Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

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Matt: [00:00:00] As we saw this summer, restaurants can receive contaminated product from their supplier and suddenly be embroiled in the biggest food safety crisis of the year. And in terms of numbers, he's being very, very nice here. This is probably one of the biggest food safety outbreaks of our time in terms of the vast numbers.

Now mind you, not in terms of deaths, right? Because cyclospora, luckily cyclospora doesn't tend to kill people. I think there's been a couple deaths, but 30,000, 32,000 people and a couple deaths, while tragic, is minute compared to like listeriosis or E. coli or salmonella or something like that. If that had been that number for that, holy cow, we'd be talking about a lot more deaths.

Intro: Everybody's gotta eat, and nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, [00:01:00] keeping your food safe at all points, from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans Francine L. Shaw and Matt Regusci 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, Francine. This is going to be, this is gonna be a fun one, I think. Okay, I think your management style is kind of similar to mine, right?

Francine: I think they're very similar.

Matt: Yeah. Kind of working together for a while. There are a lot of managers in the world that like to blame other people for all their problems.

Even if it's your mistake, they like blame it on like a subordinate, or they blame it on a client, or they blame it on something else, and it's, it's like, seriously? Why? It's so much easier just to be like, "Whoops, [00:02:00] okay, I made a mistake. This is how we're gonna fix it," blah, blah, blah, blah, and just move forward, right?

As opposed to then blaming other people and then having to deal with the mess of blaming other people, and the cultural aspect of that is just murky, and it creates a lot more... Maybe, maybe my management style and your management style is just lazy. It's easier just to accept the blame.

Francine: Let's just fix it and move forward.

Matt: Yeah. It's so much easier to do that. Like, I don't understand. But you know what? Sometimes I think it comes down to ego. Actually, a lot of times it comes down to ego, and you and I really don't have ego. I mean, we say that, but we also have a podcast where you and I just talk all night. So maybe our ego is just, uh, placed in a different direction.

Francine: Maybe. I don't know. There are very few things I will argue about. When I do argue, I will dig in [00:03:00]

Matt: hard. Yes, I've seen that.

Francine: And I only argue when it's something I feel strongly about and I'm 100% sure that I'm right. But there's very few things that I will argue about. It's just not important to me to be right 100% of the time.

It, it, just, it just, it isn't, and I don't understand what people get out of the whole blame thing. It's like, well, it wasn't me, it wasn't my... It just doesn't matter. Just doesn't matter.

Matt: Yeah. And even, okay, so when you're blaming somebody else or if you're not taking the credit and blame for a whoops, then it makes it harder to get things done.

Like, for instance, produce off the shelf, so that more people don't get sick. When you say, "No, it's not me," or, "It's over here, it's over here, it's over here," and knowing that it's you then it only makes things worse. So [00:04:00] today's topic is the food safety blame game, and the industry has been doing this probably since its, since its inception, right?

I have yet to meet a farmer or a CPG brand or a processor or a packing house or a restaurant or a grocery store that does not think that they are the best in the world, right? Or at least in their region, at least in their commodity. Every single one of them believes wholeheartedly that they are the best, and I love that about the food industry because when you strive to be the best, if your mindset is, "I am going to create the best product there is on the shelf, better than all of my competitors, time in, time out, over and over," that only helps the [00:05:00] consumer, right?

But wrapped in that can't be, "I never make mistakes," because that isn't good for the consumer, particularly if you know you made the mistake and it just keeps going. Then that only hurts your brand, like, so bad.

Francine: How can we bury this mistake?

Matt: Oh my gosh. When I was running Odd Bean Companies, which is where the vast- but people think I got my white hair from the nine children 41 altogether that have been in our house.

No. No. I got all my white hair from having 400 auditors auditing thousands of different facilities and farms every single year. That is where I got all my white hairs from. I would tell my auditors when I was hiring them, like subcontractors or full-time, I would ask them, like, "Have you ever [00:06:00] done certain things?"

And I would ask them that. Like, "When you were in industry, have you done certain things?" And I would ask them, and I would want an honest answer, because I was looking for auditors that had worked in the industry that had helped bury things, because they knew where all the skeletons were in the closets.

So when they walked into a facility or a farm, they knew where to look, they knew what questions to ask, et cetera, et cetera, because they were like, "If an auditor asked me these questions, or had looked over here, or had done this, then I would've gotten caught doing something I shouldn't have been doing."

Like, I wanted those auditors not to help bury things, but to help unbury things so that... Because the, the... That's so much risk f- for an auditing company, and for a facility. Man, what a spotlight that has been shone on our industry right now over all these outbreaks this summer, and it seems to be, [00:07:00] and Francine, you're the one who brought up this conversation, wanted to talk about this, that the f- food industry is just doing the big old food safety blame game.

Francine: Right. It is always that way. W- you know, one industry wants to blame another. It's like, you know, "Well, you sold the product. Well, you delivered the product. Well, i- it was fine whenever we shipped it to the transportation company." And the transportation company, you know, says, "Well, it was fine when we delivered it."

Well, somewhere along the line something happened to this product. People are getting sick. So can we just stop arguing about whose fault it was and try to figure it out? So yes, the restaurants or the retailers are the ones that sold it, b- but-

Matt: Directly to the consumer ...

Francine: right. Right Lettuce, they aren't the ones that caused the contamination, the [00:08:00] initial contamination.

They're just the names that we're all familiar with, and we talked about this the first time several weeks ago when we talked about the outbreak. You know, Talk of Bell was the one that initially had their name attached to the cyclospora outbreak, but Taylor Farms is the one that grew the product. Well, they're the ones, their, their farm, I guess, grew the- They're

Matt: the ones that processed it.

Yes. Yes.

Francine: So what's important, though, is that we figure out, we stop all of this and figure out where did it come from. Where did the, the water come from that contaminated the product? Because otherwise, next year we're gonna have the same problem.

Matt: Right. And so we're gonna talk about an article that was written by a good friend of our podcast, Roger Hancock, just [00:09:00] recently, and the article is What Restaurants Can Learn from the Lettuce Recall.

It was written August 20th, and it's a great, great article. Roger doesn't know that we're talking about this, which is funny, 'cause, like, I talk to him all the time. But I'll let him know that this'll be up when we do. With the food safety blame game, we heard with this cyclospora outbreak it's probably domestic water.

Which is... No, it's not. It could be in the future now that we have 31, 32,000 confirmed cases of cyclospora. That's a lot, and so unconfirmed because of a lot of different reasons. One, insurance may not pay for these tests. If they're poverty-stricken, they're not gonna pay for these tests. And a whole bunch of people just are like, "Okay, I, I'm gonna let this thing pass.

I'm healthy, I'm fine. There's no way on God's green earth I am going to go to the hospital [00:10:00] and do three stool samples for a cyclospora test." Like, "This does not sound fun. I'm already sick. That's not fun. I'm not gonna go do this. This, this is not fun at all." Right? So the CDC says that for every confirmed case, there's 84 that are unconfirmed.

If we were to take that number- Oh

Francine: my God ...

Matt: it just keeps, it keeps growing, 'cause we did this, you know, 'cause- And I

Francine: know we did this a couple weeks ago.

Matt: Yeah. All right. So if we were to take 32,000 and multiply that by 84, that is almost 2.7 million people in the United States that probably have cyclospora.

Let's say we half that. Let's say, okay, on this one, because it was so widespread, because there were so many people, let's say that 42. This is only accounts for two, 42 more victims. Then that's still 1.35 million [00:11:00] people. So who knows? Is Cyclospora now going to be an American thing? I don't know. It could be.

But right now it is not, right? This is not coming from the United States water system, right? And then there was people saying, "Well, it can't come from the farm in Mexico, 'cause all their water comes from wells. It's not from the river, it's from wells, or from canals, it's from wells." But that may be a good argument for people that don't understand how produce works.

You do not pump product from a well, which tends to be sterile, okay? Wells, unless there's cracks in the well or whatever, that water is, is very, very clean coming straight from the ground. But water from a well is not fast, so you pump water from well or wells into reservoirs, and then you feed your crops via that reservoir, because now gravity helps.[00:12:00]

Okay, so reservoirs are open. So it's like, think of, like, a reservoir as, like, a little pond next to your farms, okay? And you're feeding water onto those farms from that reservoir.

Francine: Like a feeding pond. I mean, like- It's a feeding pond ... yeah. Yeah.

Matt: It's a water pond Can cyclospora be in that? Absolutely. Another thing too is could there have been a, like a small flood event or whatever?

Was it a super rainy season near that farm? Yes, actually. This last year was a super rainy season. Could water have been flooded onto that farm? 100% it could have been, or farms feeding this processing plant. So there's a lot of different ways at which you could get a systemic event. And so when I say systemic event, this isn't like a bird pooping on a piece of lettuce, and then there's...

You can get E. coli or salmonella or whatever from that individual leaf. This would be somehow cyclospora spores [00:13:00] got onto the lettuce, either one is, it was sprayed on, so they brought the water that has cyclospora spawns into, uh, spores into their spray tanks, and then they sprayed it evenly on. Two is from their fertilizer, which this most likely didn't happen.

If it came from the fertilizer, it'd probably be E. coli or salmonella. Farms aren't usually allowed. There are some countries that allow human feces to be used as compost. I don't think Mexico is that. So it's not that. So the most likely s- place is from the water source. And so it could have come from the reservoirs, it could have come from people swimming in the reservoirs or whatever, or it could have come from a flooding event from nearby that went onto the field.

Either way, it most likely came from there. But so much blame is being placed around that the real culprit was not pulled off the shelf [00:14:00] fast enough. It just wasn't.

Francine: Taylor Farms spent so much time saying, "It's not us."

Matt: Yes.

Francine: In the meantime, I went to dinner with somebody that works for a company that sells their product.

This person is a produce manager for said company. She's arguing with me that they don't sell their product. I know for a fact that they sell Taylor Farms product. A, I've seen it there. I've bought it there. At that time, Taylor Farms had just listed the recalls, and it was on the list. Now, I'm not gonna get in an argument at dinner, but I know that you do.

How can this be that you don't know that you sell their product? And if you're the produce manager, is their product off your shelf? [00:15:00]

Matt: Yeah

Francine: So how many places is that happening?

Matt: A lot, because they may be buying it directly from Taylor Farms, or they could be buying it from a distributor directly from there.

Either way, a lot of times, is this a retailer or is this a restaurant?

Francine: It's a retailer.

Matt: Okay.

Francine: And it's a prevalent retailer.

Matt: Right. Okay. So the retailer, the produce at the retailer store is buying it from their distributor as their private label brand. So they may not know that p- that Taylor Farms is connected to that.

Francine: They have both.

Matt: Oh, right.

Francine: There's Taylor- Yes ... Farms labeled product in the store.

Matt: Yeah.

Francine: And although they're, they also have fresh label.

Matt: They could have pulled the Taylor Farms product off the shelf, but did they pull

Francine: theirs?

Matt: May-

Francine: maybe, 'cause I was wondering if that was, if, you know, it's possible that they pulled the Taylor Farms and [00:16:00] didn't pull the private label.

Matt: So Taylor Farms sells to major private label. They're the private label for a bunch of different retailers out there, a whole lot of them. And so when you're buying the grocery store's private label salad brand or whatever, it's not like that retailer is out growing the produce and processing the produce.

They have suppliers that do that, and Taylor Farms is the largest in all of those private labels.

Francine: The odds that you don't have some kind of produce in your refrigerator that came from Taylor Farms is almost slim to none.

Matt: Yes. Yeah, particularly if you're buying a private label brand. Yeah. Okay, if you are somebody who eats out a few times a week or more, [00:17:00] the chances that you have not consumed a Taylor Farms product is actually slim.

Very, very slim. Depending upon the restaurants you go to, and even high-end restaurants, right? 'Cause it's not like that restaurant is growing the salad either, right? They're buying it from distributors. And those distributors ha- have a direct line to Taylor Farms. They, they are the biggest.

Francine: So as I was looking, when this was like at its peak, and I'm reading some of the comments on social media, I'm just like, "You just don't have a clue."

Matt: No. Okay. So Roger wrote a fantastic article. Again, it's on FSR Magazine online, What Restaurants Can Learn From the Lettuce Recall. Now, obviously, Roger Hancock is the CEO of Recall Infolink, so I bet he's been very, very busy lately. I haven't talked to him in a while. I gotta give him a call.

Francine: [00:18:00] I bet business is booming.

Matt: I bet it's, it's... I bet it's not doing too bad right now. He wrote, and it is so great, "Prevention remains the goal," starting off right off the bat. "Recalls don't typically originate at the restaurant level, but as we saw this summer, restaurants can receive contaminated product from their supplier and suddenly be embroiled in the biggest food safety crisis of the year."

And in terms of numbers, he's being very, very nice here. This is probably one of the biggest food safety outbreaks of our time in terms of the vast numbers. Now mind you, not in terms of deaths, right? Because cyclospora, luckily cyclospora doesn't tend to kill people. I think there's been a couple deaths.

But 30,000, 32,000 people and a couple deaths, while tragic, is minute compared to like listeriosis or E. coli or salmonella or something like that. If [00:19:00] that had been that number for that, holy cow, we'd be talking about a lot more deaths.

Francine: Oh, my.

Matt: Oh, my gosh. Be way more. And then the next paragraph is, "We can learn important lessons from this summer's Taco Bell-Taylor Farm cyclospora outbreak, which sickened thousands of people across multiple states."

Again, Roger's being very, very nice. And by the way, if you've ever met Roger Hancock, and you can see interviews with him and Francine and I, he is like the most low-key person in the world. If you're in the middle of an outbreak, and the whole house is burning down and on fire, call Roger Hancock because his demeanor will slow you down.

To say his personality is the exact opposite of Francine and I would be an understate- Uh, it's probably why I love the guy. He's so chill. He's absolu- a- almost too chill. All right. So he says sickened thousands of people across multiple states. It's actually tens of thousands of people. Tens [00:20:00] of

Francine: thousands?

Yeah, right. They're using CDC numbers.

Matt: They're using CDC numbers. Yes. Yes. Which, of course, as we've talked about, why are the CDC numbers so low, Francine?

Francine: Because they're not accurate numbers, Matt.

Matt: What did the CDC do a year ago, two years ago?

Francine: Stopped counting. They stopped counting cyclospora. What? Right.

Yeah, they stopped counting cyclospora, so, you know, those numbers are not accurate, right? You and I are talking about state numbers that are independently counting. They're counting their own numbers. We're taking numbers from the individual states, which Bill Marler's keeping track of for us. Um, Michigan, again, has done a fantastic job, as well as some of the other states that Yeah.

So that's why we're not using the CDC because at this point their information's garbage. I used to go to them for all the informati- [00:21:00] ugh, that I used, and I rarely go to the CDC for any information at this point

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and he, he even states this right below. So sickened thousands of people across multiple states.

The CDC, Center of Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Food and Drug Administration, FDA, link shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms and served at multiple Taco Bell locations to a major widespread cyclospora outbreak.

Francine: So wait a minute. I want to go back to the CDC. When I was using their website a couple years ago, at one point they shut it down for a couple days, threw a whole bunch of information off, and it was just gone.

That's when I stopped using it. Anyway, go ahead.

Matt: A few key takeaways from this crisis include, one, it's very important to know your supply chain. Amen. Yes. Number two, recall investigations naturally evolve. Oh, [00:22:00] man, this whole entire thing has been one major evolution of the cyclospora outbreak, and some people could say s- evolve.

Roger, you are so low-key in this article that it's fun to just kind of, like, add our own commentary to this. Some would say that this is an evolution. Others would say that it's a cluster-blank.

Francine: Yeah, it is a huge cluster. The evolution is the lawsuits evolve. That's the evolution that's happening.

Intro: Oh my God.

Matt: So recalls and investigations naturally evolve, or it's a massive cluster, or lawsuits are gonna find out everything that's going on, however you wanna explain it. Three, confusion is the enemy of effective recall response. Amen Yes. And then four, complex supply chains equal harder traceability. Yes, [00:23:00] and holy cow is our supply chain extremely complex.

Extremely complex. You could say it's complex, or you can say that the consolidation in our supply chain has actually made it less complex. When I say consolidation within the supply chain, I mean one major processor can sell produce to all 50 states in the nation and get everybody sick simultaneously.

You should be able to pinpoint that very quickly, actually faster than some smaller outbreak just due to epidemiology, right? So when you do the survey of epidemiology and you're taking a survey of a whole bunch of victims and what they ate, the more numbers there are, the easier it is to boil it down.

But I would say that our complex supply chain does make it harder for traceability, but also the consolidation [00:24:00] and all the players involved in it make it harder just due to too big to fail. Like, the government doesn't wanna pinpoint who it is, all the retailers, the food service companies don't want to, because if this company goes out of business because of something like this, it would be very difficult to replace them.

So we have created- Right ... monsters with... When, when I say monsters, I mean massive organizations. Not monsters in terms of personality, but massive organizations providing so much of the food in our system, that if they were to fail, then it would be catastrophic in terms of being able to get produce or meat on the shelves.

Francine: Well, and that's why there shouldn't be monopolies.

Matt: They are basically becoming monopolies.

Francine: And that's why they, we shouldn't have monopolies in those situations, because then what- What do you do when one of them fails? That's why it's a big deal

Matt: Do you remember during COVID outbreak when [00:25:00] JBS got hacked by Russians?

Everybody realized they were like at 30% of our meat supply was coming from JBS. They were completely shut down. Yeah, not good. Not... It's great for supply chain consistency and distribution and expense, right? Because the bigger they are, theoretically, the less expensive they will be until they are a monopoly, and then they can just charge whatever they want.

But yeah. So yeah. All right.

Francine: The word is discovery. Discovery is going to make these investigations naturally evolve.

Matt: Yeah. When all the epidemiology results come through and they're like, "Why is only 25% of the cases linked to Taco Bell and Taylor Farms? Oh, because the other ones were linked to all the its other bagged lettuce that people buy at the grocery store, or some other restaurant that they ate ice- shredded [00:26:00] iceberg lettuce at or whatever.

Yeah. Okay. So Roger gives some key points for restaurateurs, which I think are fantastic. So this incident is a good reminder for restaurants to, one, communicate quickly and clearly. And he calls out He says, "As we saw in the cyclospora outbreak, a lack of quick, clear messaging led to consumers' fear and distrust.

Initially, the information around this outbreak was vague, confusing, and incomplete. As a result, consumers worried about eating all raw produce and wondered if the industry could really protect them from sickness-inducing parasites. Effective communication are framed as 'Here is what we know.'" Quote, "Here is what we know," even as the inf- incident re- evolves.[00:27:00]

So fast, clear communication could quell fear and minimize brand damage as the solution unfolds, and using understandable language, clear product identifiers, honest information about what is known and not known, and clear actions that trading partners, employees, and guests should take. As the situation changes, provide clear, concise updates.

Transparency, consistency, and clarity build trust. Amen.

Francine: Yeah. So many of these organizations when... You know, and I would even go back to Chipotle when they had their outbreak. They forget that communication is, like, the most important part of the outbreak when it happens, and they fail, or the majority of them, I should say, fail so miserably at this.

It just, it's, [00:28:00] it's terrible. It's like they wanna pretend... Boar's Head. The communication is terrible in these cases things start to happen. I, I don't know if it's their lawyer's advice. I don't know. It's awful. How many times can I say that? They just, they don't communicate at all.

Matt: No, and when they do communicate, it isn't any of those things that Roger advises.

Fast, clear communication to quell fear, minimize brand damage, use understandable language, clear product identifiers, honest information about what is known and unknown, and clear actions the trading partners, employees, and guests could take. They just send somebody out, or they write something up that is so vague and mumbo-jumbo-y, they might as well have not done anything at all.

Francine: I think it's because they're afraid of admitting liability, and I... They could [00:29:00] communicate without admitting liability. And let me just say, if you've got 10,000 people off the bat that are sick from eating lettuce that has your name on the bag, I think liability's out the window-

Matt: Yeah, yeah ...

Francine: at that point.

Say something Just say something. Or, you know, people that are in the hospital and dying from eating liverwurst or whatever it was, again, say something. Now, when it's in question, you can still say something, maybe a little bit less. But again, just not saying anything is just horrible PR, horrible And I want to thank some lawyer somewhere sitting behind a desk is advising them to just not say anything.

I think, you know, maybe PR and the attorney should get together and come up with some kind of communication that they can release.

Matt: And maybe with food [00:30:00] safety in the room. VP of food safety. Well,

Francine: that would be... If- they always leave food safety out of the room. Food safety is never in the room. They're not at the board table.

They're never in the room.

Matt: And not... Okay-

Francine: And as many freaking people as they're getting sick, I think it's time we bring food safety into the room.

Matt: Okay, as I've said, like, multiple times, there are two types of food safety people. There are food safety politicians, and there are technical food safety people.

If your VP of food safety is a food safety politician, then maybe have the other PR people in the room that are technical that would be like, "Okay, before we learn how to spin this, let's figure out the facts. And if... What facts can we give along with the spin? Maybe combine the two," right? Like, okay. Number two: don't get defensive or place blame.

Oh, I love this so much. So the cyclospora outbreak didn't [00:31:00] originate at Taco Bell, but the restaurant brand didn't publicly blame or shame their supplier, which is true. All the stuff coming from Taco Bell, they didn't blame or shame Taylor Farms at all. Taco Bell acted professionally throughout the incident, issuing a statement that said they, quote, "Believe public health is a shared responsibility among restaurants, their suppliers, and authorities, and we are proud to have consistently acted quickly and proactively to protect our guests."

And they did. They, like, pulled off everything super fast, even their salsas, before they realized it was the iceberg lettuce. They were openly transparent and collaborative, reiterating their commitment to public health and safety. Importantly, they did what they said they'd do: work with public health officials and their suppliers to pull potentially contaminated products from supply.

As a result, their customers are likely to remain loyal [00:32:00] to the brand. By the way, I had Taco Bell with my family, like, just this last week. Taco Bell actually walked out of this fairly clean by how they handled this. It's a case study on what to do.

Francine: Right. I agree.

Matt: In fact, I bet it will be a case study in future college food safety-

A month ago. I said that a month ago Yeah, you totally did. You totally did. Okay, so now it's time to plug Roger because that's what he's doing in here. Use tech tools to improve visibility and traceability. Recall info link for it's this guy who's writing this article. Once you know you have an issue, there's a lot of tools out there that make this recall way easier to do than calling up a whole bunch of people.

You just kind of click a button, plug it in there, click a button, and then boom, it goes out. His tool is actually really cool. Number four, [00:33:00] understand that evolving situations are normal, not a brand failure. You and I talk about this all the time, Francine, that while we can reduce food safety outbreaks significantly with the proper SOPs, proper following through, proper all this different types, there's going to be whoops that happen occasionally, and how you handle it is going to be whether or not it's a brand failure or you build more trust with your brand Like we saw Taco Bell versus Taylor Farms.

And then number five, prepare in advance. Oh my gosh, so many s- just in all the audits that we did over the years, it was fascinating how many people thought they knew how to do a mock recall until they ended up in an actual outbreak, and then they realized that whatever that manual was, it's not accurate.

Like nothing made [00:34:00] sense. Like practice with crisis management. Have all the right stuff in advance. Know who you're going to call. Know how you're gonna manage this. Know what systems you have in place to find this stuff out. It needs to be clockwork, because in the middle of a crisis, if you don't have that down, everything that is in that book is not gonna get followed.

Francine: Everybody that we talk to is like, "Sure, we know what to do." But do you really?

Matt: Yeah. And the answer most of the time is yes. And in actuality, the answer is no. And then remember, recall response does not replace food safety practices. Amen. Theoretically, you should never need to use a recall response. Well, there's always gonna be some sort of whoops.

Theoretically, you shouldn't have to use a recall response because all your practices are up to date. You're doing everything. You're pulling product that has issues. You're doing [00:35:00] all this different type of stuff before it ever gets into the system.

Francine: In the last few months, it's been like every day.

Matt: It's been every day.

So many companies.

Francine: You need a button. You need that easy button from Staples.

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