Food Safety Talk 108: Hyperbole and Fire Ants

Ben and Don are joined on this episode by special guest John "if I was a rock star you would have heard of me" Roderick. John does not like potatoes, but he does ask lots of great questions.

• Water activity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Clostridium perfringens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Steak tartare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Home | Conference on World Affairs | University of Colorado Boulder
• Public Health Focus > Bisphenol A (BPA): Use in Food Contact Application
• Category:Swamps of North Carolina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• John's band, The Long Winters
• Food Safety Talk 39: Des Moines is Known for their Scallops — Food Safety Talk
• Multistate Outbreak of Salmonella Bareilly and Salmonella Nchanga Infections Associated with Nakaochi Scrape AA or AAA Frozen Raw Tuna from India
• FDA issues final rule on safety and effectiveness of antibacterial soaps
• Genetically modified food - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• FDA Food Code
• 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To hear more from John, check out his other podcasts Roderick on the Line and Road Work.

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 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