the dirt. Yes.

Dr. Darin: The black gloves hide the dirt.

Not the answer you want to hear.

Matt: Wow.

Dr. Darin: Not the answer you want to hear, right?

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 Ragushi for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule.

Don't. Eat. Poop. Don't eat poop.

Matt: Hello, hello? Today, it's not just hello, hello, Francine. It's hello, hello, Francine and Dr. Darin Detweiler. For those of our audience, you know, we've talked up poison a ton. We talk about Darin all the time and we. We just use his first name and sometimes we have to clarify, Oh yeah, we keep forgetting that not everybody knows who Dr. Darin Detweiler is. Everybody in the food compliance world probably does, but not maybe all of our moms and dads out there that are listening. But today we have a very exciting host. We've had him on our show two times so far, and that is Dr. Darin Detweiler. And if you watched Poisoned, he was one of the key people in that and all around.

Just. A good guy, just a really nice guy. So we love having you on Darin. We'd love for you to spend a little bit of time introducing yourself, what you're doing in the beautiful city of where you are and what we're going to talk about today.

Dr. Darin: Well, I happen to be coming to you from Amsterdam. So it's probably several hours later into the day than you guys are right now.

And I am here for some work, I am going to be delivering a keynote address early next week at the food integrity global 2024 event in Amsterdam. And I'm speaking on this idea of is our food the safest it's ever been. I'm also moderating some panels about sustainability. And the real price of food safety culture, and even looking at the idea of food delivery.

And I have to admit, there hasn't been a day out here where we've been afoot around town. And the number of bikes and mopeds that are doing food delivery is, it seems to be growing everywhere. And so, very aware of. Food foods last mile here in Amsterdam and looking at issues that are the same here as they are in the United States and looking at issues that we tend to talk about more in terms of food safety in America, there's this invisible dome over the United States when it comes to food safety, but in reality, we have to look at the bigger picture in terms of the whole global perspective of food safety.

So that's what I'm here to be doing. And then also talking on this incredible podcast.

Matt: Thank you. Thank you. And just give our audience a little bit about your history, how you came to food safety.

Dr. Darin: Well, I, and again, like you were mentioning in terms of poisoned and in the documentary poisoned, which by the way, next week is the Emmy award for the category of documentaries.

We'll see if it ends up winning an award. It's nominated. Are you serious? No, I'll be here. But actually, I don't know if anyone can be there for the documentaries. But in that documentary, I talked about how I came into food safety when my son in 1993, 31 years ago, became sick and died during the 1993 Jack and the Boxy Cola outbreak.

The work I did immediately following my son's death with the USDA in terms of food safe handling labels and consumer education and working towards improving our inspection service. In 1993, it was still organoleptic. It's just what they could see, what they could touch, what they could smell. We needed to have more science and update that.

I have been working for the last 31 years in different areas around food safety. Some of that work shifted from the USDA to the FDA and then becoming an academic. I've been Teaching about food safety issues for some time as a professor and then writing too. I do a lot of writing. And speaking and consulting and podcasts and just a lot of different work around connecting the various parts between regulatory and industry and those who work in food safety and then communicating with consumers as well to make sure that we really have a good sense of the big picture around food safety.

It is so comprehensive that there's no such thing as any 1 perspective that captures all of the needs and the conversation around food safety.

Francine: I have a question. How does the rest of the world, what's your sense on how the rest of the world perceives the United States and food safety? I have my own opinion, but what do you think?

Dr. Darin: I find that to be a very timely question because we have this phrase. We keep kicking around the United States. The United States has the strongest food safety in the world or something that affect the safest food in the world. Most people around the world don't think that we have that. Some of the consensus here is that we have a lot of complications, a lot of issues.

When you look at the numbers of outbreaks and recalls and the different foods involved, they recognize that. I think also that there's a, especially in Europe, because in Europe, you have the European food safety Agent authority, excuse me, and a lot of the food safety regulations, policies, et cetera, are much more consistent from country to country.

And yet there's this consensus here that in the United States, again, it's like one of those situations where how safe your food is depends on your zip code. We're one nation, if you will, except when it comes to food safety, we are 3000 different jurisdictions. Every state is a different playbook, if you will, in terms of food safety.

And it's quite different than what you see here in Europe and other parts of the world too. Even Dubai. They look at it very differently than we look at it in the U. S. There's also a lot more of a focus on like provenance and food safety authority, food safety, leadership, authenticity, things of that nature.

We don't often think about food safety in terms of food authenticity. Whereas here you have so many different cultures that when it comes to food, they want that authenticity in terms of they don't want the culture of the food to be lost and food safety is caught up into this. Even the idea of food safety as a part of hospitality, we don't typically think of hospitality and food safety as being one of the same.

We often think of hospitality as how people treat each other or how people are welcomed. But it was interesting conversation I had the other day about hospitality. And food safety being one of the same, I have to admit it makes a great deal of sense, but it's just whether you're talking about labeling, whether you're talking about food fraud, which of course, food fraud was a big issue here in Europe that really stirred some of the waters, if you will, there's a fine line between the idea of what it says on the label, whether you're talking about food fraud or what it says on the label in terms of food safety.

And I also have to admit. One thing you'll notice here is that there's a lot more posted information at restaurants and grocery stores about food, whether it's nutrition information, safety information, inspection information. It just seems to be much more accepted and also demanded by the by consumers that information is transparent.

So when we talk about food safety and transparency, I have to admit in the United States, I don't think we talk about it with the idea of the consumer as part of having that transparency as much as I see it here.

Matt: I love the concept of federalism in the United States. I think it allows a lot of innovation and development that you don't see in other places.

Like California create their own laws that are pushes the envelope and other states can create their own laws in other ways that pushes the envelope and. then everybody gets a feel of how these regulations may actually work on a smaller scale. But I do think on food safety, it would be really nice if there was some sort of consistent, particularly of the imports and stuff, some sort of consistent expectation that is met everywhere.

And then with the Boar's Head thing, right? Like the FSIS obviously had used Virginia to perform the inspection. How did these inspections just disappear on its way up? If those inspections had been heated and looked at, maybe this whole entire listerosis, listeria outbreak wouldn't have happened. So there is some inefficiencies in this that are glaring, but I do think it's fascinating because I've never heard of this, Darin, that Europe with all of its different countries, part of the European Union has more of a consistency across the world.

food safety amongst those countries than the United States does amongst its states. So, uh, it's pretty fascinating.

Dr. Darin: Let me ask you this, uh, Francine, do you have a sport that you follow?

Francine: I know a little bit about most sports, but none that I follow.

Dr. Darin: We're a team. Matt, do you have one?

Matt: Yes. And that is what?

That is, it's been like the chiefs and the Broncos for a very long time.

Dr. Darin: Well, I'm glad you brought up federalism and that you have a favorite team because what if federalism allowed it such that your favorite teams, every time they go to a different stadium, it's a different game. It's a different playbook.

It's a different set of rules.

Matt: That would add some interest. It'd be fun. It might be fun, be able to track it. You wouldn't be able to track it for consistency's sake. Oh,

Dr. Darin: it would not be.

It would probably result in some complications, I would imagine. So, when you look at the idea of you can have differences looking at Europe, looking at the idea of how they've adopted certain food safety policies that are consistent across all the different participating nations in the European Union, right?

You can still have culture. You can still have language. You can still have so many things that are unique to your country. Science is science and food is food and with food traveling as much as it does. And it's like, why would there be a difference in food science? If you will, you know, between here and let's say 30 miles away in another country, you just can't have that.

And yet we don't necessarily think of it that way in the United States. But it just becomes difficult that way. And then onto your conversation, as you're starting to look at Boar's head, not too many people have been talking about this. I mean, yes, people have been talking about this, but this part, no, I don't think anyone's been talking too much about the other one Boar's head started.

Yes. 1905, 1905. When we talked about Chipotle, Chipotle started after Jack in the box.

Matt: Yeah.

Dr. Darin: You can talk about so many other brands. They're relatively newer brands that you tend to hear things about, right? Even fast food restaurants. So you only go back a number of decades, but horse heads been around since before the jungle, since before the pure food and drug act and before the meat inspection act, you would think that there was this idea of maybe they got their act straight.

But I had a very fascinating conversation with someone who was talking about how in the European Union, there was conversation about the pandemic and how here they also went to a lot of virtual auditing and a lot of virtual elements of what they were doing as regulators during the pandemic. And there was a prediction that as soon as auditors and inspectors are allowed to physically go back into the plants, they are going to see things that they never saw before.

They're going to see the meat build up on the walls. They're going to see the cockroaches. They're going to see the flies. They're going to see the scum or the dirt areas. And that's exactly what's happened in places in Europe. And that's exactly what we're seeing here with boar's head. I would imagine That there are some blind spots that were allowed to just exist.

They were aware of them, but they were moved down the list in terms of priorities during the pandemic. I get it. We all had new priorities, additional priorities during the pandemic, but that doesn't mean that we don't. Maintain a hold on those existing priorities in terms of these plant conditions. And why is it that these were reported recorded and written down, but not dealt with?

This is the family dollar central warehouse and where was that? Well, the 1 that ended up having all the rodents and impacted over 400 stores across 6 states. Why were there so many inspections and the company just signed off on it time after time, and yet they were not actually addressed. This is a concern on many levels,

Matt: on many levels.

Yeah. We're talking about that. We're doing a presentation. Francine and I are doing a presentation next week at a conference, and we're talking about some of the things that may disappear and or needs to be completely revamped. And one of the things we were talking about are audits and inspections need to be revamped.

The presentation is talking about killing golden calf. Because the listen, is there a benefit for some outside third party coming in and looking at the facility and making sure that people are doing what they say they're doing absolutely 100 percent but it doesn't mean anything unless it's actually done.

That's the hard part.

Dr. Darin: Look at all the restaurant inspections that are taking place in different cities and there was in 2014, I believe. When I was living in the Boston area, there was this one restaurant that had an incredibly high number of critical violations. And when that was reported, people were like, wait a minute, but there's no chain and lock around the door.

The restaurant's still open. How is the restaurant still open? If there's all these violations and what people jump to the conclusion of is that I think the television and movies might have a role in creating this understanding or this misconception, this idea. I'm shutting you down. I'm the food inspector.

I'm going to shut you down for the people that go in and do these audits and these inspections and write all this stuff down. They don't usually have the authority to shut down a restaurant or to shut down a food manufacturing facility. These reports are taken to some other agency in some cases, and it's their responsibility to look through them and to follow up and to take action, whether that is to require a mandatory resolution of these issues and a timeline and a plan to deal with these issues.

I think it's again, just a misconception that's there that here's the documentation of our findings and companies sign off on these. But it needs to trigger a, what are we going to do? What is the plan? It's I remember when I was a high school teacher, that if there were teachers that they would have an observation from an academic supervisor and like, whether they're a first year teacher or they do it every once a couple of years or whatever.

If there were some findings that needed to be resolved, this would be immediately followed up by a mandatory. How are you going to resolve these issues? Here is the timeline. And then a follow up kind of thing. I think that perhaps as you were mentioning the idea of perhaps we need to revision or revise how we do these inspections that it's not.

Here's the report and you sign off on it. It is a, you are required to file a document that says, I understand these are the issues. Here's how we're going to resolve these. And here's when we're going to have these resolved by and that kind of a situation. We don't see that in every case. So that becomes, I believe, part of the bigger problem as well.

Francine: Well, one of my questions yesterday was why didn't that happen if whoever did those inspections didn't have the authority to close that facility, why didn't they get to the person who did

Dr. Darin: and I would hope that quite honestly, if there is a congressional hearing about it, that type of question is asked.

Remember the issue over there was a barbecue chicken facility on the East Coast? That had a fire. There were USDA inspectors and they had noted that there were chains and locks on the, this is a number of years ago. There were chains and locks on the emergency exits and the USDA inspectors, they wanted to inform OSHA about the safety violation for the employees.

And yet there was an actual prohibition of one agency talking to the other until president Obama said, no, it is okay. For a USDA or FDA inspectors, if they notice a clear OSHA violation to bring that to the federal government's attention, kind of a deal, we have this kind of separation between those who are hired.

And the other thing too, is that in most cases, these inspectors that are continuously on the production facility, they are literally paid by the company. They are paid a flat rate for the number of hours by the company. So. I don't want to say that an inspector doesn't want to lose their job being paid by the company if you have a lot of bad information, or you make it such that the company is shut down and that's not working.

And this you now lose your number of hours. I would hate to think that there's a conflict of interest. When you have the company itself directly paying the inspectors to do that work, even though they are inspectors that are working for the outstretched arm of the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service.

Matt: It's a very interesting in terms of conflict of interest between all that. And I don't know, I've been going back and forth with Francine and I with this on how do we revamp that whole entire USDA inspection process because obviously there's issues with it. There's an inspector in that facility every single day.

Did they just completely not believe? There's difference like FSIS is a food safety inspection and we're talking about meat quality inspections, right? They're grading the meats and all that stuff like that. But there's Meet quality person who could be. Not too much extra training, a food safety person in that facility every single day.

And all of that was just allowed to happen. People talk about how the USDA is helping to make food safer. And I say, no, they're just providing a grade. And the grade could be done with AI and a picture. Produce is graded every single day without the USDA's help. A lot of products are graded every single day without the USDA's help.

So either the USDA has to branch out and maybe become more food safety as well, or we're just wasting a lot of money on that.

Dr. Darin: Well, and I think that you have policy, but you also have what authority is granted to them, and then what authority is granted to those people who are out in the field. Doing this work.

If you're a parking enforcement officer and a little teeny electric car going around town or whatever, and you come upon a car that's parked in front of a fire hydrant, your only job is to give him a ticket. Your job is not to move that car so that the fire hydrant is not blocked. That's creating a problem for the people.

And I'm not saying we need to change parking enforcement jobs, but I get it in terms of if your job doesn't have you do anything beyond, you look at these specific things at these specific times for these specific concerns, and you follow these specific guidelines and file these specific reports, that whole idea of you do what you're told to do, what you're empowered to do, and what.

With what tools you have to do them. There are some times where this doesn't sound as proactive and preventative as it could be.

Francine: Sounds ridiculous in my opinion.

Dr. Darin: I think that we also have to look at the fact that there's a difference between the speed of policy and the speed of technology and the speed of industry.

Did not necessarily look like this 10 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago. And just like I mentioned earlier that in 1993, we were using essentially the same kind of inspection Protocols or tools, if you will, as we were using 90 years earlier, how is it that meat inspection didn't change in 90 years?

Well, maybe the speed of change over those 90 years was not necessarily as fast as the speed of change over the last 30 years. Because everything from where we're getting our ingredients, the increase in ready to eat and commercially packaged foods, the idea that we have retail establishments that are also restaurants or hybrid retail, we have consumers are buying things directly from manufacturers, or they're using 3rd party shopping and 3rd party delivery and, you know, Some things are partially prepared and mailed to the house or delivered at the door, just the way that people are buying food and the kind of foods that they are buying and where these ingredients are coming from.

The whole idea of convenience has radically changed how not just the meat industry, but all of food industry has changed over the last three decades. And then with the pandemic, it's even changed faster. I think what we're going to be experiencing and we should be concerned about. Is not that there is change.

But that the speed of change is increasing and increasing. And if we take so long to change policy, look how long it took to get FISMA passed.

Matt: It took that long to get FISMA passed. And then look how long it's taking to get it implemented. So it's

Dr. Darin: like the science and technology and consumer behavior and industry needs.

have literally changed during that timeline. So you have to have policy that is not only adaptable, but perhaps policy that doesn't have to go through complete revision in order to accommodate for changing landscape within the food industry. That's actually one thing that's a bit different between the European union and the United States is that most policy here in the European union, when it comes to food safety.

Automatically is adjustable for changes in science and technology the way it's written in the United States. We tend to be a bit more agnostic when it comes to technology these days. We say transparency, but we don't say how we say sanitation, but we don't say how we say digitized, but we don't say how right.

And that becomes, I think, part of the problem in terms of why, remember when we were talking about blockchain, that was the only topic and now we don't talk about some, it used to be a three to five year return on investment. Now, is it even a 30 year return on investment? I think that again, there are some differences in terms of how we're looking at technology, whether we're being agnostic or we're writing things in a way that's not accounting for the technology.

You look at Dubai, they literally adopted a platform and said, we are going to be using this way of tracking. Food authenticity, food safety and all points in between. And it's a government mandated system. I'm not saying we have a government mandated system, but the opposite end of that spectrum is that we dodge the issue, the specificity, we're agnostic in it.

And we never really have anything that really we grab a hold of. And that starts to develop a true foundation.

Matt: So I have two points and I'd love to ask a question on another question on that. So one is, I think to your point about innovation for meat, all this stuff has happened and we haven't been innovative and meet one, like with your return on investment, why would anybody invest in providing technology and opportunity of improvement?

In a facility that is 100 percent managed by the government. So I think USDA's or the current policy for meat has made it where there is going to be no innovation because no innovator is going to touch that market because there's no ability for them to either get into that marketplace and be ever to get their return on investment.

So through your point about, you know, creating rules and allowing the teams to do their thing, there's a lot of innovation that each individual football team creates internally. Who their people are, what their plays are, all this stuff. But there's a framework of rules that are universal across that. I think it'd be awesome if we created those universal framework of rules and then allowed.

Each in company to be innovative in how they do that, whatever it is, as long as they're meeting those rules. I feel like bismuth to a four was a perfect example of that. Frank Giannis, Andy Kennedy and the team there at the FDA created. Here's what we think for traceability. They were technology agnostic, but really, truly only a couple few companies are gonna be able to do this based upon the vast expectations for that traceability, uh, new model, but it allowed a lot of innovation of how things are gonna be done in each individual warehouse, how things are gonna be done in the field, but a technology is going to end up being adopted for this at least one, but a huge change in terms of traceability is upcoming sciences and also the ability to adopt new technologies.

That aren't fear based, right? Like a radiation and some of these other things have come such a long way, but still they have to put like an irradiation label on the side of it. Like it's a nuclear hazard. I mean, you worked in nuclear submarine for years. I don't see you dying right now. Right. There are a lot of technologies that I think are really safe that.

The government makes it where it's very scary to the consumer that could totally change the whole entire industry. I don't know. I feel like I agree we need to have more government interaction, much better rules, but also I feel like government can also hinder the adoption and growth of food safety as well.

What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Darin: Interesting point. After the horse meat scandal, I talked with the Food crime lab. Andy Moorling was the director for many years. His stance was that we didn't need more rules. We needed to actually better enforce existing and perhaps it's not so much more government or big government or more laws, more rules.

As much as it is, we need to better enforce the rules that we currently have on the books, and I think that lesson learned could really apply here and the way of looking at it when we exactly how do we do this? We know certain things. First off, there's a disconnect. I think. When we looked at, is this a violation of the responsible corporate officer doctrine, the responsible corporate officers doctrine came about in 1975.

And we literally went decades before we ever actually saw it being used in a corporate sense. And even some of the cases that we've seen over the last, let's say 15 years. Has been, well, is that a violation of this or not a situation? You look at the peanut corporation of America, very weird how that broke down.

You know that it's considered to be a landmark court case because of the food safety violations. And yet none of the charges and none of the convictions were actually for harming anyone. It was all about wire fraud and obstruction of justice, but. No charges in terms of actually harming an individual or killing anyone were part of that.

When you look at bluebell creameries, the idea that there were charges brought against the now former CEO, and yet they were ultimately dropped. When you look at even the most recent one, the family dollar store. The 45. 7 million agreement, these agreements seem really large to some people, to me, well not to me, in the picture of the corporate sense, those are not really that large of a fine if you look at it, but those usually include the idea that the government's not going to go and personally or personally Investigate or charge any of the people who were responsible or were not acting responsibly in those kinds of situations.

So it's not just the idea of we're not enforcing the rules. We even have rules that we're just, it's like the cost of doing business kind of situation where, oh, just pay this fine and continue with your business. And I hope you don't ever do this again. We'll put you on probation for a while. Perhaps there has to be a look at culture differently.

Yes, I do think there needs to be the carrot and the stick. The culture has to be more than just the carrot and the stick. I'm not saying that we have to have bigger sticks, if you will, in terms of, uh, that we comply in terms of food safety, we focus on food safety out of fear of losing our life savings or our businesses or whatever kind of a deal, but there has to be a corporate culture around food safety that goes beyond that, that continues to prioritize.

It is amazing that, again, we mentioned how there was a statement made that. These big companies are poisoning millions of Americans. The problem with that are millions of Americans getting sick from food, more pathogens. Yes, but who are pathogens exist naturally. And it is company's jobs to minimize, to reduce, to have kill steps, all those kinds of things to make sure that food is as safe as it can be.

To say that companies are poisoning people, that is a whole different way of talking about intent, and I think that's part of the issue here, even with the responsible corporate officer doctrine, it does come down to intent, the idea of if you knowingly don't do something, if you knowingly don't take the right actions, if you knowingly just ignore likelihood and severity issues, that Speaks to intent the idea that you intend to prioritize profits and greed over responsibility to consumers, to communities, to society as a whole.

And that is part of that bigger conversation that we need to have far too often. And all three of us have been this, I know if I was asked this question, all three of us would raise our hands. How many people have we known for years and years within food safety that have gone from company to company to company to company, right?

Sometimes that's good. Sometimes you got to wonder so much turnover with leadership. Why are there examples of companies that don't have leaders that stick around for decades when it comes to food safety and quality assurance? Is it because of other opportunity or is it because. They see something that they don't like, and they want to move on, or because there's a corporate culture that doesn't necessarily provide the environment that they thought they wanted to be in.

It just amazes me how we look at certain consistencies, but we don't take into consideration so much change and turnover within the industry. That starts to complicate this bigger idea of reputation, brand name, legacy of companies and what we all perceive in terms of food safety.

Francine: So, I think we should probably talk about glove safety day.

What do you think? That's fitting. Not the rest of the conversation is not been amazing because it always is.

Dr. Darin: I am so excited about this. It's one thing to go, Oh, here's this thing that's been going on for a long time and why do we do it

Matt: was so nerdy. For us to say, let's talk about global food safety day.

And then Darin, for you to be like, I am so excited about this.

Dr. Darin: Well, you know, I'm excited because it's about awareness. And I think that when we talk about being an activist, when it comes to food safety, none of that can happen unless there's that foundational level of awareness. And if national food safety education month is a way for us to get to bring about awareness of information to consumers, to the workforce, even awareness of the various participants in food safety and what companies are doing when it comes to food safety.

I think that it's always a good thing, even, um, looking at it in terms of the fact that in my experience over three decades, when most people talk about food safety, it's after something bad has already happened. So. Yeah, I'm excited about the opportunity to talk about food safety and it's not purely in response to something horrible just went down.

Right.

Francine: Yeah, I was excited. I'm excited about it as well. I think it's a great thing. Do you want to explain a little bit about what Eagle protect and you are working on? I think it's amazing. I was excited when you reached out to us.

Dr. Darin: Well, happy to do that. You know, there in the recent. Issue of the Journal of Food Protection.

There's an article about some research that was done into gloves and there's so much I've learned about gloves. over the last while. And I have been someone who's been talking about food safety. It's almost a pun, if you will. The idea that we all have our hands in food safety or food safety, the responsibility for food safety is in our hands, but so are gloves and the idea of what role gloves play.

I had an opportunity last year to speak before the national conference of state legislators, like they were going before they went into their next legislative session. And 1 of the things I did was I literally brought up a map of the United States. I was showing them. From state to state, how certain things are different.

And one of them was about gloves. Here's States that say you're required to wear gloves and here's States that say you're not required to have gloves, wear gloves, and here's States that don't say anything about gloves. And I also did that with everything from dogs in restaurants to someone being a certified food handler.

They have a food card or a food certificate. Or some states it's everyone, some states it's only one person has to be. Some states don't say anything. And as we went from state to state, looking at this, the glove one was the one that sparked the most conversation like, Oh, hand washing alone is good enough, or what's wrong with wearing gloves or gloves are expensive or gloves.

And I thought, wow, there's a lot more to learn about. And before I get into some startling facts that came out through this journal of food protection article. One of the things that just jumped out to me most is that during the pandemic, there was so much broad when it comes to gloves. There were gloves that were actually like reused.

They were just like cleaned and repackaged and sent from or shipped in from other countries. Yeah. Let's

Matt: dive into this a little bit more because I was shocked about that as well. Literally recycled gloves. Were being boxed back in like new gloves and resold. How disgusting is that? So you're literally thinking that you're doing a good like washing your hands and you're putting on a glove because that's what you're supposed to do because you know that's that's right for food safety or for medical purposes for all these different things.

And it's actually hindrance. It's worse. When I read that, Darin, I was flabbergasted. I was like, wow. So, okay. I just wanted to make sure we dove a little bit into that before we, okay, go, go on with more of your journal.

Dr. Darin: Well, there's also the fact that, so, First off, disposable gloves for food are not inspected when they come to the United States, unlike gloves for medical purposes, right?

The FDA does actually have a blurb about food compliance. It's a chemical content and migration test. Only gloves are not required to be clean to meet FDA food compliance. So gloves are, they're, they're required to have certain chemical free nature to it. And to not have holes in them are not actually required to be clean,

Matt: clean or sanitize.

Dr. Darin: Yes. And so some research was finding that there's actually the water that is used to make these gloves is often not sanitary or clean inspected on its own, such that 50%, this is the finding in the journal of food protection, 50 percent of gloves entering the United States. Again, in this case, I'm talking about food handling gloves, not about medical industry.

50 percent of gloves entering the United States carried fecal matter indicators. Over 250 viable pathogens. Some of them being dangerous were found on unopened boxes of gloves entering the United States. Disposable gloves carry a couple other issues too. Those two facts from the article in the Journal of Food Protection were quite eye opening.

Matt: Yeah, and it was so startling. I want you to say that whole entire thing again, Darin, because I want to double down on that because a lot of times people are driving and I want them to hear what you just read.

Dr. Darin: So again, these two items are from the journal, the most recent Journal of Food Protection. I believe it's the July August edition, but I could be wrong.

I could be wrong. Well, we'll make sure and have it. Yeah, I'll have it in the links below. It was actually out of the time of the AFP in July. So it's whatever period covered July of 2024. Yeah. So the 2 facts were 50 percent of gloves entering the United States. Carried fecal matter indicators.

Matt: So 50 percent and fecal matter indicators are like E.

coli generic E. coli.

Dr. Darin: They, by the way, I saw this here. They tested 25 to 50 gloves from each glove brand were analyzed. 26 different brands. So this wasn't like just one or two boxes from one or two companies. So 26 brands of gloves that came into the United States. 25 to 50 gloves from each glove brand were sampled to find all this information.

Matt: That's approximately 750 gloves were actually tested, which is a pretty big sample size for testing. So that means that 325 of those 650 actually

Dr. Darin: over 2, 800 gloves were sampled. 2, 800. Okay. 2, 800 gloves.

Matt: Louise, the 2, 800, I didn't read the sample size. So 2, 800, oh my gosh. So

Dr. Darin: in the scientific study, 2, 800 gloves that were tested, excuse me.

So again, 50 percent of the gloves entering the United States carried fecal matter indicators, and even worse is that over 250 viable pathogens, some of which are dangerous were found on new unopened boxes of gloves entering the United States. So we're already starting at a bad place. I

Matt: want to make sure everybody gets clear on this because Francine and I have talked about this a couple times.

Your facility could have done everything right. You could have done everything perfectly at your restaurant, at your warehouse, at your meat processing plant, at your produce packing plant, at your produce Processing plant like lettuce, you could have done everything right and still something could have gone wrong.

And not only that, but if you're, if that's on there, who knows how much of that is actually alive. You could be exposing your facility to new pathogens that would not have come in any other way. Uh, so, so it's not just, Oh, there's the glove. It's gone. Once I throw it away. If you're touching surfaces, And that pathogen then finds a place to live.

It can grow a match on the ground that are sanitized mats. The people are stepping in. You could provide them clothing, like white robes, all this stuff. Perfectly fine. You have basically a clean room in your facility and your goal logs could be creating.

Dr. Darin: Imagine if your job was on like an assembly line to put a piece of food into a package and every time you just, you know, over and over again, you now have cross contaminated each one of those items.

It becomes a numbers thing. I'm often asked. Well, how much of like raw milk, how much raw milk does someone have to drink to get sick or how much of contaminated X, Y, and Z does someone have to eat to get sick? Well, we know that it doesn't have to be a large number of pathogens. When you're talking about those most vulnerable populations, we're not talking about, it has to be this ridiculous amount of pathogens to make someone sick.

So how much pathogen, what size or quantity of pathogens on gloves is necessary in order to make this happen? So it becomes a. Well, wouldn't you want to start from a place? Think about this. I hope, I hope none of us end up in the hospital, at least not too often, but no one wants to go and be seen by a doctor or definitely not a surgeon and be told, by the way, I hope you're okay with me wearing a dirty glove, obviously, right?

No one wants to go into a place where they're going to make your sandwich. They got their gloves and they're going to put all the fixings and all the different toppings and all that kind of stuff in your sandwich or whatever. And I hope you're okay with me wearing my dirty gloves.

Matt: I just thought about this analogy and I don't know if this works, but it would be like going in and having a proctol exam and then them saying, okay, now say ah, and never changing their gloves.

Yeah.

Dr. Darin: Or what do they call those a, an assembly line kind of a thing where the doctor goes from patient to patient, like TSA. Yeah, exactly. TSA. But you know what? I know we can laugh at this, but I have a clear memory. Of a number of years ago. It's not just at the manufacturing. I remember going to a pizza place many years ago and I'm standing in line.

I watched the guy take cash from the customer in front of me, but in the cash register, give us some change back, type in the order, then the phone rang. And then he hung up the phone and they took my order and he typed it in and he took my credit card and he ran my card credit card, gave it back. And then he turned to the side and he grabbed the dough.

He threw it down on the flour and he started going, I'm like, Whoa, but you just touched all those things. And now you're touching my dough. You're going to cook. And he said, I kid you not, dude, it doesn't matter whatever crap I put into your pizza dough. Is going to get cooked out when it goes to the oven.

And I'm like, no, you don't add to the problem. Assuming that somewhere down the road, it's going to be like the UNO card where you undo it, a thing or whatever. That's not the kind of carbiculture that we want to have. We need to make sure. That we wash our hands. We need to make sure that we have gloves and that the gloves are clean.

And also look at how many recalls have been caused by there being glove parts in there. There's actually some information here. Disposable gloves have resulted in recalls because of the parts being found in the food. And also there are actual confirmed. outbreaks and deaths, illnesses and deaths more than one because of disposable gloves that were not clean.

And I tell you, I get into plants. There are people who let's look at the good. I've seen some plants. I recently saw a plant where they had three different colors of gloves. They have one color glove that was for sanitation. They had one color glove that was. Before they put the, like the seedlings and the stuff in to grow.

And they had a third color glove for when they were taking the completed product out and putting it in for packaging. Clearly different roles, clearly different gloves for each role. And the colors helped indicate that. Was the company that was talking about how, no, they don't want different colors of gloves.

They just want black gloves. Okay, but why do you want just one color and why do you want just black gloves? What was their response?

Francine: They don't share the dirt.

Dr. Darin: Yes, the black gloves hide the dirt. Not the answer you want to hear. Wow. Not the answer you want to hear, right? And people thought that was a completely appropriate way of doing things, right?

And then you have places where people, they don't want to, Cost the company money. And if their glove rips, they'll just wear a glove that's going to rip in it. Or they want to wear the same glove all day long, or they take a bunch of gloves and they'll put them in their back pockets. And you got to wonder when a female employee comes out of the women's restroom with a bunch of gloves sticking out of her back pocket, I don't need too much of explanation to think where have those gloves been if they're in her back pocket when she came out of the bathroom.

That's not a good scenario. Yeah, but all these different things play out. And, you know, Oh, the restaurants where I've seen this, where they're making like tacos and burritos and they have glove on one hand, but not the other, because it's easier for us to handle the things that way. Yes. But that's not your corporate policy.

And when you bring it up to the manager, they're like, well, you know what? It's hard enough for us to get employees in here. We don't have enough support from corporate office to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So even though it says you must wear two gloves at all times, we let them just wear one,

Francine: that's crazy.

I just saw that the other day. Somebody, not the other hand. I've seen chefs do this, but put on five pair at a time off. And I'm like, just doing an inspection. I said, why are you, I knew, but you need to hear them say it. Why do you have so many pair of gloves on? So I don't have to wash my hands. I'm like, dude, the sink's right there.

Dr. Darin: Yeah, they have that thing that says for handwashing use only, and yet it never gets used because people don't want to wash your hands. So all of this, and I'm sure we could talk about more and more examples of these kind of things. Oh, I also this is funny because it was at a retail food conference in New York.

I went to earlier this year. I watched a guy who was demonstrating like how to make pizza with this new technology, like some kind of robot pizza maker or whatever. And then at the end, the humans would take the pizza and box it, you know, and he goes and he gets a glove and he's, you know, he blows it up and rings it out and that kind of thing.

And the next guy, of course, he went one step further and he took his glove. And put it over his head so they could put over his nose so he could blow the glove up with his nose on top of his head video and then took it off and then put it on his hands because it's cool to do that. But all these examples point to why I'm so.

Enthusiastic about this idea of Global Glove Safety Day, the idea of if food safety is in our hands, then maybe we should get it right when it comes to gloves, whether you're in sanitation or distribution or retail or restaurant or manufacturing, however, and whenever you're wearing gloves, and if you're thinking that the wearing of those gloves is you taking that active role in food safety, A, you need to make sure that you're not only wearing the right kinds of gloves, but B, that you're doing it properly, that you understand what it means to wear those gloves, you understand, again, the wearing of five gloves, or the wearing of just one glove, or the idea of A, you could be actually starting off from a bad place, or B, wearing gloves such that you're making, you're rendering them ineffective in a sense, and there's this false sense of security that When people are thinking that they're taking steps to make food safe.

I think the other element is that Eagle Protect looked at the idea of putting this in September, Food Safety Education Month. And then propose the idea of let's hold that day on the 18th, which is the anniversary of my son, Riley's who died in 1993 with Jack in the box was born on September 18th. Okay.

Well, what did gloves have to do with that kind of a deal? Well, my son never ate the hamburger that killed him. My son got sick from person to person contact. And it's important to understand that we say foodborne pathogen, but it's not Consuming the product is not the only way people get sick. It also comes down to how there's cross contamination and person to person contamination.

What role gloves play. In fact, there was a investigation into the daycare facility where my son, he got sick from this other child. And the question was, why didn't any other children, which of course we would not want, but the idea that if the daycare workers were not properly wearing gloves, that there could have been many more children that got sick.

Matt: Wow. So it was like a cross contamination of somebody changing one kid's diaper and then changing your son's diaper or grabbing your son and holding them and then not really washing their hands or wearing gloves in between. Is that how that might've gone? That was

Dr. Darin: the belief. The child that got sick, a little bit of backstory here.

So my son was 16 months old. Another child in his daycare was 18 months old and that child, and I don't hold an 18 month old child. Right.

Matt: Absolutely.

Dr. Darin: Yes. But what the investigation found was that that child had E. Coli going back a little bit. Child's mother was assistant manager at the only Jack in the box in town.

And the father was a shift supervisor and she fed her son and herself a burger that was cooked to far too low of a temperature, which was the company's their protocol at the time. Was to cook it to this temperature, even though that temperature was too low and violated the state law. She recognized symptoms in herself and her child went and got tested.

But back in 1993, test results took about 48 hours to come back. When those test results came back, the health department was notified. Washington state was one of the few states that actually did that kind of notification. And when the health department was notified, they went to the home of this family to find that they weren't there.

And, you know, kept trying to figure out where these people are to find out that not only did she go back to work at Jack in the box flipping hamburgers while she was sick with E. coli. Which, of course, that starts to create conversation around family medical leave or earn sick leave, that kind of thing.

But she put her child into daycare with bloody diarrhea and did not tell them. Wow. Until it was too late. And their way of dealing with it, Was again, their proper use of gloves and sanitation. Obviously, it resulted in my child getting sick and ultimately dying. But the county health department's assessment was, if they were not properly wearing gloves and properly conducting the sanitation that they were supposed to be doing that, this could have been a situation where that 1 child.

Got perhaps 30 other Children, all of whom, of course, are in that vulnerable population age range. They could all have been coming to contact with that and become sick. And who knows how much that would have expanded the number of illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths during that event.

Matt: Wow. Wow. I mean, we've talked to you a few times there and I've heard you speak many times, but I haven't heard those details before.

And it's these details that really help inform. The world on how to make sure that this doesn't happen again,

Dr. Darin: I think that there's, it's almost like a graph over time, right? More information came out and I used to talk about more information, but over time, I share more and more information about my specific story.

A lot of it has to do with the fact of how many families I've come into contact over the years that I hear their story and it adds more understanding. And when I'm hearing. Them talk about the situations that they're experiencing or that they did experience. It does awaken certain memories, visions, smells, sounds, things of that nature.

And I have to admit, there are times where I relive that, you know, through the sharing of that story. And this is one of the reasons why I've long said that we get too caught up in numbers. And the economics, if you will, a food safety when we really need to make sure that we continue to keep a hold of very social, the very community and public health end of things as well.

If we lose track of the true burden of disease, we lose track of not just. Being able to accurately measure likelihood and severity, but the why behind food safety and with gloves, I think there's a false sense of security. If we're just making the assumption that any old glove will do, any old manufacturer will do any old, whether it's this material or that material or this strength or that strength or this thickness, that thickness, this color, that color, whatever it is.

They're actually, they're not all the same and. I could easily talk about it from a consumer perspective, but let's shift our hats and think about those people that they want to be an ally. They're aware about this and their form of advocacy is they prioritize wearing gloves, they prioritize this, they prioritize doing it right.

And all along they thought they were doing it right. They had no idea that these gloves were contaminated when they were just opening a fresh new box and taking a pair out that they were already starting in a deficit type of a situation. Imagine the frustration that those workers must feel when you're given a tool to do a job and turns out that the tool does the exact thing that it was supposed to prevent.

That to me is, it's such a. It's, it's like talk about defeated, it's like finding out that, you know, you, you put your child in a car seat or seatbelt and, and to find out that company was deliberately making it such that children were in more of a harmful situation than if they were not in a car seat or seatbelt, how frustrated parents would be in that kind of situation.

It's more than just the idea of compliance. It's more than the idea of culture. It goes to the bigger picture of. When we want to prioritize food safety and invest in food safety and yet use the same equipment, because that's what we've always used the same gloves, because that's what we've always used.

And then go find out that it's not as safe or sanitary as we thought they were. It's just, I have to admit, it pains me a bit that there are people that they find this out. They just feel so defeated.

Francine: Well, it's the other products that they're buying. They trust those companies. They trust that these things are coming in and they honestly don't know that the FDA doesn't regulate that.

They have no idea that the FDA isn't regulating any of that.

Matt: Yeah, well, for time purposes, I want to be able to be cognizant of your time there, Darin. I know you have another place to go while you're in the beautiful city of Amsterdam, doing God's work there, letting everybody know about food safety and finding out what's going on in other places so you can bring back that insights to here at the United States.

Dr. Darin: I'll share with you a little tidbit here before I go. Went to Rotterdam, my wife and I were in Rotterdam the other day, met up with a gentleman who's focusing on sanitation of delivery trucks. Not like the box that has the, the packages of, of goods that are done, but the kind of trucks that carry like the raw materials, the raw liquids, the raw powders and things like that.

And his work has found out that there are different grades and degrees of sanitizing that those go through. There's some major assumptions and that when his. Team started looking with the new technology into the hoses and the connections and the actual cleanliness of the containers themselves. Found out that it's not exactly what people were assuming because they weren't asking the questions.

They weren't looking to validate and verify the sanitation. And even the idea of any parent knows the idea of there's a difference between asking your kid, did you clean your room and your kid says, I'm done. And in your head, you're done, but is your room done? Individuals who were responsible for cleaning these trucks and they're like, Oh yeah, I did it.

I spent five to six minutes cleaning my truck. Five to six minutes cleaning your truck. How can you have a completely sanitized truck and it was sanitized and five to six minutes or whatever. So there are new questions and some of it's come about because of technology. There's new questions in terms of how are we defining sanitized?

How are we classifying? How are we having more uniform conversations about this? So again, it's like that. There's the focus on the last mile, but when you're talking about gloves, when you're talking about raw agricultural distribution trucks or delivery trucks, that kind of stuff, when you're transferring material from one location to another, there's elements we have to look at and be aware of at those points as well.

Francine: So, was that Hans you spoke to? Yes! I spoke to Vladimir. I don't know if you mentioned Vladimir. I spoke to Vladimir a couple weeks ago and amazing in my opinion that they are doing amazing work and amazing company. And yeah, I think I would like to speak with them.

Dr. Darin: Well, I was just talking with them earlier today and again, the idea of the mutual interests, these are global issues.

Food safety, sanitation, gloves, all the things we've been talking about. Like I said, there's no invisible dome that says that it's just an American problem, or it's just a one industry or one commodity problem. There are some bigger pictures. We can't talk about America having a safe soup food supply until we can truly talk about our global food supply being safer.

And I think that's one of the bigger messages that I'm bringing here to the work that I'm doing.

Francine: Yes, I think what they're doing is amazing, and I think it's definitely something that needs to be looked at.

Dr. Darin: Sounds like an opportunity for a future topic to start talking about.

Francine: Thank you for

Matt: helping us with content, Darin.

I

Francine: spoke to Vladimir probably two weeks ago, maybe on a Friday. Yeah.

Dr. Darin: Well, I was also just talking with not only Hans, but Dr. Palmer with the food chain ID. Looking at the bigger European, Asian, some of those issues as well, much more global conversations around food safety these days. Yes,

Francine: I agree.

Matt: Well, on that note, don't eat poop.

Don't eat gloves that have fecal coliform. Don't don't don't don't use them. Don't use clubs with 50 percent fecal coliform on them, which sounds like if every glove, except for the company you're working with Eagle, he's a pretty good We're a fan of Steve and the work that he's doing. So, and this will be launching on the 17th, if you're listening to this September 17th, that would be the day before National Glove Day on September 18th.

Dr. Darin: Yes. I expect everyone to be wearing their official global glove safety regalia on September 18th.

Matt: I would love a red, white, and blue glove to wear for American. Glove food safety glove day. Excellent. Excellent. Alright, thank you all. Thank you very much.