Loading summary
Transcript193 lines
- [00:00]
A
The presenting sponsor of Food Safety Matters is Ecowise North America. Ecowise delivers safe, clean, compliant, on time sanitation for USDA and FDA regulated facilities across the US and globally every day. Privately owned, with more than 30 years of sanitation experience across four countries, EcoWise brings proven food safety systems, disciplined execution frameworks, and workforce development models into every facility they serve. Visit ecowiseusa.com to learn more. That's Ecowise. E C O W I z e USA.com. Hello everyone, and welcome to Food Safety Matters, the podcast for food safety professionals. I. I'm Stacy Acheson, publisher of Food Safety magazine, and I want to thank you for tuning in to part one of our Live from the Food Safety Summit coverage. Today. You'll hear the interviews my Food Safety Matters co hosts, Adrienne Blum, Food Safety magazine's Editorial Director, and Bob Ferguson, President of Strategic Consulting, conducted in front of live audiences in our beautiful podcast theater at the 2026 Food Safety Summit Conference and Expo that concluded last week in Rosem, Illinois. Well, this year's summit was so amazing. Everybody came ready. Outstanding educational sessions, networking and fun. So to get a taste of the experience, check out foodsafetysummit on our social networks. You know, I could try and explain, but we'd be here all day and, well, you know, a picture or a lot of pictures are worth a thousand words. So I don't even know what the count of words would be when you add in videos and food safety rock stars performing Cindy Jeong's original song, Food Safety Starts with youh and Me. So please check it all out. I know you're gonna be delighted. It was a wonderful time and thank you all. All right, back to business. So I'm gonna step out of the way shortly here and let you listen to those interviews with Jeremy Zenlia, Vice President and Head of Health and Safety at EG America Lori Farmer, Director of the Office of Retail Food Protection at FDA David Clifford, Director of Food Safety at Nestle usa Sarah Mortimer, founder of Sarah Mortimer LLC and formerly with Walmart Frank Curto, Vice President of Operations for Ecowise North America Drew McDonald, senior vice president of Quality Food Safety and Regulatory affairs at Taylor Fresh Foods, and Dr. Conrad Choirnier, Director of FDA, FDA's Office of Microbiological Food Safety. Okay, here we go.
- [03:07]
B
Okay. Hey, everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Podcast Theater Live. Thanks so much for joining us in our Podcast theater. I know we're. We scooted over a little bit here, but thanks for finding us and sitting and listening in on our interviews with our esteemed guests. So Today I have with me Lori Farmer, who's the director of the FDA Office of Retail Food Protection. And I have Jeremy Zenlia, vice president and head of Health and safety for EG America. Okay, so you're both leading sessions at the summit that are focused on retail and food service, food safety. So thanks for being here to discuss these very important topics from a few different angles. Now my first question today is going to be for Jeremy. So you're leading a session this afternoon on retail sanitation and culture, featuring real world case studies. Now, in your experience, what differentiates retailers that successfully sustain sanitation programs during disruptions from those that struggle, particularly in terms of leadership, engagement and communication?
- [04:18]
C
Sure.
- [04:18]
D
Thank you, Adrian. It's a simple answer. Good leadership promotes good behaviors, promotes a culture. There's clear communications of when something is more important. There's clear communication on what's not as important, and there's clear communication on what the overall expectations are as being a having a food safe culture. Every one of those things, the antithesis of every one of those things is something that is going to fail miserably from a disruption. The company you see that will ultimately fail is they don't take cleanliness and sanitation as a number one priority. When people in stores that I work for, when they go and they're running around and they're. They're short staffed, they. The cleaning, sanitation takes really a secondary step. And that's when the problems always occur for us. So when we see that, the first thing that we understand is that that company is not committed. They're not committed to food safety. They have not really designated food safety as a primary concern in maybe their 10k report or their business summary, whatever it is. If they're private versus public. And it's really important to make sure that you put clear expectations in that everybody needs to follow the culture. It's not just like a task list. It's like this is something we do. We live and breathe it because ultimately it makes our stores better. And one of the biggest driver stores, drivers in the C store industry is clean bathrooms. Clean and serious bathrooms. So it's important not just for the operation, but for the success of the operation as well.
- [06:01]
B
And clean bathrooms, certainly important. I know if anybody else has been through the south and Texas, we have a chain called Buc EE's and they are very well known for their clean bathrooms.
- [06:12]
D
They have very clean bathrooms.
- [06:13]
B
Yeah, yeah. Favorite stop on a road trip. So thanks for that perspective, Jeremy. Now, Lori, you led a session this morning bright and early on a collaborative approach to Norovirus reduction at retail. So one of the key things that your session focused on was FDA's a comprehensive employee health toolkit. So what were some of the most significant gaps in employee health practices that the toolkit aims to address? And how did stakeholder feedback shape its final design?
- [06:47]
E
Yep, good question, Adrian, and thank you for the opportunity to be here. The work that's being done around aftohealthy people 2030 norovirus is really about engaging industry, academia, regulators. It is a group of all of these people coming together and bringing best practices together. And so, you know, I would say that it's a collective effort by all of us to do this. And the challenge has been that we surveyed over 300 folks, we did some focus groups and what came back was that there are resources all over the place, but they're not combined in one place. And so that was the biggest challenge that we found. So what we did is we brought a team together that curated and developed some additional tools and developed a one stop shop toolkit. So if somebody was looking for that toolkit, all they had to do do is Google Norovirus and AFTO plus afto and you can find all of the resources, there's guidance documents, there are templates that operators could use. And so we have leveraged the industry, we have leveraged regulators to get those best practices. So they are tools that folks can apply. You could put your own business on, on these templates and distribute them across your operations. It's the one stop shop that was the biggest gap that people found that what they needed.
- [08:29]
B
Interesting. And you know, what has the feedback been so far on the toolkit?
- [08:34]
E
So far it's been really positive that it's centralized. And Adrian, I would say that that one of the bigger things that we're finding out and it's from our advisory group. So if anybody listening is interested in being part of our advisory group or any of our work groups, we have an employee health work group, we have sanitation and disinfectant work group and we also have a communications and marketing group. And you know, as food safety experts, we're not always great communicators. So we need to bring in people like you that are really great at communications. And so we have newly formed a communications group that's going to help with our marketing. And so to your point, you know, what is the next thing that we really need to be working on is curating by maybe position in an operation like I'm a front line line worker. Here's the curated materials for you I'm a manager. Here are the curated materials for you and what you would need. So our communications and marketing group is very interested in bringing folks in with expertise to help us in doing that this year.
- [09:51]
B
That's great and you know, great that industry can provide feedback for those working groups as well. So turning back to sanitation and culture. So Jeremy, as retailers increasingly adopt data driven tools and AI, how can they ensure that these technologies meaningfully strengthen food safety culture rather than becoming compliance only solutions?
- [10:15]
C
Sure.
- [10:16]
D
I just wanted to also take a minute to thank the public like Lori here for helping the industry really address some serious problems and provide guidance. I know sometimes the relationship's a bit rocky. However, those who know know that you are our best friends. So thank you for that and thank you for the rest of the public employees that serve our community every single day. The use of AI and data is actually something that we're struggling right now with within my, my departments. The struggle is that we have a lot of people that use data and AI in place place of doing a proper research and proper understanding of what is happening. So for example, we have a, we have to study all the temperature checks in 1500 stores. You can take that data, which is a lot, you could type it into AI or chat GBT or whatever and it will spit out key insights, it'll spit out a lot of stuff that normally would take hours to do and perform. That is great. However, it needs to be understood and we make this clear that that is a guide that is guiding you towards what the answer is guiding you towards compliance. But in the end you have to actually do something about it. So like AI could say you have all these hotspots. Well, you need to make sure that you're going to those hotspots and properly treating them so that there is no issue with your environmental program. One more recent we had is we had to take a look at a lot of the cooling times of the raw chicken that we have. We, we cook fried chicken. We have to make sure that heating and cooling of course takes precedence. And I had, I had some. We have a specialist that decided that she wants to take this project on. Was great. She used the chat GBT to get everything. So we were listening to the presentation, executive summaries, whatever, and then a bunch of questions started happening and I felt, I really felt bad for her, but she could not answer a darn question. And that's because she crunched data using AI rather than actually getting the research done, getting it in her brain, understanding really the why behind it and actually, can you explain it or not? So that's where we see really the struggles. But again, like I said, at the same time, it is a compliance to tool just like anything SQF or those are technically a tool, but it really takes the human being, the human elephant to actually make it work and use for your everyday activities.
- [12:45]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, having a human in the loop is so essential when we're experimenting with these new tools that seem to be, you know, magical answer machines. But the thing is that we, we, we do not want AI making the decisions for us. We want them to aid us in our decision making and, and help us analyze information. And certainly AI is really valuable for aggregating and analyzing large data sets, things like that. Right. And that can aid in decision making.
- [13:13]
D
Yeah, we just got to make sure. I think the message really is don't get the two confused. Yeah. AI is not reality. AI is still a chatbot. What you are doing, you're swabbing, you're making sanitation work, you're doing all this stuff up, keeping passive records. That is what's important is the person. So.
- [13:30]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And of course there are many things that AI can't replace.
- [13:33]
D
You know, that's correct.
- [13:34]
B
Think of a sanitation crew. AI is not going to be doing that for you. And making sure that things are, are clean and sanitized. Right.
- [13:41]
D
And quite honestly, no one wants AI to replace you. I mean, that's not what we want. So we have to make sure we guide it so it can't replace us. There's still a human element that's needed, Necessary.
- [13:52]
B
Yeah, yeah. So, Laurie, with the session this morning, what were some of the learnings to come out of the session regarding how retailers can utilize employee health policies to reduce norovirus risk, especially in fast paced environments or environments that have high turnover.
- [14:12]
E
Yes, Adrienne. I think it's so important that FDA be here at the Food Center Summit to be engaging with industry to have a truly integrated food safety system. Industry really needs to be at the table to developing policies and guidance. Where the agency is doing that alone is not the now, it's not the future. It is the engagement where we're developing policies and guidance and practices that can be applied. And so it's really important through these groups that we're engaging and getting feedback. So you talk about the high pace environments and we recognize that. And operators have to continually do regular training. The training has to be. And think about smaller operators. They're getting a lot of their training from their regulatory Officials and we talked about that a bit today. So the resources that we've brought together are in that one stop shop that I talked about. But they really need to be simple and clear and concise and they need to be templates that folks can already adopt easily. One of the things that we shared today was a stop foodborne illness video of Barbara and she was a victim of an norovirus illness. Having videos like that that are small snippets of training where it really touches the heart. We heard from our keynote speaker today, you really can't get to people until you get to their heart. And so at the frontline worker level, it's just as important that they understand they're an important part of the team. And so having those small snippets of training just in time, training the use of technology as we're communicating, leveraging apps, we are doing that through our employee health assessment tool. So that sounds fancy and it is, but it is an app that helps people quickly understand exclusion and restriction criteria for the food code and operations. So we're looking, looking at ways that we can be efficient and helping keep sick workers out of facilities and being clear on what's required on sanitation and disinfectant. So those are our key objectives and ensuring having quick, easy to access materials that anybody in operation can get.
- [16:49]
B
Great, thanks for that, Lori. Now I'm going to give you guys one last question. So aside from from your own sessions, what at the summit, what, what sessions or maybe workshops that happened yesterday, you know, are you excited to attend or that you found valuable? You know, what, what are you looking for? What are you looking forward to at the summit this year? Jeremy, maybe you want to kick, kick us off with that?
- [17:14]
C
Sure.
- [17:15]
D
I'm just looking forward to the next keynote. And like, I always like the talk birds, especially the ones with the regulators and the town hall. I feel we get some really good responses out of this. They're not so much like a canned response. It's like, this is how it is, this is how it be. And I'm looking forward to it. That's always one of my favorite sessions
- [17:36]
B
of the town hall.
- [17:37]
D
Yeah, absolutely.
- [17:38]
B
Yeah. I think it's insightful for everybody and it's great to be able to get such high profile regulators in the same room together to talk about these really pressing topics for the food safety community and food and food regulations.
- [17:50]
D
So yeah, it has like a lot of takeaways too. So like if you go back to your company and you're like, this is what I heard and they say, who told you that? I'll say, like, oh, Lori did. She's from the fda. What do you think? So it does. It really helps. I know it helps me. It helps people that come here to go back and have another, like, basis for defense for what they want to put in or take out.
- [18:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a great point. Lori, what about you?
- [18:15]
E
Yeah, I would say, you know, I really enjoyed the keynote and getting the industry perspective is always very helpful to me to continue to hear. The town hall will be great. But I will tell you personally, I love the AI session because that is all of us. Yes, we had an AI workshop yesterday, and that is something all of us are learning together. We're struggling with. We're learning how to do prompts. It's something I'm very excited about in the agency. We have our own internal AI model that we use. There's also, there's. So there's an FDA system called ELSA that we use, and then we have an hhs, a chat GPT that we use. And so we're trying to find ways to utilize these tools as, as well, to look at risk, to think about risk. And we also know our stakeholders are using them. So when we think about states and locals and tribes and territories, they're using these tools to answer their question. So it's nice to have as an assistant there to help you think through things. It certainly helps us move faster along, and I think it makes it even more important for us scientific experts, experts to be there and to really reassess what is being said by the AI. And so I really love the session where I got to interact with my table and we could try different prompts and hear from other people how they're using AI.
- [19:47]
B
Yeah, yeah. I think that was a really valuable thing in that, in that workshop is, you know, everybody getting to discuss how they're using AI in their companies and even know. And also whether companies are allowing or the. Or the, you know, basically the directives that are coming down from the top saying, this is how we want you to use. Use AI. This is how we don't want you to use AI. And that workshop, it was the opening workshop yesterday, if you missed it or you weren't here yet, that is available to watch on demand on our live streaming program for the summit. So you can find that on the summit website, that session, if you want to revisit it. And I think, you know, kind of, we've been talking a little bit about AI during this whole conversation. I think one of the things during that workshop yesterday that was so interesting is what Sean Layton said about treat AI like a brilliant intern. I like that, you know, so I liked that too. It was a very good way to frame it, I think, because, you know, obviously AI can assist and speed up and offer insights and help us do tasks much faster, more efficiently and sometimes more correctly than we would be able to do them manually. But at the same time, you know that piece about needing to verify everything, needing a human to be involved in the oversight and how what comes out of AI is implemented. So lots of great takeaways from that session. And of course your session this morning, Lori, Norovirus and in retail. And then, Jeremy, Your session, session seven, retail sanitation and culture, that's at 2:45 this afternoon. So everybody make sure to attend that. And thanks for listening in to our first interview. Thank you. Thank you, Lori. Thank you, Jeremy. And so we're gonna have another one at 11:30, so take a quick break, go get a drink, you know, a little snack and we'll see you back here in, in about seven minutes. So thanks everybody.
- [21:43]
D
Thank you very much.
- [21:43]
E
Thank you, Adrian.
- [21:46]
B
All right, so our next interview now is with David Clifford, who is the Director of food safety at Nestle usa, and Sara Mortimer, founder of Sara Mortimer LLC and formerly Vice President for Food Safety at Walmart. So you are both speaking on a session this afternoon about Nestle's journey to a connected food safety ecosystem. Now, from both of your perspectives across Nestle's implementation, David, and your experience at Walmart, Sara, what are the biggest organizational barriers to scaling digital haccp and how can companies overcome them? David, maybe you want to lead us off.
- [22:25]
F
Yeah. For Nestle being a global organization and we're trying to put Digital HACCP in 350 factories at the same time and numerous R and D centers, the number one barrier that we faced going in was knowledge and capability. And so standardizing the knowledge base that folks had on traditional technical HACCP was a critical unlock for us to be able to be efficient on the digital side. We needed informed super users that could adjust and work within the system. Secondly, as a company that's growing a lot through acquisition fragmentation, fragmentation of data and inconsistencies in data across the organization, which was going to be a necessary feed in for us, but also fragmentation in terms of just differences across all the sites in their HACCP that they had to ground with in the first place. So even sites that, that we're doing all the same thing across the globe, different interpretations due to local influences, knowledge bases, those kind of things. And really the investment in initial capability and initial standardization, recognizing that has allowed us to take on the digital tool and the digital transformation in a much more efficient manner.
- [23:46]
B
Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work went into coordinating all of that, you know, but I think, you know. Well, we're going to hear more about that on the session. Right. Sara, from your perspective, you know, having led global food safety to global organization like Walmart.
- [24:03]
G
Yes.
- [24:03]
B
What do you think about digital HACCP and the barriers to overcoming?
- [24:07]
G
Just listening to David as well, I think for many suppliers I've been into, many companies I've been into, people are so busy. So I think top time is a huge barrier for many people. And they've already got a HACCP system, it's certified, so why kind of fix what's not broken? In theory, it's a big investment, so there's the investment piece of it. But it's investment in time and money and I think it's just a, for any big project it's a heavy lift. I'm sure David will agree. It must have been a massive lift at Nestle smaller company. I guess it would be less a lift. And you've got to be able to see the rewards at the end of the day if it's so say working. But I think knowledge, I'd agree with David. Knowledge also is another sort of aspect of that, making sure you've got the right knowledge to put into a digital system. Because if you haven't got a great system to start with, digitalizing it isn't going to fix it. So there's a lot of that as well. But I think one of the barriers is probably time, time and effort when you're very busy.
- [25:08]
B
Yeah, right. Well, thank you both for your perspectives on that. Now Sara, given your background in large scale retail food safety systems, how do you see digital HACCP changing the way companies standardize hazard analysis and maintain consistency across diverse operations?
- [25:28]
G
Yeah, I was thinking about that. I think there's an opportunity for us to maybe use, use digitalization to share good information more widely. Company like Nestle, you've got a central technical team who has tons of knowledge so they can make sure that that knowledge is then disseminated consistently from site to site. The sites then of course still need to customize, localize because every factory is different. But by product category there'll be some opportunity to provide some consistency. Maybe that's an opportunity for trade associations or ICMSF or some of the reputable sources or even governments, because there's so much fantastic information around today that there wasn't 30, 40 years ago when HACCP was really getting going. So I think the dissemination of reputable resources, maybe coming through digitalization would be something, but that means you've got to connect it, so you've got to connect it all up through the industry in some way. But I do see that as an opportunity, the access to resources digitally that perhaps is different to sitting down with a book.
- [26:41]
B
And you know, kind of following on from that, I want to ask both of you, how do you ensure that digitization enhances rather than replaces critical thinking in HACCP decision making at the site level?
- [26:58]
F
David, maybe you want to for Nestle, it doesn't replace thinking, it doesn't replace expertise. What digital HACCP is giving us is structure around that. And so Sarah mentioned a few times, consistency, right? In a non digital haccp, there's a lot of opportunity for interpretation and spinning off in directions that are not consistent with our technical intelligence internally. Digital HACCP kind of takes that and gives structure to how we're doing haccp, how we're applying that information. It introduces structured workflows, it introduces structured data sets, it introduces structured governance to check and balance decisions that are being made. That still requires a person to understand and apply logic to it, but with some guide rails that are set more by the company that offering that again, that structured workflow and that structured process of getting to the endpoint.
- [28:00]
B
Thanks David and Sarah.
- [28:02]
G
I'd love to provide some input as well because I think as we've been hearing a lot over the, of course, course of the last couple of days, the opportunity to read data reams and reams of data that is a HACCP output, I can see absolutely that's going to enhance opportunities for having a more effective HACCP system. It doesn't replace critical thinking in that regard, but it takes some of the busy work out of the day to day of a HACCP team, of a food safety team, a quality team there I can see huge opportunity opportunities. But you still need that critical thinking, the curiosity to set the questions, whether you're using AI or some other sort of data trawling tool that you really need to look at it and proactively go in and seek that out. But you're going to need the critical thinking and know how even to review if you're using digitalization of a HACCP system or digital inputs, you're still going to need that knowledge to review, validate whether it's correct or not correct. But I really see huge opportunities in leveraging the data that are the outputs of a lot of these control systems, process control systems, preventive control systems, so we can see failures earlier and get after them.
- [29:16]
H
Yeah.
- [29:17]
F
And if I can, something you said made me think also HACCP is a heavy administrative burden. And from my experience in a lot of years of doing this, the act of going through all of that administrative process of haccp, there's an introduction of fatigue that takes place. So you front end build a lot of effort in just documenting the flow diagram and lines and lines and lines of process and hazard assessment, which the digital environment for us is going to pull in and make much lighter on the person, affording them the opportunity to use their expertise in what the output should be. So I think as I said, you lose a bit. There's a fatigue that sets in and doing HACCP because of how heavy it is administratively that burden comes off of the individual, allows them to focus in on what we're really trying to do, controlling the food safety hazards and design, designing the systems to work for us.
- [30:18]
G
And it's not just about the kind of the HACCP structure and the HACCP plan and the flowcharts. I think it is around that early warning systems, the data gathering and all the things that can really enhance the experience and the sort of preventative approach. Yeah. So I'm really excited to think that maybe 10 years down the road we might see more of that. And innovation doesn't have to be all about a huge systems approach. It can be people thinking very innovatively with a QR code at a CCP or a preventive control. It can be all sorts of small things that really take the workload off and enhance the hearts, the programs and get that preventive mindset right through. Because it's easier, it's just easier to manage.
- [31:05]
B
Yeah, yeah. And you know, kind of looking at that 10 year down the line question, so looking ahead to the future, how do you each see digital HACCP contributing to a more connected end to end food safety ecosystem and particularly across big global supply chains like you've both managed.
- [31:25]
F
I mean fundamentally we're going to move from what is effectively a static system into a dynamic system. And that affords us the opportunity to connect in a lot of the data streams internally and externally that are right now systematically disconnected, fractionated. These need to be reviewed by people and go through other series of reviews in order to cascade in with a integrated food safety ecosystem, which is, which is interesting. This afternoon I'm going to spend a bit of time in the session just talking about what that means because it's a term that we're using quite a bit without really defining or spending some time talking about it. But think of all the inputs that we get for early warning and risk data, thousands, tens of thousands of data points that we get as Nestle as an organization that are just not possible for humans to understand and look for nuanced differences. Feeding into HACCP that dynamically is allowing that to influence that risk assessment strategy that's built within the system and send warnings to or send notifications to folks that there's a different pressure coming or pressure is being relieving. How do we adjust our food safety management system based on all that input and cycling back? How effective, effective are those changes back to the beginning as a risk management device as well. So the strength of all the data that we get, all the intelligence that we get internally as well as externally, and leveraging that for a dynamic system again now we're talking years down the road. At the end of this year we will have fully digitalized haccp, which only means we're converting paper or spreadsheet systems into a digital format. That doesn't get me much, but it enables me to see the future and start working towards where we're trying to go. I mean, imagine a time when preventive maintenance tasks aren't necessarily getting done on the frequency that they're scheduled to be. Like that happens in real life. There's a lot of work to do. And how is that influencing the decisions made within the core engine of food safety, which is haccp? Because HACCP decisions are based upon those systems and those prerequisite programs acting and working and being executed as designed. There's a lot of assumptions that are built into there without necessarily the feedback loop to tell us, well, something isn't being followed as accepted. Do you agree with this? Do you not agree with that? And what adjustments should we be making based on the ebbs and flows of just normal operational inconsistencies? So it definitely adds a sensitivity to our ability to manage food safety in a different way.
- [34:25]
B
Great, thanks for those insights. David and Sara, your take on how do you see digital HACCP contributing to more connected, you know, end to end ecosystem?
- [34:34]
G
Yes, it's a huge question, isn't it? Because you start to think 10 years probably isn't enough. But if you really think about the duplication that Happens within the industry. There's so much work that is done in Nestle, that's done in Cargill, that's done in governments around the world, whatever. And Walmart was really heavy into blockchain, is really heavy into blockchain. You think about the power passport system of passing on immutable data from one part of the global supply chain to the next, to the next, to the next. We all write our own specifications. Suppliers do it, they send them to the company, they rewrite them. It's happening all over the world and it's not efficient. So maybe there's a utopia, a future out there which really leans into how can we digitalise information in a common format, a consistent format that is usable by companies globally. Of course, you then got the question of who validates that. Now the validation is owned by the food business operator, the producer of the item. So if it's going down the supply chain, it starts at the beginning. So then you sort of think about how do we ensure valid data? But that's another question I think that I can absolutely see. There's much more room for connectivity through digitalizing, whether it's blockchain or some other form of data transfer and locking in passport systems and so on, and data sharing. But we're starting to do it and Sean Layton was talking about that yesterday at the AI session. We're looking at how they digitalize all the different inputs, internal and external, to prevent failure. And you can just sort of start to see, see that coming. But I think it's a long year,
- [36:19]
F
long, many years out from the early warning perspective. And playing on that, the, the ability to easily cascade information throughout the enterprise based on whatever inputs we may be seeing, which right now takes emails and coordination in these, you can push this, at least the vision, you can push this into the system. Now, as Peter Parker's Uncle Ben said, with great power comes great responsibility.
- [36:44]
H
Right?
- [36:45]
F
So no factory manager is going to want to walk into the factory on Monday and all of a sudden his or her control measures have changed. So we have to be a bit careful. But cascading Information simultaneously across 350 factories Enterprise wide is going to allow for greater efficiency and controls, for sure.
- [37:05]
B
Absolutely. Now, I have one more question for you all. You know, with a session like this where, you know, you get to share from your company's perspective, Nestle usa, you know, a case history like this that demonstrates, you know, your journey to digital haccp, you know, an initiative your company is doing and how that has worked out. What do you see as the value in being able to bring a case history in a session like that to the summit and share it with attendees. And Sara, I'd love your perspective on this as well.
- [37:41]
F
Well, in a large organization like I'm part of with Nestle, we have a lot of internal horsepower, internal horsepower to ideate on what is possible. And we have a lot of internal horsepower to take the spaghetti you throw at the wall and see what sticks and do something with it and try feasible and try to understand it and connect with organizations that maybe have the horsepower to turn that into something real that other organizations don't have. They can't invest in a lot of that prep work or upfront discovery work. So I think that's the gift that we can give back to the smaller organizations is this is a real thing, this is possible. It doesn't have to be on the scale that we're doing it, but digitalizing and connecting is there's resources available. And certainly, I mean, we all own the improvement of food safety. We all own public protection, public health protection. Anytime something happens in the industry, it affects all of us in one way or another. And so I think that's the gift that we can give as a large organization wrestling with this and coming out of it with some solution that is scalable to big or small organizations.
- [38:57]
G
I think Nestle provides a really good example. I mean, it's a commercial organization. They're not going to waste money investing in things that they don't think matters and that will add significant value. So I think the fact that they've gone through this, they're continuing to invest and roll it out, speaks volumes. But it's well worth the effort, which it is going to be a big effort, so not a smaller scale. I've met so many small companies who are highly innovative and they look at something big and figure out how to make that work if they, if they can. And sometimes if you don't have money, I think it was John Ruskin who said, we have no money, therefore we must think. I had that above my desk once in a big company because it made us think about how to be more efficient, how to be get things done, how not to waste resources that really do things that add value. And I've seen some brilliant innovation in small companies. But having Nestle as an example because they see that it matters is really important. One thing I really like about the Nestle approach is they've taken the process flow diagram and it's like the engine, isn't it? It's like the engine of what happens around haccp. And I think that's just brilliant. I love, loved seeing that. I'll talk more about that later. But absolutely brilliant to really hang things off that and just make it come to life and live. And HACCP so often is this sort of flat paper system and it's a check, check, check. I've done it and I've got my certificate and it really needs to live and breathe in an organization that to me is what shines from what Nestle have done.
- [40:36]
B
Great. And one more bonus question for you all. And Sara, you're on our educational advisory board for the summit. Thank you for that. What are some of the things that you look forward to at the summit? What are some of your favorite parts of the summit? Sara?
- [40:53]
G
I always learn new stuff and I'm amazed at the energy that is here every year, but I think every year it gets better and better. So enjoyed the AI sessions this time but I went to another brilliant session on mentorship in small companies this morning. It was just inspiring and so I look forward to discovering those nuggets of just outstanding, inspiring, educational. It's truly an educational event and things that are real world applied and people just sharing so openly and freely and there's such energy here. So I'm looking forward to the rest of the, the rest of the event and as much energy and learning as, as we've got now.
- [41:33]
F
Yeah, for me it's, yeah, the sess. The sessions are great but I get more from the sidebar conversations. Reconnecting with colleagues especially you know, sharing kind of the pain and sharing the wins and, and, and, and discovering what are you doing about that? And this is what we're doing, doing and as I said earlier, this is, we all have a shared responsibility with protecting public health. And a lot of, a lot of the things I take back from these events are from a 10 minute conversation with Sarah on something or many of the other professionals in here and the really interesting and innovative things that they're doing and how they're developing their people and how they're talking to leadership. That's for me, what the big takeaway is.
- [42:19]
B
Great. Well, thank you both for being here and thanks for doing this interview for our podcast, Theatre Live. Thanks for sitting in on the interview. Appreciate it.
- [42:27]
F
Thanks folks.
- [42:31]
I
Good afternoon everybody. I'm Bob Ferguson with Food Safety magazine and the food safety podcast, Food Safety Matters and I am here with Frank Curto from Ecowise and we're going to talk a bit about sanitation and what it takes to a food plant. And first off, though, Frank and I have been talking about this a little bit, and he has a perfect background for this. You were with the USDA for a while, correct?
- [42:52]
C
I was, yeah. Early in my career, I was on. I'm sure there's some regulators around. I was on the dark side. No, just kidding. But, yeah, invaluable experience. So, you know, I had that vantage point, you know, from the. The regulatory view of food safety and sanitation. But, you know, quite frankly, the growth opportunities were on the industry side. So I've been bid on the industry for the last 20 plus years. But, yeah, very grateful for those early days of my USDA career.
- [43:24]
I
That's a good background, a good experience.
- [43:26]
C
Yeah, it was excellent.
- [43:27]
H
Yeah.
- [43:27]
I
So when we were talking about this before, when we start talking about some of the things we're going to discuss today, this isn't theoretical for you. You've been on the floor. You've been on the plant floor floor. You've been there.
- [43:36]
C
Yeah. Not my first rodeo by any means. Yeah. I've seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and tried to learn from all of it. Yeah. So where. Where. Where that can help me now, my career, I. There's many opportunities where I look back and say, I remember that time. Yeah. So it's. Yeah, it was an invaluable experience.
- [43:57]
H
Yeah.
- [43:58]
I
Okay, tell me a little bit about Ecowise.
- [44:00]
C
Yeah, so Ecowise is. Is. We're actually a global company. A lot of people don't know that about us. Our roots are in South Africa, and we were sort of first to market in South Africa in the contract sanitation space. We literally have customers today that we started 20 years ago with Plus. Yeah. So a very partnership, very cultural base. So our founder expanded that into our Australia, New Zealand division many years ago. And in North America, we've been growing very thoughtfully in. In the States, you know, looking for opportunities to help companies. We're not the biggest. We aspire to be the best. And we're, you know, we're trying to bring a new vantage point to contract sanitation and, you know, building a team that has the relevant experience that can hit the ground and help our customers immediately.
- [44:57]
I
Okay. If you don't mind if I embarrass you a little bit, I have a question for you. We were just talking a second ago about what you're going to do as soon as we're done talking here. So you're talking about what it takes to do this job and do it differently and do it right.
- [45:09]
H
Yeah.
- [45:09]
I
What are you doing when we're done here.
- [45:11]
C
I'm going to hightail it out of here. I'm going to get to the airport, hop on a plane, and I'll be on site on the, on the floor tonight at a customer site. Probably work through the night, be there for pre op and make sure we have a successful release. Yeah, that's what it takes.
- [45:30]
I
That's right.
- [45:30]
C
That's the commitment that we have as a company. That's our culture. No jobs too small, no titles too big. Customer first, we got to get it done. So, yeah. And again, not boasting, it's what, what we do. But yeah, it's. I want to say I'm happy to do it. I am. But, yeah, not looking forward to it necessarily, but it's. It's what has. How the job has to get done. So we do it. Yeah.
- [45:54]
I
All right, so I'll look at everybody in the audience when I say that was not on the notes. Frank and I were just talking about this and he says he's flying to a site to make sure everything gets fixed on site.
- [46:01]
H
Right.
- [46:02]
C
Yeah. Giving up a steak dinner at Capitol Grill for that too. So a few more bonus points.
- [46:07]
J
All right, so let's, let's talk a
- [46:09]
I
little bit about sanitation and food safety. I talked to a lot of companies. One of the things I do for the magazine is interview companies that. About what they're actually doing. And I talk to a lot of people about how sanitation fits in with food safety culture. And sometimes it gets left out and not really thought of until later. So talk to me a little bit about how that fits in with food safety culture and how you use the type of work that you do and the programs that you have to enhance the food safety culture. How do they go together?
- [46:34]
C
Sure. Food safety is. Well, sanitation is where food safety begins. You cannot have a safe product in a dirty plant.
- [46:42]
H
Correct.
- [46:43]
C
I mean, that's the foundation for food safety. The margin of error is really small. So, I mean, excellence is something you kind of have to demand and expect every night. And that's a tough task. So, yeah, I mean, that's our approach to it is it's people. It's people first. They're the ones that make the difference. And trust me, getting motivated to do that night after night, it takes special people.
- [47:11]
I
Yeah, that's right.
- [47:11]
C
Yeah.
- [47:12]
I
And you said you look for those people and those are the ones that you actually promote so they stay with your company a longer period of time.
- [47:17]
C
Yeah, yeah. We have folks in our organization that literally started out as entry level Sanitation technicians and are now in corporate level positions because of their faithfulness and dedication. It takes dedicated people to do that night after night. It's a tough job. It's physical. The, the environment is challenging. It's cold, it's wet. And that's not every once in a while. It's every night. And to do it at the end of that, you know, there's a scorecard every night. There's an inspector, there's a swab. There's all those things that, you know, you get instant feedback and it can, you know, it, it takes special people to endure that and be willing to take the feedback and come back, do it again better tomorrow night.
- [48:02]
H
Yep.
- [48:03]
C
Yeah.
- [48:03]
I
So you say it starts with people. I love mnemonic devices that put a principle in, in effect. And you had said that you have the, the power of the P's, the 4P. The first one's people.
- [48:12]
C
Yes. And the other ones are process, procedures and policies. Okay, yeah, look, all important, but without the people, the other P's fall to the wayside. You need trained, dedicated, committed people to carry out procedures. And it's, to me, it's the difference between, you know, the words in the binder on the shelf, the beautiful written HACCP plans and the behaviors on the shop floor. There's a big gap between the two. And it's the people that make the difference.
- [48:44]
H
Right.
- [48:44]
C
You have to invest in them so that they, they understand the why behind the what. And, and they, you know, they're empowered to go out there and make a difference every night.
- [48:53]
I
Okay. And there was another saying that you mentioned something. Intrinsic infusion. Tell me what that is. What's intrinsic infusion again?
- [49:01]
C
How do you, how do you get people motivated to do a tough job? You have to, one, I believe you got to educate people why behind the what? But then in part into them, there's, there's a passion behind them, purpose. And that's the intrinsic factor.
- [49:18]
J
Okay.
- [49:18]
C
And I remember Frank said this, you know, or I remember. Oh yeah. If I don't, if I take the shortcut here, that could impact the end result. That could make an unsafe product, that could make somebody sick. It's, it's the little things. It sounds a little corny, but it is really that impartation. And again, as I mentioned, it takes special people to do this. It's not an easy job. So the, you know, it's the little things that go a long way to get people empowered.
- [49:45]
I
Key piece about food safety is when you're making those decisions and you have to decide what to do. If you have all these principles in mind, you'll know what the right thing to do.
- [49:54]
C
Yeah. You have a guiding light. You always have a beacon to look to. Yeah, absolutely.
- [49:58]
I
So you mentioned it's a tough job. At the end of the day you get a grade and it's not like that in a lot of jobs. So you have to not only be good at it, but you know that that's, that's coming. And we talked a little bit about, you know, audits as culture builders with that correction or those tests at the end of it. Talk a little bit about how that works and how that feeds into a food, food safety program, but a food safety culture.
- [50:18]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Audits are part of our day to day. We I. It's very rare that a week goes by that we're not audited, whether it's internally by our own teams or through a third party. I mean we're inspected every day by our customers. So it's a part of our culture. So we're used to that. And again, it's feedback and it helps us get better. So it is a continuous improvement feedback loop. I think for us the key is what do you do about that information? So the urgency around it, the preventative part of it, the root cause assessment part of it. Those are all disciplines that we're worked very hard in over the last year to really, you know, sort of mature our process so that those feedback loops go, don't go unheard.
- [51:07]
H
Right.
- [51:07]
C
They're really put to really good use.
- [51:10]
I
And you also mentioned that it's important to reframe it as a positive. It's not a punish punishment.
- [51:15]
C
It's absolutely, yeah. I mean it's a fact finding exercise, not a fault finding exercise. Or at least it should be. It's an opportunity. Opportunity to engage. We have an operational excellence team that goes out routinely and audits our team again in preparation for third party audits and customer audits. And that's what we instill. It's an opportunity to foster relationships. If folks aren't fearful of if I say the wrong thing, I'm going to get in trouble. So we encourage feedback. Some of the best information you'll get is from the shop floor people that do it every day. So it's, it's an opportunity and it's again, culturally building trust is very, very big. So we use it as an opportunity to build our culture just by fostering relationships and engagement.
- [52:05]
I
Okay. And so this is going to be obvious to anybody involved with food safety. Anybody who's ever been on a plant floor. But it's not just your audits, but you're also customers are getting audited on everything that you do is sure. And I was talking to the folks at your booth and they said that you have a system where you keep all that information available at any time. What's that called?
- [52:22]
C
Yeah, it's EQMS 2.0. It's, it's our electronic quality management system. 2.0 is, it's because that's our new iteration of it. We've, we've been do working with a quality management system for over a decade now. This new iteration is what I like to refer to as the central platform for standardized data that we need to take it to the next level. It is app based. It's real time, authentic data, full transparency to our customer base. Our customers see it in real time. Our leadership team can see it remotely so we can surveil our performance. And again, it's another one of those feedback loops. So again for me, coming from the regulatory background, if it looks pencil whipped, it probably is. And that's something we're trying to separate ourselves from the pack. Full transparency, real time, authentic data. It's where the rubber meets the road for us. And again, we don't just clean your plants, we're part of your regulatory program. And authentic data is critical in the relationship. So yeah, take that very seriously.
- [53:39]
I
And we hadn't talked about this before, but I'm going to try another question on you is so you have this data and it's, it's a feedback loop, it's for regular improvement. Can you give me an example of a situation where you were working with a plant and you, you found certain things but being able to have this data allowed you to change what you were doing or make some actionable, some actions for your customer that their customer was able to change what they were doing. Give me an example of how some of the improvement works.
- [54:04]
C
Sure, yeah. And that platform allows us to track a lot of different aspects. I mean we do pre op inspections on there titrations, shift handovers. Again, it's actually an opportunity to keep ourselves accountable. The customer at the end of the day, I mean we do service, but it is a partnership and it does require inputs. There's minimum inputs. We need to do a good job. Hot water is one of them, water pressure is another one.
- [54:32]
H
Right.
- [54:33]
C
Safety from a lockout perspective, we have to be able to secure the energy and whatnot. So yeah, we've had those sort of inputs where we've been able to go to a customer and say, we came out to the floor and the lockout switch was broken and we weren't able to safely clean it. And we, but we took these actions and it's a, again, it's an instant feedback loop. When the maintenance man gets on the floor first thing in the morning, he knows, go to that machine and fix the switch or give us another, you know, give us another means of securing the, the safety of that machine. So it's a, it's a, it's a collaborative system as well.
- [55:11]
H
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [55:12]
I
One of those real life things that don't always come up on a, on a whiteboard when you're talking about this kind of thing, but the stuff that you actually find.
- [55:18]
C
Yeah, absolutely.
- [55:19]
H
Yeah.
- [55:20]
I
And we talked about audit findings and, and other types of ways and improvement. Anything else with an audit that's come up that, let's say as, as opposed to something you saw when you're on the floor, but in an audit or when you're working back and forth with your customers, ways you've been able to mutually make improvements?
- [55:34]
C
Yeah, absolutely. And again, I think the beauty of the system is that it gives us the ability to look at history too. So, yeah, the, the idea is to be proactive and prevent things from happening. But in, you know, and in the element, if there's, you know, something we missed and it is cited on an audit, you know, it does give us the ability to have visibility to it. The system will allow us to create actions. So if there is a finding, it will create an action and it can assign it to individuals internally and externally. So both customer facing and ecowise facing to drive sort of that collaboration. Let's fix this together.
- [56:15]
H
Yeah.
- [56:15]
I
It's easier for everybody on the team to see their grades as well too,
- [56:18]
C
and absolutely compete against.
- [56:20]
I
I've, I've heard a lot of stories where people say that with those tests, and particularly like you say, swabs at the end of a shift, people start to compete to see if they can do better than yesterday or do better at all times.
- [56:29]
C
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. A little, a little healthy tension, little competition in an organization. Yeah, that's right.
- [56:37]
I
Yeah.
- [56:37]
C
Yeah.
- [56:38]
I
Especially in something as critical as this. You want to.
- [56:40]
C
Yes, yeah. Like I said, the margin of error is really narrow.
- [56:44]
F
Right.
- [56:44]
C
With what we do. But yeah, we sort of thrive in that, that environment. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's good.
- [56:51]
I
If there was a final takeaway, you wanted somebody to take away from what we talked about and what somebody should Know about what, what you do or any of the issues that we talked about, what would it be?
- [57:01]
C
Yeah, sanitation is, I mean, we're, it's sort of the unsung heroes of the food safety initiative. Right. It's critical. The margin of error is small. It is a, it is a skilled profession. It's not an unskilled task. So, you know, invest in those teams, invest in those folks, upskill them, train them, educate them in part into them and keep, you know, have a seat at the table for that. Have a voice on the, at the conference room regarding sanitation because it's foundation, you can't, you can't produce a safe product in an unclean plant. Yeah, yeah.
- [57:46]
I
And you started, we started this whole discussion off about people. And I mentioned that one of the interviews I did some time ago, somebody said food safety manager at a company was saying to me, I don't have a problem getting applicants for jobs. I have a problem getting the right applicants for jobs. And you told me that the way you work, you get enough applicants, you're able to staff all the projects you have. And even if you get a new project, you're able to staff all those. And with the systems that you're working on, again, you're able to train people and get them to buy into the system so that they are the right people.
- [58:17]
C
Absolutely. Yeah. And part of what we try to do is make the job easier.
- [58:23]
H
Right.
- [58:23]
C
You know, the system that we've Talked about, our EQMS 2.0, is one of those initiatives, particularly for our leadership on the, on the floor. Paperwork is paperwork, you know, and again, when you're, you know, when you have a hose in your hand half the night, the paperwork part is sort of an arduous thing at the end of your shift. This drives more real time data, so more real time collection of tasks. But at the same time, it's digital, it's enabled that, where you can start it on the floor, finish it at your desk at a computer. So that certainly helps drive that. But even in our approaches to processes make the job easier because it's going to be a hard job. The conditions are going to be what they are. But again, if you have standardized processes, you're going to have predictable outcomes and you're going to work a lot harder to get there. That's an initiative that we're really pushing hard on. That's good.
- [59:21]
I
It must be working because you told me before the business is good and
- [59:24]
C
you're expanding throughout the US we're poised to grow because we've taken the time to get better before we get bigger. And I think that's a big differentiator for us. You know, we're. We aspire to be the best, not necessarily the biggest, but it's more. It's more important that we're genuine and authentic, and people, our customers recognize that. And for that, it's a partnership, and that's. It's sustainable partnership. That's really what's key for us.
- [59:50]
I
And you have guys that aren't shy to hop on a plane and fly out.
- [59:54]
C
No, from.
- [59:55]
I
From Chicago, Minnesota.
- [59:57]
C
Yeah, absolutely.
- [59:59]
I
Frank, good talking to you.
- [60:00]
C
Likewise. Thanks.
- [60:01]
I
Thanks for being on the podcast. Good to see you.
- [60:02]
C
Yeah. Awesome.
- [60:04]
B
All right, well, welcome back to the podcast Theater Live. Thank you all for stopping by to listen to our interviews. And today I'm very pleased to have with me Dr. Conrad Choirniere, director of the FDA Office of Microbiological Food Safety, and Drew McDonald, senior vice president of Quality food Safety and Regulatory affairs for. For Taylor Fresh Foods. So you're both speaking on a session today on how to break through silos and bias to encourage real collaboration in food safety. And I think this promises to be a very interesting session because it sounds like there's going to be a lot of real talk happening in the room. So I'm really looking forward to it.
- [60:44]
J
It might be like a cage match.
- [60:46]
B
Yeah, exactly. That's what we're all looking forward to. That's a great plug for the session. So, you know, looking at this topic from an industry, regulatory, and academic perspective, what do you guys think are the biggest barriers to sharing early or incomplete data or research? And how can organizations create environments where that kind of transparency is actually encouraged? Drew, maybe you want to lead us off, since you're the session lead.
- [61:14]
J
No, I think it's a great starting question. I think the first, most basic challenge or barrier is from an industry side. We asked ourselves, how could this, if we're sharing data, how can it be used against us? Unfortunately, that's the reality of it, and the reason why is out of context. Let's say we're a company, which we are, that does a of lot, lot of testing, or we really dig into our operations with process failures. If that's overly documented or just handed over or looked at, you can use that in all different ways. It said, oh, wow, look at all these process failures you have. When in fact, it's a reflection of we really want to solve issues and find issues. It's usually a red flag if you don't see that kind of Tracking. And I will say fda, especially when it comes to listeria monitoring and, and that kind of program over the years has definitely embraced that approach. And, and almost to the point where I've heard from colleagues in the industry where FDA is questioning their data when they don't have issues reflected. And I get that, and I think that's important. But as far as how to break through that is. Is I think it's understanding that and recognizing that, that there. There is a fear of using the data inappropriately. And so the way to get through that is, I think, having dialogues and educating and having opportunities to provide that context. And I see that more and more happening, but it needs to happen more.
- [62:57]
H
Yeah, I agree with this idea that we need to have some dialogues, particularly like, almost like I've been in meetings where it's very important just at the very beginning to just say, okay, we are here to solve a problem, not to catch the bad guy. Right. And going in with an attitude of that, as my mom used to say growing up, give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
- [63:22]
B
Right.
- [63:22]
H
Make sure, you know, don't assume that there's some malfeasance or negligence going on in a situation and to try and build that trust and dialogue. One thing that has been helpful in these dialogues, most recently for me, at least, as a regulator, is that with our reorganization, we've had better clarification of whose role is whose. Right. So I am clearly not a compliance person. I'm not an outbreak response person. My office is about prevention. So when we. When I meet with industry or other folks trying to be clear that that is what my role is, that is what our role is. And so therefore, we're not looking at your data with the hope of finding a smoking gun that we can therefore nail you with. Right. And so I think having those. Setting those ground rules with some of these agreements and these collaborations that we have from the onset are very helpful.
- [64:25]
B
Yeah. And, Conrad, I think you illustrated a great point from Joan Menkesher's keynote earlier this morning where she said regulators want to help. You know, it's not all about pointing fingers. Right. And we need to collaborate better and work together. So. So thanks for those perspectives.
- [64:41]
J
Now, she also talked about hugging regulators, too.
- [64:44]
H
She did, yes. And I want to.
- [64:45]
J
I shook his hand. That's. That's as close as I'll get to hugging.
- [64:49]
B
You might get hugged during the conversation.
- [64:50]
H
I've been accosted a few times already.
- [64:54]
B
More hugs in your future. All right, so, Conrad, I'm curious, how does FDA approach decision making when confronted with conflicting or preliminary data. And you know, what role does industry collaboration play in reducing uncertainty and bias?
- [65:12]
H
So I think we approach it like anybody else does, particularly in risk management. Whenever you're a risk manager, you never have all of the information. You're always going to have some conflicting information. You have to make your best estimate, educated or experienced estimate of what the right approach is. You can't wait for all the data before making a decision. I know in the past the agency has been criticized for maybe taking too long to make a decision, which is one of the reasons why we went through this reorg to establish streamlined decision making, clarification of who's got decision rights. And I think that's been helpful. But we will always be faced with a lack of, not a lack, but there will always be some degree of uncertainty in any decisions we are making. So I have talked a lot about us needing to take new approaches or thinking about new ways to get at the information or the data that we're looking for. And I'm going to put a shameless plug in here. We rolled out two webpages this morning, one related to best practices. Industry has been doing a great job of developing best practice practices for their particular situations. And we have been working with industry to help ensure that what they come up with actually is concordant with the rules and laws that we have in place. Not to guarantee that, hey, if you follow these best practices, it indemnifies you, but just to give them some assurance that they're not going down the wrong track. And so we put up a website to recognize that work as well as let other parts of industry know that we're willing to provide that expertise. I mean, we can't write a guidance or a rule for every single scenario out there. And we don't necessarily have all the expertise for making food or growing food. That expertise lies with industry. So looking at ways we can have collaborations with industry to get that information.
- [67:15]
B
Well, thanks for sharing those resources that FDA published this morning. I'm sure our attendees are going to be interested to be able to access those and check that out. So, Drew, in a fast moving production environment, how do you balance the need for rapid decision making with the value of incorporating diverse and sometimes unconventional perspectives on risk?
- [67:41]
J
Well, there's two parts going on right now and it's come up throughout this conference. It's in the, how do you say, the zeitgeist? Is that right, Sandy? Really moving away from hazard identification to true risk identification or management. And I am hoping that's not just lip service. I don't think it is. I think it's being said a lot, but really getting to that. So in our own operations, we have some fairly straightforward operations that are salad operations where we're bringing in raw material from the field, we're chopping up, we're washing it, and we're bagging it. It's more complex than that. But what we try to do and what my philosophy is, is trying to keep it really simple. At the end of the day, we're dealing with. We don't have a kill step. We're dealing with cross contamination. And so we look for ways to avoid that. And our strongest programs are our plant hygiene, plant design, we call it plant health. So the cleanliness of the facility, sanitation, all of the hygienic designs, and that continues to evolve, and then our wash systems. So don't take a small contamination and let it spread. In our more complex operations, our USDA facilities primarily, you're dealing with a lot more complexity through automation, through other innovations we're doing, we're taking that out. And the real thing is taking out the human error. If I had to look back on some key programs that we've developed, I was talking to someone that. He's a behavioral scientist, a neuroscientist from Canada with his company. And I guess they go in and they use that science to train and change behavior. I told him, I don't know if I'm. I'm kind of interested in it, just the concept. But what I'm really interested is we're trying to take it so that we don't have that chance for human error. So we go through and look for any chance or any situation where a human is interacting with that part of the process and saying, how do we make it so they're not going to make a mistake? Obviously, you can automate it, but not everything can be automatable. And automation, you can have issues with that as well. But that's really what we've done to kind of reduce the complexity. We have put a program in over the last many years on tracking near misses. And then we prioritize those misses. Like, is this something that would have resulted in a regulatory event? Is this something that would have resulted in something the customer would have been concerned about or noticed or the consumer or. Or anything that would trigger a response and say, how do we prevent that from happening? And. And what were the things that led up to that? And we found in this, we actually used AI. It was one of Our first things where we just dumped all this data in.
- [70:45]
B
I was going to ask, how did you analyze all that data?
- [70:48]
J
It emerged and the most common response was our kappa was something like retrain and update the procedure. And it was like, that's not an answer. And it was a huge percentage of it. So we just went through and then we dug down deeper and the people on my team did this, but I just, we kind of did the five whys right where you just keep yyy. And we got down to it. A big one was on our labeling and mislabeling as a challenge. And we essentially eliminated I don't know how many steps into one simplified kind of checks along the way so they would only get to that point where that error could happen. And knock on wood, it's been extremely successful. But it's really, it's difficult because in an operation for those that are on the processing side, there's a lot going on and you can't fix everything. You really have to prioritize and triage. And then as soon as you do that and you solve something, you move on to the next thing to solve.
- [71:47]
H
But don't forget to share the learnings from what you solved. Right. Which gets me at the other webpage that we're rolling out today fits neatly with what you were just talking about, which is root cause analysis and thinking about how we can get more adoption or greater adoption of root cause analysis as part of our routine operations. You just described a great the five whys approach of doing root cause analysis. And for us thinking about as an agency, how do we collaborate with industry on root cause analysis, how do we share the findings or how can we do it better in terms of sharing the findings that we have gleaned from our root cause analyses, comparing notes with industry when something has gone wrong, and then collectively identifying solutions. We've dabbled in it and we've had some successes and some failures which we'll talk about in more detail in the session this afternoon.
- [72:48]
B
Yeah, I'm excited about that and you know, thank you for the additional detail on, you know, the FDA new webpage releases and Drew kind of the case history you're talking about. I'm sure we'll hear more about that in the session. Really fascinating details and you know, I guess what practical models or structures have you guys seen work to break down some of those silos between regulators, industry and academia? Especially during like high profile, high pressure food safety events?
- [73:22]
J
I would say the my first reaction to that and I don't know Was that on our questions? It's a good question.
- [73:28]
B
It.
- [73:30]
J
That's not the time to try to.
- [73:33]
C
Yes.
- [73:33]
H
Right.
- [73:34]
J
I don't want to say not be collaborative. We need to be collaborative. It's. It's actually a really important time to be collaborative. But what I often say is that's not the time to learn about that particular industry. And it's really before and after. At first, it's gonna have to be after where we sit down and we go through, you know, kind of a back and forth about this is what we saw, this is what, you know, you said you saw. This is what would be helpful. This is what we're working on, this is why we're doing what we're doing. And I will say absolutely, over the years, in outbreak investigations, especially on the produce side, we put together a group of us. I think it was united at the time, but now ifpa kind of a document to kind of guide through. And I will say FDA really listened to that. We saw those questions coming up in other outbreaks or ones after that where they were asking better questions about harvesters and harvest crews and, and equipment and, and crossovers and all that. Whereas before they didn't necessarily even know to ask or they didn't know how to ask. And just even using the same jargon is important. And so I, I've seen that change. But that is the kind of. It's just during an outbreak, it's not the time to try to. It is a time time to educate, but it's not the time to really learn about the industry. We have to do that now when. When things are going well.
- [75:07]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [75:08]
H
I had a similar response, and I did get your question ahead of time. True. But no, I agree. In the time of a crisis is not when you want to be building relationships or learning about industry. Right. And so it's risk communication 101. Crisis management 101. You build those relationships ahead of time. Going back to some of the things I said earlier in terms of like having an attitude of assuming no guilt until you've proven that someone's negligent or malfeasant. Going into the situation with the attitude of you're there to solve the problem, figure out what went wrong, fix the problem, not to assign blame. Blame can be assigned later if there was actually some negligence involved. But really in the time of crisis, having had established that kind of ground rule, that relationship, so that when you are in the midst of a crisis, you can actually collaborate and you're not at odds with each other.
- [76:14]
J
Yeah. And it's a challenge. I would say we're not unique, but one perspective we have is we have facilities across North America that are primarily fda, but then we have a dozen or so now that are USDA as well. And there is this familiarity because USDA is. They're in the facilities every day. They. They know who we are, they know our customers, they know our products, they know our processes. They've essentially signed off on it. FDA is at a disadvantage in many cases right out of the gates on, you know, from an investigation standpoint and even inspection standpoint. So I think the opportunity to accelerate that knowledge, familiarity and all that. I mean, I tell my group across the board, they all need to know who their district coordinator is. I think this district coordinator still. Is that the name? It might be a different name now, but anyway, the person that they would contact for a recall or any of that.
- [77:14]
B
Yeah.
- [77:15]
J
And that. That pays dividends. Just having a familiarity. It's not a contentious thing. It's. That's their job. And it's. It goes a long way having that relationship. It goes a long way that, you know, I know Conrad and we can sit and have a conversation. And many others in fda, they've been involved in the industry for a long time. They participate in all the same panels that I'm on and a lot of the same groups. And that goes a long, long way. Because at the end of the day, we're people that have jobs to do and we do have a common goal. And I think we lose sight of that sometimes.
- [77:49]
H
Yeah. And the issues that we're dealing with are pretty complex. And it's really important that you have all the perspectives brought to the situation. And if you go in an antagonistic way, you won't get all those perspectives heard and they won't be all shared and you won't. It'll take you longer to solve the issue.
- [78:11]
B
Absolutely. And, you know, having those prior relationships already built certainly helps diffuse some of that attention, some of that, you know, the kind of the chaos of when these things go wrong and you know, know, like in the thick of the moment, you already have people you can call, you know who to call, people you can rely on, people you already know you can call up and have a conversation with who are willing to help, who want to help. You know, those things are so important. And one of the things I'm looking forward to in the session this afternoon at 2:45, it's session eight, so make sure you're session eight at 2:45 is, you know, seeing the mix of folks that are in the room attending the session and. And hearing their input. You know, I mean, I know certainly you and the panelists are going to be, you know, speaking. Speaking some, but we're going to hear from the attendees as well, a little bit too. And I think that's going to be really interesting, seeing what comes the learnings that come out of the session from the attendees point of view. But what I'm also interested in hearing, and not to give too much away of what you're going to be conducting in this session, but for each of you kind of coming at this from the different perspectives that you are, what's like, one thing that you're. You hope the attendees of your session are going to take away from the session today. Drew, maybe you want to.
- [79:30]
J
I would say that, you know, the session's about breaking down silos, and I started with this wonderful overview of silos. And don't miss that, because it's going to be special. But the message is that there's a reason silos exist, of course, but what's important about why we break them down is everyone does have a perspective. Conrad has information, and FDA and his colleagues have information that I need. We have information that they need. We have researchers, some of whom are in this audience right now. They have information and a perspective that we don't have. And having that discussion, just sharing that information and the effort to just break down the silos, even if we're not always successful, is really, really important and really beneficial. Because it's amazing when you have a conversation, and I'm not saying this happened with Conrad and I, but Conrad may say something to me, like, you know, I was thinking about, you know, this process line and, and with the lettuce. And then I realized in that question, he doesn't know about. And this actually happened with, like, tomatoes, not with you, but with fda, where they didn't understand the ripening. It was completely off their radar. When we talked about the gassing or ripening rooms, and it wasn't in their flowchart, it wasn't. And we had it in our, you know, and they just didn't know. And it may have been that individual, but it's one of those things where you're like, oh, I do need to explain this more. So having everyone has a perspective and everyone has something to add to the conversation, not one of us knows everything. Despite what some people may say about me, I don't know everything.
- [81:17]
H
I think you're the only One that says that Drew. But you know, I think Drew's been making some, some great points that I agree with wholeheartedly. My main message is, I think, you know, we often say food safety is everyone's responsibility. So if that is true, then we should all be working together to solve, to deal with this responsibility. And I think accepting the fact that things are going to go wrong, no matter how perfect we make our system, things will go wrong. So. So we just have to be ready to address the issues, learn from them and move forward. So having an attitude of continuous improvement is what I'd like to see more of across the board.
- [82:02]
B
Great points and looking forward to hearing more at the session. Since we have another minute or two, I'll throw out one more question for you guys. I like to ask this during interviews sometimes. So when you're at the summit and I know you both have been, well, Drew, you're on our educational advisory board and you guys have been to the summit many times. What do you feel are some of the most valuable experiences or things that you look forward to doing at the summit year after year?
- [82:28]
H
Well, I like the podcast. I like coming to the podcast theater and wonderful. And seeing the talks here. But no, I like the sessions, the workshops. I've been to a couple workshops already. We had an interesting1 on AI yesterday where really a hands on experience. And yesterday I caught a really good discussion that really hit on continuous improvement. They were talking about environmental monitoring. And it's important not just to sanitize the surface that you found your listeria. The real important thing is actually figure out where is that listeria coming from. Where is it? Where's the Harbridge and take tackle the issue at its root and hearing those types of things and hearing that that message is getting out there to the people that are actually doing this day to day is really important.
- [83:17]
B
Yeah, I liked that session too. Kind of walking through the science of what are you looking for? What are you looking for when you do a root cause analysis? It was nice. We had John Butts, the inventor of the seek and destroy process, in the audience also asking questions at the end. So that was a real treat. Drew, what about you? What are you like at the summit? What are you looking forward to this year?
- [83:37]
J
Yeah, you know, there's so many meetings, there's so many different food safety conferences and it's really difficult to navigate. It's probably. I get calls a lot, you know, are you going to attend this? And I think a lot of them are really good. But what I Like about this one, and it continues to improve is I. I'm gonna say the same session, but for those that were in that sanitation and harborage session, the guy from Hormel, I forget his name, who's up there. And you can tell he's in the plants.
- [84:11]
B
Yep.
- [84:12]
J
And he's talking the language of getting into the, you know, control box. And, and the neem of the penetrating of the water. Like. Like, that is why I like this show. And what I get out of it is, is I don't want to be preached to. I don't. I don't want platitudes. I want real case studies, concrete examples. As an audience member, I want it to be real. I want it to be something useful. And I think that's going to continue to be part of the recipe for success. For this is. Is that's what people, you know, I'll send people from my team, like, go. And it's just much more practical than someone standing up there saying, you know, keep your plant clean. You know, it's going into the details that I think is really cool.
- [84:58]
B
Yeah, I agree. The details, the case studies, the, you know, specific examples, you know, the science. I love all those things and look forward to that every year at Summit. So, anyway, thank you so much, Drew and Conrad, for participating in the interview and to the attendees. Thanks for. Thanks for watching the Interview and Session 8, 2:45. Please attend. I will be there. You should too.
- [85:20]
D
So thank you.
- [85:23]
A
Thank you again to Jeremy Zemlia, Lori Farmer, David Clifford, Sarah Mortimer, Frank Curto, Drew McDonald and Conrad Choignier for joining us on the podcast today. And of course, thanks to all of you for listening. A very special thanks to our presenting sponsor, Ecowise. Ecowise delivers safe, clean, compliant, on time sanitation for, for USDA and FDA regulated facilities across the U. S and globally. Every day. Visit ecowiseusa.com that's e c o w I z e u s a dot com to learn more. And as always, you know that we love hearing from you, so please never hesitate. Send us your questions or suggestions to podcastood-safety.com or post a note on LinkedIn, Facebook, X or Instagram. We always love getting your feedback. And to make sure that new and bonus episodes magically appear in your podcast player, all you have to do is click that Follow or Subscribe button in the player of your choice and presto. Bingo. All the episodes appear, which is a lot at this point. We're now nine years old. Unbelievable. And while you're there, please throw some stars our way. By rating the podcast, especially if you liked it. It only takes a minute and it's good for everyone. And that's it for us today. We'll post part two of our Live from the Food Safety Summit episodes on Thursday, two days from now, May 21st. And in the meantime, take good care of yourselves and those around you. We'll talk to you then.