Food Safety Matters — Bonus Episode: Live from the 2025 Food Safety Summit—Part 2

Date: May 22, 2025
Host: Food Safety Magazine Editorial Team
Location: Live from the 2025 Food Safety Summit, Rosemont, Illinois

Episode Overview

This special live episode features interviews with thought leaders conducted in front of a live audience at the 2025 Food Safety Summit. The conversations focus on critical and emerging issues in food safety, ranging from the role and limitations of finished product testing, best practices for environmental monitoring, regulatory insights, supply chain technology, and advancing food safety culture through industry and consumer partnerships.

Key Discussion Segments

1. The Function (and Limitations) of Finished Product Testing

Guests: Sharon Beals (SKKB Founder) and Dr. Peter Taormina (Aetna Consulting Group Founder & President)
Host: Adrienne Blum
Timestamps: 02:24–23:22

Assessing What and Why to Test

• Intended Use Drives Testing:
  • Sharon Beals (03:07): "It starts with your intended product use... Is it thaw and gnaw?... Do you need to have inhibitors in it? If it’s ready to eat, heavy environmental testing is key; finished product testing is probably less so."
• Hazard Analysis is Essential:
  • Peter Taormina (03:48): "The hazard analysis should drive what you’re going to end up doing as far as finished product testing."

Frequency and Reevaluation of Testing

• Differences in supplier and customer expectations: customers want every lot tested; suppliers focus on managing via HACCP and food safety plans.
• Data-Driven Decision Making (05:48):
  • Sharon Beals: "Let the data tell us how often we have to perform that task so that we stay ahead of a problem."
  • Avoid unnecessary, indefinite corrective actions—set an endpoint and use a step-down approach as data allow.

Limitations of Retesting

• Sharon Beals (08:03): "You can't test your way out of a positive if it's a pathogen."
• Discusses "split lots" and the different behaviors of pathogens like E. coli O157:H7 vs. Listeria in production environments.

Environmental Testing vs. End Product Testing

• Environmental monitoring often yields more actionable data, especially for persistent hazards like Listeria.
  • Beals (10:20): "Heavily focusing on those zones... making sure you’re keeping it at bay, that’s where environmental [testing] is extremely more powerful."
• Customers should seek transparency and data-sharing on suppliers' environmental monitoring.

Communicating with Customers

• Be Transparent, Early:
  • Beals (11:32): "You want to talk about the program before you sign the contract... being transparent with your customer is part and parcel to that."
• Encourage direct communication between technical teams (12:08):
  • Taormina: "Technical people from both sides aren't always on those communications as much as they should be."

Audience Q&A Highlights

• Validating Less Testing: Use long-term process data and, where possible, validation or challenge studies (19:14).
• Responding to Recurring Failures: Cross-functional teams should address issues proactively, not waiting for recalls (20:37).
  • Beals: "Don’t wait too long to react. Better to react sooner than later. Do seek and destroy exercises at least quarterly, even if you haven't had a positive."

2. The Advocate’s Perspective: Food Safety Policy and Collaboration

Guest: Sandra Eskin (CEO, Stop Foodborne Illness; former USDA FSIS Deputy Undersecretary)
Host: Adrienne Blum
Timestamps: 23:24–37:33

Transition from Regulator to Advocate

• Eskin describes her return to advocacy after her regulatory role, emphasizing her history with STOP and the importance of relationships and pragmatism in advocacy (24:00).

Effective Consumer Advocacy

• Balancing demands for change with constructive engagement:
  • Eskin (25:26): "In food safety, relationships are absolutely important... when you have that relationship... you listen better."
• STOP’s approach reflects contemporary realities—less regulation, more creative, collaborative solutions.

The Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness

• STOP bridges industry and consumer voices, notably via its alliance program, advancing shared interests like food safety culture (27:00).
• States and federal regulators both play critical roles; STOP works with all stakeholders.

The Value of the Summit

• Professional development, networking, and the boost from the Summit’s charitable support (29:31).
  • Eskin: "I always learn something new."

Mission and Priorities for STOP

• Priority issues:
  1. Opposing expanded raw milk access due to health dangers.
  2. Modernizing recall communication.
  3. Lifting best practices in produce safety via collaborative, multi-stakeholder engagement.
• Future focus on outbreak communication transparency downstream to consumers and affected parties (31:49–35:23).
  • Eskin: “You can make significant public health improvement with tweaks in the process."

Memorable Moment

• On policymaking: Eskin (35:41): "It is really fun to be in the room where it happens... people really do try to think about everything, from who's it going to impact to what are the unintended consequences."

3. Supply Chain Visibility & Environmental Sensors

Guest: John O'Fallon (Senior Manager, Environmental Sensors, Zebra Technologies)
Host: Bob Ferguson
Timestamps: 37:33–63:59

Overview of Zebra’s Environmental Sensors

• Zebra’s tech monitors temperature and environment for products in motion, especially in food, pharma, and other temperature-sensitive sectors.
• Types of sensors: ready-to-use indicators, printable indicators, electronic (Bluetooth) data loggers.

Why Supply Chain Monitoring Matters

• COVID pandemic highlighted weaknesses in supply chain visibility and increased focus on sustainability and cost savings (39:38).
  • O'Fallon: "Having the correct vision of what the future is... sustainability and cost savings go hand in hand."
• Data-driven accountability benefits brand reputation and consumer safety.

Real-Time Data and Waste Reduction

• Bluetooth data loggers (ZS300): easy integration with handheld devices; automatic data upload upon arrival; broad temperature range (46:02).
• Reduces waste by providing objective records; prevents unnecessary disposal due to lack of data (44:14).
  • O'Fallon: "If you knew what the temperature was, you would be saving yourself a significant amount of money."

Customization and Usability

• Systems are designed to integrate with existing IT, are scalable, and viable for any company size (49:14).
• Many companies still use cumbersome pen-and-paper logging; automation presents an easy ROI.

Application Insights

• Different needs depending on supply chain stage (beginning with brand owners, through distributors, to points of sale/consumption).
• Real-world variation: "the first pallet on the floor is not necessarily the same temperature as the 15th stacked up"—sensors capture these nuances (51:02).

The Future of Supply Chain Monitoring

• Growth in sensing/monitoring technology is inevitable, especially as regulatory scrutiny increases (55:00).
• O'Fallon: "Having more data at disposal is going to be key for a lot of companies to succeed."

4. Building Food Safety Culture: Consumer Stories Meet Industry Action

Guests: Monica Khoury (Senior Quality Expert, Nestlé) and Lily Yasuda (Program Manager, Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness)
Host: Bob Ferguson
Timestamps: 64:01–74:59

The Alliance: Bridging Industry and Advocacy

• The Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness connects real food safety stories of consumers with industry professionals—mainly through a new 40-video series featuring those personally affected by foodborne illness (65:31–66:22).

Impact of Personal Stories on Industry Culture

• Videos humanize and contextualize "the why" behind food safety—making it more personal, powerful, and relatable for food industry workers (67:01).
  • Yasuda: "Having Barbara Chamberlain in person to share her family’s story was very powerful."

Toolkit Features and Benefits

• The free Food Safety Culture Toolkit offers videos, assessment modules, webinars, and tools for rewards & recognition—especially designed for adaptability.
• Aims for wide accessibility: resources are "low or no cost," beneficial for companies of all sizes—not just food giants (68:52).
  • Upcoming mentorship program to tailor resources for small and mid-sized businesses.

Fostering "Aha" Moments in Training

• Integrating consumer stories in onboarding ensures employees connect food safety to real-life impact from day one (71:16).
  • Khoury: "We’re really trying to make sure that every employee gets food safety on day one. The constituent stories are a great way..."

Best Practice Sharing

• The Alliance convenes members (e.g., Nestlé, Walmart, PepsiCo) to share practical experience and solutions—via annual meetings, working groups, and informal networking (73:44).
  • Yasuda: "We’re trying to make best practice sharing a more explicit part of those in-person sessions..."

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Sharon Beals (03:07): "It starts with your intended product use... Is it thaw and gnaw?... Do you need to have inhibitors in it?"
• Peter Taormina (03:48): "The hazard analysis should drive what you’re going to end up doing as far as finished product testing."
• Sandra Eskin (25:26): "In food safety, relationships are absolutely important... when you have that relationship... you listen better."
• John O'Fallon (44:14): "If you knew what the temperature was, you would be saving yourself a significant amount of money."
• Lily Yasuda (66:22): "[The video series]...feature[s] four of those real life stories to help contextualize the why of food safety... that’s definitely the special sauce of the alliance."
• Sandra Eskin (35:41): "It is really fun to be in the room where it happens... people really do try to think about everything, from who's it going to impact to what are the unintended consequences."
• Khoury (71:16): "The constituent stories are a great way to give someone the background… it just makes it personal and it brings it home."

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:24–23:22: Finished Product Testing — Beals & Taormina
• 23:24–37:33: The Advocate’s View — Sandra Eskin
• 37:33–63:59: Environmental Sensors in Supply Chains — John O'Fallon
• 64:01–74:59: Building Food Safety Culture With Consumer Perspective — Monica Khoury & Lily Yasuda

Overall Tone & Takeaways

The episode is conversational and candid, rich with practical advice, hard-earned insights, audience engagement, technical detail, and a consistently collaborative spirit. The unifying theme across interviews: food safety is a cross-disciplinary, relationship-driven effort where data, transparency, and a human connection are all essential for safeguarding public health and continually improving industry standards.

For more insights or resources mentioned on this episode, visit Stop Foodborne Illness and check out Zebra Technologies’ environmental sensor solutions at Zebra.com.