Food Safety Talk 6: Animal Neuroses and Guilty Pleasures

In Episode 6 Don and Ben talk petting zoos and risk management strategies. Ben rants about his neuroses with animal contact while Don analyzes these fears (for free).

• An outbreak of E. coli O157 linked to the North Carolina State Fair.  
• What a well known quickserve restaurant might look like (here, here or here).
• A list of petting zoo-related outbreaks.
• The North Carolina State Fair.
• Some other pathogenic E. colis.
• 2004 North Carolina State Fair petting zoo-linked E. coli O157 outbreak (108 cases).
• What a hippie Ben looks like, and a picture of his Birkenstocks and water tub.
• Why Ben is worried about railings, sawdust, etc at petting zoos.
• Howling Cow; NC State Ice Cream.
• Fireman Sam, who Ben's son often emulates.
• Valuing a safe petting zoo.
• Freehold Borough, in the garden state, where Don lives and can't raise chickens in his backyard.
• Deli meat risks and pregnancy another risk benefit trade-off.
• Potential for microbial contamination of spinach through feedyard air/dust growing in close proximity to cattle feedyard operations.
• Benefits that raw milk drinkers see that can outweigh risks for some individuals.
• Ben on TV; those are not his jazzy hands at the bottom.
• A way of getting things off of Ben's TV.
• Handwashing encouragement signs at the North Carolina State Fair (October 16, 2011).
• Inspecting food vendors at the North Carolina State Fair.
• North Carolina petting zoo sanitation and communication regulations.
• NC State Expert Offers Insight On E. coli Outbreak.
• Risk of Salmonella from reptiles.
• Quit touching my toilet paper.
• Journal of Irreproducible Results.
• Ah, graduate students.
• Foodborne illnesses aren't just numbers.
• The satire of bridging masters.
• What professors looked like before iPods.
• The Pearl Jam documentary that Ben is obsessed with.
• The Bridge School benefit concert.
• Don's guilty pleasure.
• Why Don and Kristin may never leave the couch again.
• The Instapaper sage Marco, who has blogged about TV watching. 
• Merlin likes sports.

Animal Neuroses and Guilty Pleasures

Food Safety Talk 5: A Medley of Fleetwood Mac

Don and Ben are back in the same time zone and talk a lot about cantaloupe. The episode starts off with a bit of nerdy discussion about Apple products and upgrading to iOS 5. But then the guys talk about food safety, outbreak investigations, social media and messaging. The podcast is available here.

• The muse who Don spoke with.
• Food safety's Weird Al, Carl Winter.
• The band that Ben suggests stringing 6 seconds of multiple songs together for the bump.
• FDA's report of finding one of the three outbreak strains at Jensen Farms.
• Like Bryan Adams, Celine Dion and Alan Thicke - Canada has brought the world notable things, including Listeria in fresh produce.
• Our good friend, who has said that sheep are used as weed control between crops.
• What hydrocooler might look like.
• Listeria dose/response in RTE foods.
• What a cantaloupe encrusted with animal feces might look like.
• The Finnish butter outbreak.
• High fat in chocolate and peanut products has a protective effect on Salmonella.
• Don and Michelle's pathogenic E. coli in leafy greens modelling work.
• A YouTube video of a cantaloupe packing line with the worlds greatest music
• Importance of having chlorine in your wash water when processing leafy greens.
• Absolutely, positively, Listeria-free cantaloupes on sale in Carborro, NC.
• Zach Braff's shining moment, Garden State.
• Edmonton's (which is on the outskirts of Canada) greatest time.
• Don's Skype interview where he was referred to as Canadian.
• Is a consumer really just a consumer? 
• Einstein's advice:  "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler"
• Don on NPR.
• Food safety's small group (IAFP's membership is around 3000).
• Our at least one listener.
• Nerdy app that Ben likes and Don doesn't.
• The competition that swamped Ben and Don with food safety questions from keen high school kids.
• A really nerdy thing Ben participated in high school, and loved it.
• The movie that Ben loved and felt that was the best social marketing for handwashing (that bordered on propaganda).
• The agency that Ben feels does the best job of telling folks what they do.
• Our friend who thinks Ben works at CDC.

A Medley of Fleetwood Mac

Food Safety Talk 4: Ode To A Pittsburgh (Michael Batz, Guest)

Episode 4 of Food Safety Talk. In which Ben and Don can't mesh their schedules, so Don interviews Michael Batz, who turns out to be just as big a food safety nerd as Don or Ben. Like certain other podcasters, Batz insisted on using WiFi rather than a wired Ethernet connection as suggested by the experts. Although he promised to "sit real close" to his wireless base station, the quality of the call degrades toward the end. Don was prepared to drop in a few choice sound effects in case Mike dropped out completely, but in the end everything Mike had to say made it into the recording.

• University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute where Mike Batz works.
• Mike used to live in Baltimore, where The Wire was set and shot.
• Mike has degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, which is in Pittsburg. Loudon Wainwright III has a song about Pittsburg. The movie The Wonderboys is also set in Pittsburg. The trailer is available on you tube. For the record it's only professors in the humanities that get to walk around in their bathrobes and smoke dope.
• Mike does a mean cover of I Wanna Be Sedated by the Ramones. Ask him to show you some time.
• The Ranking the Risks report that forms the basis of the interview.
• A direct link to the full report
• CSPI’s top 10 from 2009, upon which that Women’s Day article was based.
• The Journal of Food Protection where much of the high quality food safety research is published.
• “I hate writing, I love having written.” ― Dorothy Parker
• A different podcast about writing, sometimes.
• Bill Marler, who Don seems to mention every time he does a podcast.
• The all important Scallan papers, that updated the previous paper by Mead et al..
• The case-control study on Toxoplasma gondii mentioned in the interview and a full copy of the entire article
• USDA lowers pork cooking temperatures. There is at least one paper on heat inactivation of toxoplasma, which seems to suggest that the USDA's decision has a minimal effect on risk.
• The case-control study on Campylobacter and the full version
• “I know it when I see it”. I though Batz was a kindred spirt. This seals the deal. Plus the Ramones thing.
• Listeria in cantaloupe which briefly comes up at the end of the podcast.
• The podcaster approved headphones that all food safety talk guest are required to purchase.
• The song about Pittsburgh that Batz was going to bring up, but which he couldn’t remember the exact name of.

Food Safety Talk Episode 4

Food Safety Talk 3: Be the Ball (Chris Gunter, Guest)

Episode 3 of food safety talk. Don is galavanting around Europe, at least 5 hrs ahead of Ben. Instead of trying to match up schedules the guys decide to have a couple of guests on. Dr. Chris Gunter, vegetable production specialist at N.C. State joins Ben to talk cantaloupe, GAPs and share anecdotes from producers about their concerns around food safety.

• What Don was emailing Ben about from Europe.
• Chris Gunter on Twitter and the NC State Horticulture Dept website.
• Chris' previous institutions Purdue and University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• North Carolina Fresh Produce Safety.
• CDC page on Listeria-in-melons outbreak.
• A list of cantaloupe-linked outbreaks that Ben considers to be a lot.
• Produce association that has someone who is looking for outbreak information on behalf of members.
• Reggie Brown, Florida Tomato Commission.
• Risk assessment of Listeria in RTE foods.
• CDC's explanation of underreporting foodborne illness.
• Markets where buyers typically don't require verification of GAPs.
• The produce meeting that Chris and Ben were at in Florida.
• Sweetpotatoes, a lot of which are grown in North Carolina.
• TGAPs, a law for many tomato producers in Florida.
• One of the industries that Ben worked with in Ontario.
• People that say food safety isn't competitive (ex 1, ex 2).
• A couple of the formulaic checklists that are out there (ex1, ex 2).
• Be the ball (or the bug).

Food Safety Talk Episode 3

Food Safety Talk 2: It Goes to 11

In this episode Don and Ben discover that they can talk about Food Safety for an hour more than once. And while talking every two weeks seems to work, actually getting stuff posted seems more difficult.

The link to the episode can be found here or at the bottom of this post.

Here are some link to some of the things they discussed:

• National food safety education month
• Google news time line food safety month
• Story Corps NPR, where Episode 00 of foodsafety talk will reside.
• Alar in apples, Don's introduction to food safety risk communication
• Alar, also known as Daminozide
• Keeping food safe during grilling season; also known as using the calendar for a lede.
• Ben laments the end of food safety month, 2009
• One different way to talk about food safety Also, Frank Zappa is awesome.
• Bites
• The top-eleven list Episode 2 is all about
• The incredible David Letterman, who has popularized top 10 lists
• Leafy greens, and how they can be made safety, courtesy of our friends at the FDA
• Lots of Salmonella illnesses in eggs because a lot are eaten.. See also this FAO/WHO document
• The 2011 Wright county eggs Salmonella outbreak
• Lots of science on Scrombrotoxin in tuna
• Spinal tap turns it up to 11, so great
• A large outbreak of botulism: the deadly baked potato
• US Federal Risk Assessment for Listeria monocytogenes in Deli Meats
• Is free soft-serve ice cream for pregnant women a good idea? Probably not
• IAFP 2011 Annual Meeting abstracts (where Ben saw a bunch of presentations on internalization of Salmonella in tomatoes)
• The Almond Queen herself: No, she is not an evil queen. She only uses her powers for good.
• Bob Rusts's Sproutnet and Bob's Sanderson's Sprout company
• Celebrity barf, because it's ok to pander for page views.
• Emerging Infectious Diseases Outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis Associated with Nationally Distributed Ice Cream Products -- Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, 1994
• Frozen berries seem to be problematic in Europe

Food Safety Talk Episode 2

Food Safety Talk 1: Frampton Comes Alive

In this episode Don and Ben discover that they can indeed talk about Food Safety for an hour. This episode they talk about why they decided to do a podcast and about restaurant inspection.

Here are some link to some of the things they discussed:

• Ben's work homepage
• Don's work homepage
• Governmental food safety podcast that shall remain unnamed.
• Barfblog, Where Ben and Doug mostly and Don rarely blogs.
• Don's super secret National Academy of Sciences panel on publishing FSIS establishment specific data.
• USDA FSIS Freedom of Information Act page
• Indicator organisms background information
• The book Poisoned on the Jack-in-box-Outbreak.
• An article by Cruz et al. on the ability of routine restaurant inspections to predict food-borne outbreaks.
• Another article by Jones et al. on restaurant inspection scores and foodborne disease.
• The awesome International Association for Food Protection - IAFP
• StoryCorps, who recently interviewed folks from IAFP for our 100th anniversary.
• Mandated labels on raw meat that are perhaps not all that useful.
• Frampton Comes Alive, which came out when Don was in High School and Ben wasn't.
• FDA Listeria risk ranking
• A food safety expert we'd like to interview.
• North Carolina's restaurant inspection system.
• Wake county restaurant sanitation grades.
• The sort of restaurant inspection results that Don used to read back when there were newspapers.
• A popular chain, let's call them Billi's
• The 5by5 network, our inspiration.
• And some of our 5by5 appearances.

And here is the podcast:

Click here for Food Safety Talk season 1, episode 1