Food Safety Talk 58: Where's my wallet?

The guys started the show admiring Ben's new computer, and his House of Clay beer, before talking about Don and Victoria Backham's treadmill desks, Ricky Gervais bathtub photos, dressing up like a realtor, and confidence intervals.

Don and Ben then welcomed Bill Marler to the show. Bill's notoriety started with the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak (documented in the book Poisoned). The discussion moved to the Jensen farm legal case, in particular, the criminal aspects of unknowingly shipping contaminated food and the involvement of service providers, i.e. auditors. The guys also discussed the impact on apportioning liability as a result of the recent North Carolina limiting farmers liability law. The conversation then turned to Salmonella and Foster Farm's chicken and no one could understand why there hadn't been a recall.

The guys then discussed Listeria and cantaloupes, including CDC's recommendations and Don's paper on "Modeling the growth of Listeria monocytogenes on cut cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon."

After a short detour via the AVN Awards, Bill got the chance to explain why he generally doesn't take on norovirus cases and the lengths he goes to before taking on a case, using the Townsend Farm Hepatitis A outbreak as an example. The conversation then turned to auditors and what the impact of the Jensen Farm litigation case might be.

After saying farewell to Bill, Don and Ben talked about podcasting, including Lex Friedman, and Libsyn's Rob Walch.

In the after dark the guys chatted about House of Cards, True Detective, Ben's quirky Aussie accent, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 and Lost.

Food Safety Talk 50: Fifty pink flamingos

The guys started the show with a Flamingo flash back, Don's iTunes Radio "Grateful Dead" channel experiment (sans Katy Perry and Kanye West), New Girl with Zooey Deschanel, She & Him, Steve Earle, The Walking Dead, the Pulling the String podcast, and The Lone Ranger.

Don then shared how he used the Internet's way-back machine (not to be confused with Mister Peabody's WABAC Machine) to get around the black-out of US government websites.

Ben then turned to an NPR article about the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network and a Kickstarter campaign to create an open source HACCP plan. This lead into a broader discussion of the work undertaken by extension specialists, Don's 'useless' Twitter exchange and how to find out about food safety using Let Me Google That For You.

In the Food Safety History segment, Don shared information from the IAFP History book about the 1950's and an increased focus on preventing foodborne illness.

Don then returned to his recent Twitter exchange about hand washing with @Frankly and @danbenjamin, which included this article from About.com. The article, which referenced unpublished work from 2000 by Barbara Almanza on hand sanitizers, got the guys fired up about the regulatory system and undertaking effective research on the assessing the efficacy of hand sanitizers. After taking yet another detour into the world of The Wire, the guys returned to hand sanitizers and discussed some research articles, including:

• Effectiveness of Liquid Soap and Hand Sanitizer against Norwalk Virus on Contaminated Hands

• Improved inactivation of nonenveloped enteric viruses and their surrogates by a novel alcohol-based hand sanitizer

• Comparative efficacy of seven hand sanitizers against murine norovirus, feline calicivirus, and GII.4 norovirus

• Management of Risk of Microbial Cross-Contamination from Uncooked Frozen Hamburgers by Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizer

To finish this monster show, the guys briefly touched on Foster Farms fiasco, which they've kept on their list of things to discuss next time.

By the time the after dark came around Don was contemplating a career in pottery, while Ben favored rolling cigars for a living.