Food Safety Talk 70: A Quick Overnight Servicing

The episode begins with Ben and Don talking about the fall weather and Ben’s podcasting from home (possibly sans pants).  The discussion turns to travel and its potential impact on Don’s jury duty.  Ben has never served on a jury, but has seen many movies about trials.  Don shares that he has seen some movies about trials, notably Capote and To Kill a Mockingbird.  Both guys are fans of the movie My Cousin Vinny, which is not a book.  The pop culture talk turns to television, and Ben mentions The Americans (spelled with a c, not k, but the c does look like a hammer and sickle in the show logo).  Don has been watching Intruders, but he has barely been able to discern what the show is actually about.  Last Tango in Halifax is also good TV; with season two now available on Netflix. Ben wraps up the pop culture part of the show with a mention of a Farm Aid concert he attended with some other foodie-people and mentioned that Neil Young shared about his personal views on some farming issues at the concert.

The conversation moved to politics and cable news.  As a board member of the New Jersey Association for Food Protection, Don was part of a recent conference call regarding the organizing of a GMO foods discussion/debate with invited speakers, potentially including Robyn O’Brien. When Ben got his start in food safety, GMO foods were in the news and he mentioned a recent barfblog post on labeling of GMO foods and their unintended impacts on consumer choice. Ben talked about the summer reading program at NC State, and this years book Tomorrows Table, written by an organic farmer and a food biotechnologist. 

Ben recently participated in an IFT sponsored twitter chat on the safety of packed lunches.  Ben noted the difficulty in answering complicated questions in only 140 characters over twitter and the stress of having answered so many questions in a short period of time. The discussion turned to an article about the temperatures of school lunches, and the importance of considering both time and temperature.  Don mentioned a good FightBac webinar that covered cross contamination, and plugged his recent appearance on Academic Minute that covered some of Don’s hand washing experiments.

Ben recently received a risk-type question during an interview, and he was keen to know what Don would answer (PhD students take note: Ben plans to ask this question at every qualifying exam he goes to!).  The question was: What is the riskiest food-related thing that you do? Don provides two answers: 1) he sometimes doesn’t wash his hands for 20 s with soap; 2) sometimes he doesn’t take the temperature of meat on the grill and just believes it is ‘probably good enough’.  Ben’s answer included eating fresh restaurant salsa with lots of cilantro and eating a lot of berries. 

Ben, Don and regular podcast guest Mike Batz are all trying to eat less and exercise more, and using technology to do it.  Mike and Don are using Lose It; Ben is using My Net Diary and Runtastic. 

Don announced that he has podcast cheated on Ben by participating on another podcast, Better Know a Jackal, and the discussion moves to podcasting workflows in general.  Don is now using an app to send webpage PDFs to Dropbox.

The conversation then transitioned to some humorous turns-of-phrase that Doug and Ben like to drop into Barfblog articles.  Ben was disappointed no one commented on a witty double entendre he included in a posting about finding vomit on an airplane.  Ben has to repeat the line to Don a few times before laughter ensues. 

Food Safety Talk 14: Laws, sausages and scientific papers

In this episode the dudes (now known in some small circles as Dr. Micro and Pathogen Boy) take on new-ish legislation on food safety preventative controls, the virtues of evening podcast recording and chia pets.

The show opens with a gong noise. Ben thinks it might be Don's computer warning him of the impending iPad 3. Don learns later that it was his Rutgers webmail running in the background.

It's an evening recording, so the guys are enjoying cold beverages. Ben is drinking Bud Light for some unknown reason, while Don is drinking Mike Solberg's Seagram's Seven, mixed with soda stream seltzer, the seltzer of choice for discerning podcasters everywhere). The guys do point out, however that they don't drink in the office, unlike the Oxford Professors on Inspector Morse, although they both agree that Roger Cook's set up in New Zealand sounds pretty sweet.

This weeks follow up includes Ben's visit to the Dubai Food Safety Conference, more on toilet paper, and Ben's selection of his favorite episode for Merlin. The guys go retro with a discussion of chia pets and sea monkeys, before Ben mentions that their favorite Internet celebrity may be moonlighting as a food safety writer. This barf blog post prompted Batz to make a ghost busters reference on twitter, which prompted a visit from the stay puft marshmallow man. Don mentions his own connection with another Internet celebrity this week, before rounding out the followup with a discussion of his colonoscopy doctor, who really does look like Dougie Howser.

Don wants to talk about FSMA, in preparation for his upcoming talk at the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety, specifically Section 103 on Preventive Controls, in part so he can plug the Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance. The Preventive Controls seem to look a lot like HACCP, and Don goes on to opine on:

• Otto von Bismarck
• Seafood HACCP
• Fish and fisheries products hazards guide, which includes the Eelpout.
• Seafood HACCP guru, Steve Otwell
• The merits of Third-party auditors
• The Pareto principle
• The formula for Risk
• and Lynn Knipe's outstanding meat HACCP document on scientific documentation, MS Word format
• Ben finally gets a word in, and misremembers the author (from Steve Knabel's group) but brings up Cathy Cutter's colleagues outstanding documents on Lebanon bologna which can be found here, here, here and here
• Don concludes with a mention of the best thing to come out of FSPCA so far, the logo

Ben wraps up the episode with a discussion of some training that he has planned for his agents where he will lead an in-depth discussion on a variety of scientific publications. Don suggests the recent paper on raw milk epidemiology by the CDC, and Ben notes that he might also include a paper by Brian Nummer, Don and others (but not Linda Harris), and the New England Journal of Medicine article on Salmonella Saintpaul.

Laws, Sausages and Scientific Papers

Food Safety Talk 13: I Don't Want Other People's Poo in My Poo Hole

In this episode Don and Ben talk Valentine's day happenings; chocolate and then being famous on the Internet. The guys eventually get to food safety stuff and chat about raw milk risks, inactivation of Salmonella in peanut butter and the risk of someones dirty hands ending up on their toilet paper.

• W00t deal, a deal a day where Don and Kristin scored some Valentine's day salted caramels.
• Don gets his greeting cards at CVS, Ben wonders if they stock these.
• The hip Raleigh restaurant that Ben and Dani went to a couple of years ago for Valentine's Day.
• Wine and Design - Dani's gift was to go out without Ben with a bunch of her friends. And then they ate Subway.
• American Frozen Food Institute annual meeting, where Don went to hang out after Valentine's Day.
• Ben tries to connect chocolate and Valentine's Day and food safety - here is an example.
• What someone who is surprised might look like.
• I love charts tumblr.
• Don's tumblr.
• The iPhone 5 that cures the flu and makes broccoli taste like chocolate, and made Don famous on the inter webs.
• Don seeks clarification on whether the required metric is blogs or blog posts? (or a blogg?) for his annual survey of program methods
• Batz's Double Face Palm post.
• What a denominator might look like.
• FDA's cold-smoked fish hazards. There's contamination, not many people eat it, total risk is probably pretty low.
• There was an outbreak of Salmonella linked to this company in 2009. Tragically these things happened and then this.
• Some of the work on the inactivation of Salmonella in peanut butter.
• What 1.5 million servings of chocolate might look like.
• Don talks about Salmonella in dry spots (not Arizona, but products like hydrolyzed vegetable protein and almonds).
• Walmart quietly dropped sprouts from sale.
• FDA's sprout guidance document highlights the importance of testing spent irrigation water.
• Bob Sanderson, whom Don would eat sprouts from if he liked them.
• Galen Weston who thinks farmers markets might kill people soon.
• Ben wants to buy food from vendors who think they might kill someone.
• What Ben is really talking about -- food safety culture.
• One guy who doesn't worry about making waves or causing a stir.
• Don's famous internet friend. Not this one.
• Merlin put Don on the spot on what his favorite Food Safety Talk episode is. Don picks this one. Ben likes this one.
• Quit touching my toilet paper.
• How Ben would mitigate this risk.
• What Don is worried about at farmers markets.

I Don't Want Other People's Poo in My Poo Hole

Food Safety Talk 9: Two monitors and a microphone

Episode 9 of Food Safety Talk opens with an extended wide-ranging session of follow-up, touching on cookies, beef jerky, and the SRA annual meeting. Finally the guys get around to discussing a recent change to the NYC heath code and the timing of public announcements about foods implicated in food poisoning outbreaks.

• The show opens with a discussion of audio levels, which is apparently very important in podcasting.
• It turns out that PIBCAK, specifically Don's keyboard and chair.
• The first pop culture reference is Beck's classic Two turntables and a microphone.
• And while we do get listener mail, it's not all positive.
• This first part of the podcast is devoted to what's known in the business as "FU", or followup, as commonly practiced by one of the best in the business, although he's apparently not infallible... so...
• The first item of FU relates to baking cookies, where starch gelatinization can be determined with a tip-sensitive thermometer.
• A least one the these baking companies is looking to validate their baking protocols. Which is important because cookies can make you sick. So, it's best to make sure you have validated their safety with a challenge study.
• The discussion of cookies and baking moves on to a discussion of heating and low water foods like meat jerky, and Don and Ben's podcasting hero, who is according to Ben, a jerky fiend. Which is not surprising since it's one of the things you can eat on the Paleo diet.
• From there, the guys get into a brief discussion of the complexity of the US Food safety regulations.
• Don's brings Ben up to speed on the SRA annual meeting, where Don missed a great talk by Eric Evers of RIVM who spoke about petting zoo risk assessment. Which reminds Ben of a guy that he and Doug call Gonzo, although he's neither a muppet nor a gun-toting journalist.
• While at SRA, Don watched the last episode of The Wire, which featured a brief food safety reference.
• Finally, the guys get down to business with a discussion of new food safety rules in New York City which are related to hairnets and to real issues like time out of temperature control.
• Don briefly recalls some clever teaching experiments by Carl Batt which demonstrate which foods might need temperature control (like beer) but not pizza made by your cousin Vinnie's pizzeria.
• Ben mentions Brae Surgeoner's work on how consumers would like to be communicated to regarding take out food safety, and his own experiences at Maggiano's.
• The next topic up is about some potentially crossed signals between Missouri public health officials and the CDC. Clearly making public statements implicating a particular food are tricky, and Paul Mead ought to know, as he wrote the book, or at least the definitive article. At least it was until the more recent articles by Scallon, here and here.
• Don is reminded of more SRA presentations by Hallman and Cuite at SRA and their important work showing that people still eat implicated foods in a recall.
• Its clear that there are communication challenges, just ask Hershey's and the CFIA or some Florida tomato growers
• It's a good thing we have folks like Craig Hedberg and Frank Yiannis, and tools like the Reportable Food Registry for Industry working to improve information flow. Even the USDA/FSIS is considering Public Release of Establishment-Specific Data.
• Ben mentions Parents just don't understand, by Will Smith. This prompts Don to ask about the difference between Hip Hop and Rap. Ben tells him to search the Internet. Don couldn't find anything helpful on the always entertaining I love charts, although he did seem to find this article which does a pretty good job explaining the difference.
• Don talks about what he's been listening to recently, and Ben suggests a lyric-off for a future episode.

Two Monitors and a Microphone

Food Safety Talk 7: Dazed and Confused

In Episode 7 of Food Safety Talk, Ben and Don set out to talk about the Mr. Cheese Salmonella outbreak, but range far and wide into discussions about helping Entrepreneurs, the differences between risk assessment and risk management, and the importance of a good theme song.

• Seltzer, The beverage of choice for leading Podcaster's everywhere.
• The NC state fair outbreak has been linked to a livestock display barn.
• Spinach grown near cattle feed yards can become contaminated with microorganisms transfer via the air.
• Mr. Cheese is a man (cheese?) of many faces.
• Ben's son thinks Mr. Cheese looks like this.
• Details on the actual Mr. Cheese outbreak.
• The original Listeria Hispanic style cheese outbreak.
• Don's barfblog post on Freehold illegal restaurants.
• A Map of Utah counties.
• Whole foods want to sell foods made by local entrepreneurs.
• NJ retail food code, now chapter 24. It's twice as good as the old Chapter 12.
• Watermelon jelly botulism, I blame Canada.
• National Center for Home Food Preservation.
• A scientific article on the Hazelnut yogurt botulism outbreak.
• Northeast Center for Food Entrepreneurship at the New York State Food Venture Center.
• Fletcher Arritt, III Assistant Professor, Food Science.
• Snooki is to NJ as Andy Griffith is to NC.
• Mike the Barber, don't be creepy.
• The old Extension model, as described by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
• The National GAP'S program.
• Episode 3 of FST, where Ben interviews Don's replacement.
• An article on risk analysis.
• The Norman Borlaug institute doing good work.
• Risk Analysis is cool, but it is important to understand the difference between risk assessment and risk management.
• HACCP.
• See Episode 1, for the differences between Ben and Don's personal food safety risk management decisions.
• Lynn Frewer who does research on Risk communication with consumers: Ben is a big fan.
• How to pronounce data.
• Craig Hedberg from U Minnesota: Don is a big fan.
• My biggest fan by Loudon Wainwright III... "yeah there's Bob then there's Neil then there's me", full lyrics here.
• The KISS comic book, printed with the actual KISS blood.
• I wanna rock and roll all night with lyrics, in the hopes that Ben's son will learn to read, and learn more words to the song.
• The Dazed and Confused movie, which Don has to watch for homework. Because very cool podcasts often talk about movies.
• Licensing music from ASCAP for podcasts.
• And for those who listened through the outro music, check out Roderick on the Line.
• Ben's homework is to learn Markdown.

Dazed and Confused

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