Welcome everyone to this edition of Amy and TJ, and we have another special episode. We'll explain why it's special in just a moment, but we have been asking what is going on with all of these recalls. If you've been paying attention to the news, or even paying attention to Morning Run, you will know that this fall, it feels like once a week at least, there's another headline out there that are there's another recall, and it makes me.
I don't know if it makes you, but I feel like it probably makes a lot of us feel like the food supply has become less safe these days. First, over the summer, we had the boar's head Deli meat. That's the first one I remember reporting on at least I know there were several before, but that one had ten fatalities. The outbreak second, sixty one people in nineteen states.
Yes, I love boys at the salami. You love that salam.
That salami is the genuash, the best was the last piece you had. It's been a while. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, listeria is scary. And then in September there was an egg recall. Sixty five people and nine states were sickened twenty four had to be hospitalized. That was salmonella. Then in October, Oh, we remember this headline McDonald's. It was the slivered onions in the McDonald's quarter pounders. One hundred and four patients across fourteen states became ill,
thirty four hospitalizations, one death. We reported on that at nauseum.
Are we missing a food born where listeria, salmonella, and colil? Have we got this help? We hit them all yet?
Yeah? I think those are the three big ones. And then we'll just stay on the E. Coli train because just a few weeks after the McDonald's outbreak was organic carrots. Thirty eight people were sickened, fifteen hospitalizations and one death, and this was all across eighteen states. Then we got the ground beef in November and it was the same ecoal I remember that as the one of McDonald's, but it sickened nineteen people in Minnesota. Four people were hospitalized.
And my goodness, this week we talked about cucumbers and eggs. This was salmonella as well. The cucumbers have sickened sixty eight people in nineteen states.
What was it in the I forgot what was it in the cucumbers again, it would that was equal our salmonola.
Salmanolaep it all straight. And then the eggs. There haven't been any reports of sicknesses, but ten thousand cartons of Kirkland brand eggs were recalled from Costco. So I'm exhausted.
Did we throw those cucumbers out?
No? We ate them. And I kind of freaked out. But so far, so good.
I wonder if that's a bad move. I think it's in our nature. Right. As soon as you hear there's a recall of anything, I don't go to the FDA or USDA website. I go to my refrigerator and I'll throw out whatever the thing they said. I don't check.
Yeah, I do the same thing. And we didn't. We finally ate McDonald's actually right before Thanksgiving, but it had been a while.
Yeah. Then I got, oh, oh my gosh, way wait, wait.
You wait a McRib? They haven't recalled What is that meat in a McRib?
There is not meat, it's just the molded thing that looks like a slab, is it. I don't actually don't know.
We have an expert here, we can ask him in a second. But here, so I just listed all these headlines, and it has felt overwhelming. But the two federal agencies that are responsible primarily for the safety of our food supply, they have They've cataloged more than twenty five recalls since November one alone, many of them linked to salmonella and E. Coli bought. With all of that, they say, we're close to the same levels as we were last year in twenty twenty three. So they say there isn't an uptick
from year to year. But I did. I was reading an article in the Washington Post, and there is a lawyer who has made a living since the early nineties representing plaintiffs in food born illness cases.
You have his number because I hate a macrib that might have been bad.
I can get that for you. I'm going to quote him here. He says, I've been doing this kind of work for thirty one years, and the last four to five months have been exhausting, I mean, also probably lucrative.
Yeah, I mean, do we want to use that as anecdotal evidence that our whole food supply is now tainted?
I think it just shows that we're hearing a lot more about them and a lot more people. As far as we've been aware, of have been affected or impact.
So that's the question. Are we hearing more about it? Are we reporting more about it? Are because the outbreak was at McDonald's that makes a headline definitely, right? And maybe that is the case. But I have seen a lot of places that it's not some huge surge or uptick with just getting a little more coverage. I'm curious if there's more of a cluster right now. I don't know if that's the case.
Yeah, and we're not just asking these questions in a vacuum. We actually have an expert in the studio to explain what is happening, why it's happening, and what you can do with anything to protect yourself. His name is Mike Roboch, my father. He is a microbiologist.
It isn't like a superhero.
I know. His name is Mike, and dad were You've been in charge of food safety for a couple of different corporations, but most recently and you are retired, but you most recently were what was your title exactly?
Hi was vice president Food Safety, Quality and Regulatory Affairs.
Very nice. See so he knows what he's talking about.
We put this in. Look, your dad has spent an entire life traveling around the world keeping food safe. Period. That is what he does. That is his job, has been his job, and so I have to resist their urge Baba roback almost like at least two times a day to not text you and say, hey, should I throw these eggs? Out right? I have all these questions, but we all have them, and now with these recalls, so I'm trying to put your dad's resume and his
credentials in proper context. This dude has spent a little life, yes, doing nothing but studying the safety of food and producing and coming up with ways to keep the food supply safe. This dude knows the stuff.
He's worked for some of the biggest names in the industry that you've eaten their products from meat, et cetera. So he knows his stuff. And I remember Dad even being on vacations with you over the years where you are on the phone trying to get a signal because you are dealing with another recall, like you were the person who was dealing with recalls for decades. So what is going on? Is anything different going on?
I don't know that there's anything different going on in terms of the number of recalls what has happened over the last few years as technology has improved so that we are able to identify certain strains of bacteria definitively, and the epidemiology, the investigations that public health authorities do and that the CDC does around multi state outbreaks, those techniques have gotten much better, and there's better coordination between
public health authorities and the CDC. So in the past, you used to have maybe twenty five or thirty illnesses a cur before a cluster was identified. Now if you have two or three people becoming ill, that can then with the investigative techniques and the technology available, can be linked to a certain strain of bacteria, whether it's Salmonella, Listeria, shegatoxin producing E. Coli, or camplebacter and it then epidemiologically can be linked to a food to a common source.
So the investigative techniques have gotten better, reporting has gotten much better, and there's more awareness around the safety of our food than there ever has been before.
Those was the coolest thing was we had this conversation like two three weeks ago down and You'll kitchen all right in Atlanta, and I was saying, well, what in the world's going on with the food. He's like, rest easy, young man. This is proof that the system is working. So it sounds like, are you say we can catch it in two or three people, which can now keep
the twenty five from maybe getting sick. Right, So, even though we might see recall recall, is it possible that fewer people are getting sick because we are catching these things so often and so quickly.
Well, I don't know if fewer people are getting sick. I think what we're doing is we're preventing the spread of some of these incidents. In other words, it used to be thirty five, forty five, even six days before you'd identify a problem, So you had that much product out in the marketplace making people sick. So you know, now I think we are able to limit the spread
and hopefully that is causing less illness. But that's a very difficult thing to measure because everybody doesn't pick up the phone and call their local public health authority, you know, when they have what we used to call the stomach flu, which you know, we know is you know, could be a gastro intestinal illness associated with food. Most people don't do that. I think the CDC feels for every case that's reported, there's something like fifteen or twenty that go unreported.
Wow, so it's like fifteen to twenty times the numbers were actually hearing other people who were actually impacted. And to your point, I would never who do you call? How do I call the FDA and say, hey, I just aid a McDonald's and I'm not feeling so well.
Nobody's going to do that?
Your thing to do that, and I won't even know how to do it. So who are these people figuring it out?
Some of these illnesses are are reportable. So if you show up in an emergency room and they identify uh salmonella, you know they culture salmonella from a sample that that you've given, that will be reported okay, and so that then can initiate UH an investigation.
But salmonela generally speaking, most of us A, most healthy adults have salmonella. Will it feel like it's just going to cycle through? Would you get sick enough a normal human? No, normal healthy I should say person. Would you get sick enough that you would go seek medical treatment? Or you just feel bad and take a couple of days off?
And well that's a It depends on the strain of salmon. There are hundreds of strains of salmonella, and I know it's confusing.
No, when I can do everything I ask you about it, you say, well, there are strains like, oh boy, here we go.
There are some strains like salmonella Kentucky for example. It's very common Salmonella Kentucky, and it is very common, but it's unlikely to cause human illness. Now there are others like salmonella and orititus, salmonella typhomerium.
They are more.
Pathogenic to humans. And so even a small dose so that salmonella could make someone ill ill enough that they would be debilitated. They would have to stay home. They may even go to the emergency room because they can have a fever, they can have diarrhea.
You know, there's cramping.
You can get cramping, you become dehydrated. I mean, so, yeah, it's serious.
I say this because I likes in a lot of these cases. It's that serious, right exactly.
And you know your brother's salmonella incident happened in the laboratory. He was working at a US Department of Agriculture lab when a graduate student, he was teaching them how to identify colonies and accidentally had a plate full of salmonella shoved into his face, and so he was able to go to the emergency room and actually self identify the salmonella strain was making him sick.
Wow, that's the way to get exactly the right antibiotic that you need. How does this happen? How do these types of bacteria get into the food supply?
Well? A variety of ways, and it depends what food product you're talking about. You know, we've talked a lot about produce related recalls, and you know, salmonella is not something that normally grows out in fields. It can be present in field, but it usually has to come from the gastrointestinal track of a warm blooded animal. I mean,
that's really the reservoir for salmonella. So you can have workers in a field that don't have appropriate hygiene and they can be contaminating produce as it's being picked, as it's being harvested, as it's being packed. The other way that you see it is and this is salmonella or E. Coli, both very similar organisms from they're both from the GI tract.
They can be found in water and if you're using irrigation water that's not properly treated, you can be spreading that salmonella or E. Coli contamination onto the produce as it's actually growing.
You used to say to me, fecal to oral. That always schews me out. But that's one way to put it.
Right, It's one way to put it.
Sorry, I was just sharing some family fun.
Wow, listeria, your brother eats salmonilla off a plate and yeah, ekals oral fun family dinners around there, right, I.
Mean it was it was not a food plate.
Let me be clear.
It was a laboratory and it was a it was a petri dish that that had a selective augur on it so that the salmonilla cells showed up looking a certain way.
What about listeria? How does that happen?
Westeria is more of an environmental contaminant. It's found it's ubiquitous in nature. It's found in soil, it's found in the air, and it becomes an environmental contaminant because it can get into a plant, into a food processing facility, and it loves cold, wet environments, and it actually forms a biofilm to protect itself, so once it colonizes, it can colonize a piece of equipment. It could colonize a floor,
sounds like an alien. It can colonize drains, forming a biofilm which then protects it from any disinfectants or what any sanitation devices. So you have to be very diligent in the way that you approach that, so that you're not just spraying bleach on things. You're actually washing them. So you get a detergent to break up the biofilm, then you can kill the organism.
Okay, I was a mad Listeria was the foreshead, right, And we've talked about the plant. It's been in news a lot. How does that happen? How does listeria end up taking over a plant like that and getting into the food supply, the meat supply of Yeah.
It's a it's a pretty straightforward process. I mean somebody brings the listeria into the facility. I mean it can be brought in on shoes, can be brought in on clothing. You probably have some listeria cells on us right now. And you know, in and of itself, it's it's a
normal organism. But what happens is you bring it into a plant and it finds a niche, it gets into a drain, it gets into the corner between the wall and the floor, It can get into a grout or anything that might be available for it to stick to, and it can grow. So if you don't have really diligent cleaning and sanitation programs and you're not actively monitoring the environment in your facility, you can get colonization and you don't realize that you have a problem because everything
looks clean. But microscopically, you've got these bacteria that are lurking around, and if they get on a conveyor belt, they get on a slide that products going over, they will transfer onto that product and end up. Slicers are notoriously difficult to clean, both in plants, facilities and also in retail delis. Wow, the slicer is a very common vehicle to spread bacterial contamination in retail delis.
That is so scary. And you have never been an alarmist ever when I've asked you can I eat this? Can I eat that? You always You're actually less of an alarmists than I would think. But I remember when I was pregnant, you were adamant do not eat deli meat, and all I wanted was a subway sandwich. I mean the entire time, That's all I wanted. But that you were adamant is I'm curious and you might not be.
It might be based on the strain. But if you compared E Coli to salmonella to listeria, is one significantly more deadly than the other?
Well, Listeria monocytogenes has a higher mortality rate, you know, per thousand illnesses. However, we talked about the different strains of salmonella, and they vary greatly in terms of their pathogenicity, so you know how they can make you ill. When we talk about E. Coli. Everybody talks about E. Coli very generically, but what we in food safety talk about specifically are shigotoxin producing E coli. And these are the ones you hear about OH one five seven or OH
one two four. These are markers or identifying characteristics of these organisms, and they produce a shigotoxin, a very powerful toxin. And OH one five seven, which was implicated early on in the early nineties in the famous Hamburger recalls that made headlines. And you mentioned an attorney who started out in that area. I know Bill Marler.
Oh, that's exactly who it is. That's so funny.
I know Bill very well, and yeah, he's made a career out of hawking this and working with victims of food born illness.
So he's not really exhausted.
I'm kidding, Yeah, I think, well, you know Bill. Bill's line was, please put me out of work, you know, and so you know it was it always had some good conversations about what we were doing to to improve food safety. But these one five seven E Coli O one five seven H seven was the organism that caused those outbreaks, and they are very pathogenic. So as small as one cell and a vulnerable individual can you know,
cause serious illness. And what most people end up dying from from oh one five seven is kidney failure because the organism will colonize the kidney and basically break it down. The reason that I didn't want you eating Deli meats when you were pregnant is because Listerium monopsytogenies is notorious
for causing spontaneous abortion. So you become infected, and if you're pregnant, you're very vulnerable because your immune system is suppressed, and that organism can induce a spontaneous abortion.
Okay, it's you all, forgive me. I'm a little behind here. But is this not something that women when they go in to talk to their doctum when they are pregnant, that is talked about with women? Deli meat, it wasn't.
I think they say try don't eat deli meat, don't eat sushi because of mercury levels. But for me, it wasn't. I wasn't told it. If you eat this, you are putting your fetus at risk. No, it was not said in those very specific terms. So when Dad said it to me, I was a little shocked. I mean he was like, absolutely no.
Like you said, no, you're not alarmist, But to hear a microbiologist, somebody you care about that much he's pregnant, you said, no, don't do this, that's a strong.
It's a it's a reasonable precaution to take, because you know, you're talking about deli meats, you're talking about soft ripened cheeses. You know these are typical vehicles for Lasteria monocytogenies. And now I got to say that the industry, the meat processing industry, has gotten a heck of a lot better. I mean, the boris head incident was one that we hadn't really heard about in a while. I mean, it hadn't been implicated Deli meats had not been implicated in
lasteria outbreaks like this for a for a while. I remember in my career back in the in the nineties, we worked long and hard to improve our sanitation systems, our cleaning systems, and our monitor our microbiological monitoring systems so we could identify if we were getting a listeria problem growing in a plant. So it was job number one and are ready to eat plant is to make sure that you're keeping listeria out of that environment.
Wow, catching the outbreaks is one thing, and it seems like we're doing as a government or as a country better. But how can the industry do better at preventing the outports? I mean, what have you seen happen and is that something that still needs improvement or are they doing as good as good of a job as they can?
Well, I think you can always do better, you know, And at the end of the day, it comes down to the human beings and the plant implementing the programs and the processes that have been developed. So the industry has spent a lot of time working collaboratively around ways to improve cleaning and sanitation and what we call operational sanitation, so that is wild the plant is running, you're keeping things clean, you're keeping things as dry as you can,
You're keeping them moving along in a sanitary manner. Equipment has gotten a lot better, so it's easier to keep cleaned once it's been clean and sanitized, and that work continues, constantly continues. You know, we've looked at different techniques you know, that you can use while the plant's in operation to assure that you're keeping any loads down to a reasonable level. Now, as long as you're working with fresh product, it's not
going to be sterile. So there's always going to be bacteria present because they're present naturally and are ready to eat plant. We've done a much better job in designing the facility so that you separate raw from cooked and you don't have crossover of personnel, you don't have crossover of equipment. You don't have you have airflow that's positive air in the in the finished product area, in the ready to eat area, once it's been cooked, you have
positive air, so air is being pushed out. You don't have air coming in from the outside or from the raw area.
You know, it's sounding like from it sounds like from you. Everybody else all this coverage and everything, everybody's going crazy, all these recalls. But from you, a guy who's been in the industry your whole career, sounds like you're not necessarily concerned. Like things are working. It mean, it sounds like you have faith in the system right now.
Things are working. I mean, I feel very confident with the folks I still know in the meat industry. Who are you know, very diligent in the approach to this. I mean, all the big companies work collaboratively around food safety.
One of the things we said. I was part of the Global Food Safety Initiative for about fifteen years, and the Global Food Safety Initiative was focused on the fact that food safety is not a competitive advantage, and so we were out sharing with one another our processes, our techniques, our technology so that everybody had access to it. We'll compete on quality, but we're not going to compete on food safety.
That's really nice to hear. That's nice to hear. I'm curious, are there certain products that are always going to be riskier to eat. Is there something that you feel uncomfortable eating. I'm just curious.
I don't eat sprouts, and I think you have to be more diligent these days in consuming fresh produce, because again, there's not a kill step in fresh produce. You know, you buy meat, you're going to handle it appropriately, and you're going to cook it before you eat it and
are ready to eat meat scenario. You know it's cooked meat that you eating, salami, maloney, you know deli meats, they're cooked, you know, So assuming that you don't have a disaster like happening at the boresh head plant, you know you can be relatively I think, comfortable eating those those products produce. There's no kill step. You know, you're not cooking your kale, You're not cooking your lettuce or your spinach. I mean you could cook spinach, I guess,
but a lot of people eat it raw. And sprouts have notoriously been grown in a wet, moist, warm environment, which is very conducive to the growth of bacterial pathogens.
And they're hard.
So yes, they're hard to wash. And I don't eat sprouts at all.
This is a microbiologist. Then there's one thing that is off the table for him always. And that's sprouts. Now, even at home, we can walk, you can wash them to Even at home, you wouldn't trust I don't.
I just don't eat sprout sprout, But certainly not at a restaurant. No, certainly not at a restaurant.
What about a buffet?
Oh, don't don't.
I don't eat a phase because he doesn't need a phase. And if you actually just I'm just gonna say, stand a few feet away and just watch people for about five minutes, and you will see so much disgusting behavior you won't want to eat at a buffet either. I told you what I saw at the Delta Sky Club the other day.
No, he didn't.
Yes, this man took his hands and went and got pickles, and it took his other hand and got another pickle. And I had a pickle on my plate that I used the tongs for. I threw the pickle away and said never again, because that wasn't eaten. I mean, that wasn't cooked either. Can Can I trust my produce? Can I trust restaurants? I mean, how do you grapple with that?
When you see all the headlines, you think, Wow, do I really want to eat out or you know, can I trust that these cucumbers are going to be saved?
Well, that's a really good question, you know. I mean, let me let me say this. I mean, I think that most food service establishments, you know, and I think you know, we we we talked a little bit about McDonald's. McDonald's has some of the best food safety management systems in the restaurant industry. They have clamshell cookers for their ground beef patties. That is not under the control of a teenager in the back of the house. It's computer generated.
And boy, when that quarter pounder burger goes down there, that clamshell comes down and it doesn't come off until the validated cook time is over. So I feel safe at you know, eating at a lot of the restaurants where you know, they there's a focus on food safety. Now, one of the things that you have to be careful about is you go to some places and you order a rare hamburger. Some states won't serve a rare hamburger, but some places you can still go in and get
a rare hamburger. You know, I personally would not probably eat a rare hamburger.
Is medium Okay, that's what I usually. I mean, you know, it's a little bit of a risk.
Well, you have to be careful because people say medium, What does that mean? Is that one hundred and forty five degrees? Is it one hundred and fifty degrees? Is it one hundred and fifty five degrees? You don't know, people say, oh, a little bit of pink in the middle. You cannot determine the dunness of meat based on color, and that's a fallacy that a lot of people have. They think, oh, look it's you know, cooked all the way through.
It might not be.
It might have been oxidized meat that was already brown when they put it in the pan.
What's your hamburger?
Order that medium?
Okay, all right, just making sure you're a little bit of a risk take.
Well, I'm a I'm a believer in acquired immunity, So I mean, so a little bit of something. Now I'm not talking about ecole one five seven h seven or or highly pathogenic salmonella or anything like that, but you know, a little bit of bacterial consumption is not bad for you. I mean, wat yogurt, right, it's full of bacteria, you know, I mean they're all good back to they're all lacked up a Solla streptococas. So they're good things for you just.
Showing out now, stop But which I assume all of them? But but tell me I go with chicken. Look, this is a might be a stupid question for but it comes from a guy who's in the kitchen all the time. Which which of these meats you better make damn sure you don't undercook like chicken, pork, ground beef, ground turkey, state all these things, like you don't want to undercook I assume anything, But what are those dangers? And what do you better make? Damn sure you don't undercook.
Anything that's ground. You want to make sure that you cook, you know, so ground beef should be cooked to one hundred and sixty degrees, ground turkey and ground chicken to one sixty five. So anything that's not what I call intact. In other words, if it's ground, if you've broken it up, even if it's been needle tenderized, that means that the surface has been compromised and you've had the opportunity for bacteria to get down into the inside of the meat.
So those meats and you need to make sure that they're fully cooked to be safe. A steak, which is an intact eake like a filet mignon, I have no problem meeting those medium rare. So you could have a you know, kind of warm red center, you know, so uh that maybe got up to one hundred and thirty five degrees one hundred and forty, but the surface was fully cooked. The surface made it up to that one sixty mark, but the inside didn't. But the inside, the
muscle itself, is sterile. Wow, So you can go ahead and eat that, you know, pork, pork you want to cook. I mean, we used to have a problem called trick and Ella trick and osis, which was a nema toad that would bury into the muscle of a of a hog, and people were getting trick and osis from eating under cooked pork. We monitored the herds for for that now. But nonetheless, I always like my pork done, you know, probably medium. Well.
I never know what to cook pork like that. And obviously chicken is a non.
Chicken is you know, one one sixty to one sixty five.
I've had to send two chicken breasts back in recent months because when I cut into it, I saw pink. If you see pink, you should not eat it.
Correct Well, again, color is not an indication of cooking, even with chicken, and sometimes sometimes if the chicken has been marinated, it can be marinated with some salts that can cause some pinking in the product. You really have to look at the texture of the meat itself to determine whether it's cooked or not.
But better safe than sorry, better safe than sorry.
Yeah, if you're uncomfortable eating pink, check and then you shouldn't need it. I know, probably not a bad thing.
Do you know the answer? What is the meat in the mickrib?
It's pork, okay.
Yes, yes, it's some slivered onions on it. You know what? What is the also thesterious almonla e Coli? Generally speaking? I know they're different strains hundreds, and I know you can name all of them. But what is the difference how soon you might see illness with these three things if you ingest them.
Yeah, it depends on the organism, and it depends on the dose. There's a term we use called dose response, you know, So if you get a big dose of salmonella, you'll probably have symptoms in twenty four to thirty six hours.
What's a big dose, Like, what does that even mean?
Well, I mean it'd be like a thousand cells program, So you know, pretty good load, pretty good, a highly contaminated product.
But it can take even longer if it's not as it.
Can and listeria takes a little longer. Listeria' is more like forty eight to seventy two to ninety six hours. Now there's other organisms too we haven't talked about, like stapf oreas. So we had an experience with we think staph orios when we were in Berlin after the marathon.
Can you say you mean you yeah, yeah, you don eat that.
So so that is.
An illness that is a little different because it's a it's an intoxication. So it's a toxin that's produced by staff for it's called enerotoxin, and you can have symptoms in you know, six to twelve hours and those are normally it's normally vomiting, which was consistent with what we.
And it was it was immediate and it was strong, right, it was powerful.
It was powerful again again, depending on the dose, some people got sicker and were sicker longer than others based on what they ate.
You know on the dose thing. Okay, back to that fort is it? You say, dose ite and potency? Is it possible? I might have a huge piece of chicken here with salmonella in it, and then a small piece of chicken here with salmonella, and the smaller one could have some kind of higher concentration of salmonella, and I could end up getting sicker by eating the smaller piece than.
Yeah, it's not about the amount of meat you eat. It's about the number of salmonella the cells you're consuming. And because what salmonova does, like E. Coli, those organisms, then it's an infection. They colonize your GI track. Yeah, and they are gram negative bacteria, so they produce what is called an endotoxin, and that toxin then slowly is released and it kind of peels off the layer of your intestines and that's releasing water and that's why you
get diarrhea. And in severe cases, then can it can actually colonize through the intestinal wall and get into your bloodstream and then you've got sepsis, Then you've got kidney infections. You've got and that's very very serious.
It's if you live long enough, if you travel enough, eventually you're going to go through one of these moments. But I remember Dad calling you. I was living in DC and I was I could not stop vomiting. And I was like, Dad, what's going on? And you said, what's the last thing you would And I was like fruit? And he was like, did you cut and wash the fruit? I was like no, it was pre cut in the grocery store. He was like, how long ago did you
eat that? I was like two hours ago. He's like, you have staff and you need to go get you some help right now, Like you knew the incubation incubation period and the fact that I hadn't I hadn't cut the fruit, and I hadn't washed the fruit with strawberries and bluebear berries. And now I will never buy pre cut the fruit at a grocery store.
Wait a minute, that's a big deal. Well, I would never have thought of that slice for people grab them every single morning and go about their way. You're saying you should rinse that off fruit.
I mean, it doesn't happen often, but it does happen. And in this case, it was a worker whoever, or or the the cutting board wherever they did the slicing of the.
Fruit could have been right there at the grocery store.
I could have been right at the grocery store. Yeah, yeah, you know they're because not all grocery store workers, whether they're in the deli or they're in the fruit cut up area, are necessyally properly trained. A lot of people wear gloves. You see them wearing gloves, but you know why they're wearing gloves. They're wearing gloves. They're thinking to
protect themselves as opposed. You know, we used to make a joke that you probably should require people to wear gloves when they go into the bathroom and then take them off when they leave, because that would be that would be more sanitary.
You know.
Then people wearing their gloves and then they're on the phone, they're writing in order, they're at the cash register, they're not changing their gloves.
During COVID you went bananas when you saw people doing that, because you said, they're actually not helping not spread COVID impact Because you have gloves on, somehow you think you're protected, and you probably do things you wouldn't do, and then you don't wash your hands because you have the gloves on, so you're actually being less clean by wearing the gloves. So you never liked seeing workers wearing gloves.
Yeah, there's a I mean, if you have proper hand washing and sanitation going on, you know, you don't really need to wear gloves. Now. I mean for people that are in a hurry, if you change gloves between each each transaction or each time you're handling meat at a slicer or cheese at a slicer, that's fine, that's right.
I doubt that, but you.
Would be you're changing your gloves constantly if you do that. Wow, And most people don't do that all right.
So do all of these headlines dat in your opinion, help or do they hurt? Do people overreact or maybe even do they grow desensitized to it? Do you think that we need to calm down in the media, maybe even by reporting all of these all of these different recalls. What's your take on the media's role in all of this.
I think it's important that these things are reported so people are aware. I mean, that's just information that people need to have. And I think that what you have to do is you have to read between the lines because what you're seeing with a lot of these recalls, with cucumbers with carrots, you then get subsequent recalls that are related to the same root cause, because my carrots didn't just get sold as carrots in a package. They also got sold to some guy that's making salads and
somebody that's making other products. And so as the trace back continues, as they look at where did all those carrots go, Where did all those cucumbers go, Where did all those onions go? You get subsequent recalls when you trace it back, and so sometimes things seem bigger than
they are because there's all these continuing recalls. Often, though, some companies try to recall as little product as possible, and then they subsequently find out and this happened or said they subsequently find out that the problem was just not related to my liverworst line, but I had other problems. So then they have to then start recalling additional products.
My philosophy was identify the problem, identify the scope, and then just take it all back, get it all out of the marketplace, and then take your corrective action in your plant before you start up again.
But there was a financial reason they don't want to do a wide.
I think they feel that having a ten thousand pound recall is better than having a one hundred thousand pound recall or a million pound recall, when in fact of the matter, I don't think most people really that doesn't register. Just get any potentially contaminated product out of the marketplace, and a lot of these perishable products, the product's already gone. You're not going to get it back anyway. It's already
been consumed. So we did a recall back in twenty thirteen that the US Department of Agriculture was upset with me because I expanded the scope of our recall. Initially, they were getting ready to ask us to recall a relatively small amount related to a cluster of illnesses, and we went back and looked at the data and looked at the spread, and I had some conversations with some colleagues at the CDC, and it became obvious to me that this was much more widespread than was a parent.
So I went back and recalled product from February all the way to August, and the US Department of Agriculture, the undersecretary called me and said, why are you doing this? And my response was, what part of voluntary? Don't you understand? What's a voluntary recall.
But why would the USDA have any issue? Well, would the government have an issue with you?
Because they they wanted to tell me what to do?
What it is that really it?
Well, that's the only reason I could come up with, because otherwise I'd be saying thank you very much for doing the right thing.
But the government is trying to get a company to limit the recall.
They weren't getting it trying to get us to limit it. They just wanted us to recall what they were asking us to recall. And we went beyond that.
But most of the recalls we end up seeing are voluntary.
Right for they're all voluntary.
They're all volunteary. But the government can or cannot force them.
The government could go out and seize product, They can go out and seize products so.
Fast, but they can't issue the recall. Actually that the recalls don't.
They can announce that the company is doing a recall. But if the company does the recall, what the government has the FDA and USDA can go out and they can seize product in the marketplace.
Which happens.
It's how often voluntary recall I would say ninety nine point nine nine percent. I mean there are some There are some famous cases where people resisted, but those are quite rare. The industry is very responsible, you know. I've always told people, and working with consumer groups for a good part of my career is what I did. I would often say, you know, it's not a great business practice to make your customers ill, so it's not in
our best interest to do that. So believe me, we are doing everything we can to make sure that we're putting out safe, wholesome product for the consumer.
Well, Dad, this has been so fascinating, and I've heard you talk about this over the years, but it's really cool to be able to hear you put so many answers to so many questions I still had, and I know so many people listening have, So we really really appreciate it, and thank you. Thank you for coming. It's nice to have you in town, but it's even nicer to have you here in the studio with us.
All Right, Well, thanks for having me.
Wait we have if you all, we have another episode we do with Papa Robot here. We asked you all to send in your questions. He is going to answer all of those in another episode. Ask a microbiologist is what we call it, so make sure you tune in for that or try to catch to that one, because I got some questions myself.
So do I, and apparently so do a lot of you. So yes, take a look for that that will be dropping soon