This is the third session in the series we’ve hosted on how large retailers, companies, and regulators evaluate food safety and suppliers. And I’m delighted to have Dr. Darin Detwiler with us today. I’ve been looking forward to this one for many weeks.
About Dr. Darin Detwiler
As you are probably well aware, Darin is a world-renowned food safety academic advisor, advocate, and author. And he’s significantly influenced food safety policies and practices through many roles over the years, working with government agencies like the USDA, FDA, and also directly with industry.
He’s the founder and CEO of the Detwiler Consulting Group, where his work has earned the status of a food safety icon. And he’s also a professor at Northern University and an adjunct professor of food law at Michigan State. Maybe most famously, Darin was starring in the Netflix documentary ‘Poisoned The Dirty Truth About Your Food’, which is a fascinating watch, and I’d encourage everyone to check it out if you haven’t seen it already. In addition to traveling the world as a keynote speaker, he’s written many books, and he’s been a recipient of awards, including the IAFP 2022 award for control of foodborne illness and a 2018 distinguished service award for dedication and acceptable contributions to the reduction of foodborne illness. We’re delighted to have you here, Darin.
About Cronan McNamara and Creme Global.
I’m Cronan McNamara. I’ve hosted this series. I’m the founder and CEO of Creme Global.
We’ve just completed two decades of work, so our 20th birthday was earlier this year, and we’ve dedicated ourselves to scientific excellence and technical innovation in deploying secure data science applications on the cloud.
We were formed with the vision of combining science with real-world applications, data, and solutions. And we’ve developed many tools and models and predictive analytical capabilities to help organizations make database decisions all around food safety, chemical safety, and agriculture.
And our goal is to continue to collaborate with industry and regulators to leverage data and to:
- Enable organizations to make better decisions
- Improve food safety
- Reduce foodborne illness
So welcome all. Welcome, Darin. Great to see you again. Great to see you again. We just saw each other three weeks ago, or, yeah, four weeks ago.
Not too long ago. Yeah, it was great to see you at IAFP in Cleveland, which is a great conference, very busy, and I know you are super busy recording many podcasts and webinars. And by the way, I interviewed you as it is. Yes. I’m looking forward to that one coming out.
I’ve got plenty of questions here for Darin, so please do chime in with questions or comments. So let’s kick off.
Are we safer than we were 20 years ago?
We’ve known each other for many years, Darin, and we met at conferences over the years, starting maybe in Dubai many years ago. And you’ve been at the forefront of food safety for decades.
And if you look at the state of food safety now, how do you feel we’re doing? Are we genuinely safer than we were 10 or 20 years ago? Or do we still have the same foundational or fundamental risks with us?
[00:03:22] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
First off, there’s the fact that I’ve been at this for three decades, and you’ve been at this for two decades.
I think that if you look at the act of food safety, the tools, the science, the technologies, I think those have improved. If you look at the environment, the landscape, right? If you look at the complexities at retail, the complexities with our distribution systems, and just so many different facets of manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, and the economics. I think that has become so complicated that it starts to answer the question of why. Then, when we look at global statistics, when I look at statistics in the United States, predominantly, the majority of the three decades, as I’ve been working on this since 1993. Those 48 million Americans who get sick, 128,000 who are hospitalized, some 3000 who die every year, those numbers haven’t changed, not even by 1%.
I think that is eye-opening. I also think that the bigger picture, when you look back at it in the 1990s. When we talked about outbreaks and recalls, we were typically talking about meat and poultry.
Today, you hear recalls about literally every kind of food. And, the very recent news about potentially irradiated shrimp. We have ramen noodles that are recalled due to mislabeling and allergens. There are so many different concerns about different foods regulated by different agencies coming from different locations. And different stages of commercially packaged goods or ready-to-eat foods.
We’re not even just talking about raw ingredients anymore. And we’ve recently had some companies that are huge. Companies have been around for 120 years, even predating Upton Sinclair’s Jungle. So not only is no food safe from an outbreak or recall, no company is safe or immune, if you will, from an outbreak or recall. And the fact that these numbers haven’t changed, there’s some concern that even last year, the information about outbreaks and recalls has shown an increase over time. I cannot say that we are any safer than we were before. But I can say that the act of food safety, the Herculean effort, the compassion with which people put into food safety, the tools and resources, the support, and the validation that we have of so many people across different jobs in the food industry. That is definitely different.
And I think the last thing I’ll add is that you mentioned ‘Poisoned’. I think that, overall, consumers are more knowledgeable and aware of, and asking more questions about their food and about food safety today than ever before.
[00:06:15] Cronan McNamara:
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So it’s interesting that you’re saying that the science, technology, the tools have got better, consumer awareness has improved, but yet those statistics are stubbornly not budging.
So that’s an interesting paradox in a way.
What were your aims in Poisoned?
[00:06:32] Cronan McNamara:
Getting back to Poisoned, which was a huge success and number one for weeks here in Ireland, even though it was a US-focused documentary, I remember it being in the top 10 for many weeks here and was very well watched. When you set out to make that, what was your hope that it might achieve when you were making that documentary?
[00:06:52] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
My initial hope was that I could help make it such that I’m not gonna watch it and be frustrated because they didn’t do this or they didn’t talk about that, or they didn’t communicate the idea of the true burden of disease. Some people can get sick, yeah. It’s a little bit more than some people can get sick, yeah, absolutely. Or these are random events that happen every once in a while. Okay. There’s a little bit more history behind this. So, my initial thought was that I would do whatever I could to support this to be, as if this were the documentary about food safety. I wanted it to be adequate, accurate, and impactful.
The company wanted me to be much more involved, not only behind the scenes, but to tell a compelling story. I had so much footage and had so much experience, not only what happened in 1993 with the death of my son during that landmark E. coli outbreak, but also my involvement since then.
But I think ultimately, as I sat in New York with the world premiere, it was very obvious to me that this was more than just about trying to make sure that when people were talking about food safety, it was not solely after they were harmed, after there was hospitalization, or a death in their family, they were dealing with.
The idea that people could be talking about food safety before something like this happens. The idea that this could be a topic that’s okay for us to talk about as a general topic was very important to me. But in that world, premiere, I had just gone to the 9/11 memorial in New York. And there is no monument or memorial, or statue for those who were victims who were lost due to failures in food safety. So now all of a sudden the documentary became, not just for me and for my son Riley, but for so many families impacted by food safety. Something that we can anchor the idea that this is not so ephemeral. We’re not invisible. That this is out there, this is the closest thing to a tangible monument to attest to the idea of the true cost of disease.
How can suppliers balance all of these food safety requirements with the pressures of doing business and everyday pressures?
[00:08:56] Cronan McNamara:
I was just thinking that is your monument, a monumental achievement really, to get that out into the mainstream. And I remember watching it, and there were some shocking failures, which were just very, criminal, almost. And I know there have been prosecutions out of some of those cases that were featured, but on the other hand, there are also people out there doing the best they can, doing the right thing, but also having challenges. So I think it’s a non-homogeneous process when you’re dealing with agriculture and outdoors, and there are risks. To get into the science of it and the real world of all the, as you say, these complex supply chains and trying to feed many people with healthy salads and foods, how can suppliers, realistically, balance all of these food safety requirements with the pressures of doing business and the costs of everyday pressures that they face?
[00:09:53] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
I would hope, especially because I know you and I fly a great deal, I would hope that prioritizing safe landings and takeoffs is a big priority. A priority for the airline industry. I would hope that it would be the same for the food industry.
You can talk about how the tastes or the benefits, all these different things. There are so many things you could talk about in terms of food, and that’s great, but it’s still not food unless it’s safe food. It’s not a happy meal unless it’s a safe, happy meal. It’s not a family event. We don’t want the food to make people remember the event for all the wrong reasons.
Yeah. It should be the number one priority is what you’re saying there. Basically.
The cost of a hit to reputation.
It should, but my research over the years and some of the work I’ve done with companies has shown that profit is a driving factor. And I get it. It’s important, but when we look at proactive versus reactive, one of the research studies that I did, it was very hard to pin it down because there’s so much diversity in size and scope and scale, and the differences with the commodities. But when you start looking across industries, what we came to was an understanding that there’s the cost of compliance, and yes, we get that there is a cost to be in compliance with local, state, federal, and international laws. But the cost of non-compliance is much more expensive. We’re talking upwards of 17 times more expensive to deal with a failure on average than to prevent it in the first place. When you look at the idea of a reactive approach, crisis response. Now we have all these things going on. Lawsuits, recalls, damage, brand reputation, lost lives. Lost jobs, slowdown, or shutdown of production. So many different things. And even companies that are not at the root of the Outbreak recall, but they’re impacted by it because they use this product as well, or because they were recipient, they were customers themselves of the product from this company. It’s going to be a lot more expensive. If you look in the United States, a number of years back, there was a series of outbreaks tied to a Mexican restaurant called Chipotle. And what’s amazing is that there was an economic model that showed that it would take one quarter for the losses to bottom out and three quarters for it to return to its prior or pre-incident values. Stock market values.
Chipotle. It didn’t take a total of four for one to bottom out and three to return. It took 15 quarters for it to bottom out and then finally come back.
So the amount of money that was lost and that wasn’t, that loss was not due to lawsuits or federal fines. That was due to a reputation hit. So we have to understand that prioritization and investment in food safety is always going to be a much more moral, ethical, and economic decision to make for leaders who act with intention. When they’re being proactive and trying to mitigate in the first place, as opposed to, if it happens, if it’s tied back to us, then we’ll take care of it then. I’m always amazed by how companies find it difficult to justify spending one, two, $5 million to be proactive, but after they’re in the headlines for a major failure, they can quickly justify a hundred million dollars.
[00:13:31] Cronan McNamara:
Yeah. They find the money. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:33] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
Imagine finding the money in the first place.
The common pitfalls that many organizations fall into?
[00:13:35] Cronan McNamara:
This is the challenge, and I know a number of reputable companies that are doing the right thing. They see the government regulations as a very much a baseline, and they actually do go above and beyond that. But then they have other commercial audits and buyers, and these different regulations they try to satisfy for their customers. Yet they still may end up having food safety challenges, despite going above and beyond the government regulations. What have you seen from your experiences are pitfalls that many organizations fall into?
[00:14:12] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
We all know of a recent, and by recent, fourth quarter of last year, a major fast food restaurant that is relatively well known in terms of their food safety and how they train their employees, and how they prioritize food safety at the locations.
And they’ve had a really incredible record for decades when it comes to food safety. The pitfall that they fell into, though, was that they trusted the word of their supplier when it came to onions that ultimately were contaminated with E. coli. And unfortunately, these onions were ones that were diced and not cooked. And put on their sandwiches so there was no kill step. So when you have a situation where you’ve got product from a vendor, right, from a supplier, and you’re not doing your own kill step, and you’re relying on the need to audit, to validate, to do your independent validation, you’re you’re continuous validation.
If you’re not doing that, then what happens is what happened there. They had deaths as a result of this. It’s easy to say it’s wrong for consumers, based on the headlines, to blame the fast food restaurant. We should blame the supplier. Okay. Yeah, sure, there is blame to be held by the supplier, but the fact that they didn’t do adequate independent testing to validate it in the first place, especially if it’s gonna be something without a kill step, now they have a responsibility in that as well.
So the, yeah, we shift suppliers, seasonality, we shift suppliers due to if we get it from over there, it’s gonna be cheaper. We’ll save a little bit of money. We’re also, when we have retailers and restaurants that are across great geographical distances, and we decide that it’s gonna be cheaper for us to go with this one supplier as opposed to many local suppliers. Now you wonder why so many different restaurants in different cities, or so many different grocery stores are impacted in different states and different countries, even. Maybe you need to go back to the system where you trust and validate some of your local vendors. And if there was a problem with a local vendor, you’re not gonna have it impacting 400 stores across six states.
[00:16:20] Cronan McNamara:
Yeah. It becomes a genuine outbreak because it’s such a broad swath of people getting affected.
[00:16:25] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
It increased the risks, but it also messes with the scope and scale. You’ve just multiplied the risk because you’ve increased the likelihood and severity for different geographical regions.
What more should regulators be doing?
[00:16:36] Cronan McNamara:
That might be one of those reasons that we were talking about earlier, that, despite all of the efforts that outbreaks are still happening and quite impactful ones. Perhaps it’s due to the consolidation, scale of companies, having consolidated operations at the mega production steps, mega distribution channels. And therefore, if something goes wrong, it can impact very broadly.
But what I wanted to ask you then, maybe talking about regulators and talking about the gaps that they might not be seeing, what more can regulators do, or should they do to better evaluate and support, and enforce food safety around suppliers and operators?
[00:17:22] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
It definitely needs to be more than just checking boxes. This is an area where you start to wonder who the constituents are. Are they there to support the business? Sure. But if the primary focus is the safety of the public. Then sometimes some hard decisions and some hard conversations have to be held in terms of accountability for holding those companies accountable when violations lead to harm, right? I do think they need to educate the public. I think that consumers, not only the real constituents, could be the greatest advocates. And even, I don’t wanna say necessarily activists but but literally the, some of the bigger advocates when it comes to food safety.
One of my concerns is that we see in the United States, at least. There are a couple of peaks, but a lot of valleys when it comes to holding companies accountable. We can go back almost a decade ago looking at the Peanut Corporation of America. It shocked not only the public but the food industry and beyond when the corporate executives ended up being sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, and at 20, 28 years, depending on their role. There were a lot of people who thought that this was gonna be a wake-up call. This is gonna be a day of reckoning. Now we’re gonna start to see corporate executives whose failure in corporate social responsibility, their ethical failures, are at the root of some of these problems, and we’ll see them being held accountable.
Yet we don’t, we, we haven’t seen anything like that for the last decade, and yet we’ve had some major outbreaks and major recalls and people have died. And these companies literally just paid 17, 25, $45 million, and make the case go away. No one’s really truly held accountable.
So my fear is that unless we truly hold companies accountable when violations lead to harm. Then what happens is they pay a fine. And that’s a message to industry in terms of if you fail, it’s okay. It’s just gonna cost you this much. Therefore, food safety failures become the cost of doing business.
Therefore, harm and death of consumers are just a part of doing business. Nothing where you’re actually gonna be held accountable for.
[00:19:40] Cronan McNamara:
Yeah, they need a bit more teeth, no pun intended, to the regulatory framework. I remember educating the public a few years ago, the Irish Food Safety Authority professor Allan Riley was on the radio. We were having a few weeks of good weather in the summer, and people were barbecuing. He was on the radio, and he said, One tip is just cook the meat until the juices run clear. And I thought to myself, that’s an odd thing for the head of the Food Safety of Ireland to be saying on the radio.
But in hindsight, that actually was really good advice. Simple advice for people who are barbecuing to make sure the meat is cooked properly. Probably saved a lot of people from getting sick that summer. Just by that simple, simple message. I remember to this day, when I’m barbecuing even this summer, still remember that simple message.
So definitely a role there too, for that communication and education piece. And keeping it simple.
[00:20:37] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
Even that education piece, I remember 30 years ago when I was talking with people about the idea of, hey I don’t cook my steak that much. Why do I have to cook my ground beef that much?
Because if the pathogens are on the outside of a steak, that’s one thing, but ground beef is now on the inside, so you have to cook it through. But I’ve had conversations much more recently where people were surprised that when they go to the grocery store and buy a pound of ground beef or ground chicken or ground turkey, that it’s from more than one animal.
If you’re buying commercially packaged ground meat, you’re looking at upwards of 400 heads of cattle going into the bigger consolidated, centralized processing system, and you have no idea how many animals are in that one pound of ground beef. In that one package of ground beef, and if any one of those animals were contaminated, now, the whole lot is. There’s consumer awareness issues. Whether we’re talking about ‘Poisoned’ or food safety regulators or food safety experts, there are always going to be opportunities to educate the public on the why behind whether it’s cooking until the juices are clear or using a thermometer, washing your hands, proper refrigeration, all these different things. I think that’s one of the biggest things, going back to your previous question, about what regulators could do? Again. It’s not educating on the details as much as it is educating on the why.
[00:21:59] Cronan McNamara:
Coming back to the question of scale and these massive processing organizations, so you know, increasing the risk because of one small thing going wrong, it impacts a lot of products.
Does packaging innovation compete with food safety?
[00:22:18] Cronan McNamara:
So let’s move on. I have a question here about sustainability and packaging. And I know this has come up on a few workshops I’ve been to around packaging innovation and perhaps trying to remove plastic for sustainability. But that can compete with food safety essentially, and shelf life, because packaging can have a very good function in a certain packaging.
Do you see those packaging innovations for sustainability competing with food safety in your work?
[00:22:51] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
It’s not just innovation, I think it’s innovation with packaging combined with disruption. At the retail level, you have people who used to buy the raw ingredients and take ’em home, and then they would make a potato salad or whatever. Whatever it is. Make a lasagna. Make a stew. Now. They want pre-packaged. They want everything ready to go. They want it convenient, they want it simple, they want it economic. And with that comes the idea you’re gonna receive a package and it’s gonna have this package in the package, and then this package is wrapped in that.
[00:23:27] Cronan McNamara:
Just throw it in the microwave.
[00:23:28] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and is it frozen? Is it in a can? Is it in a box? Is it in two boxes? Are there plastic containers in this? And now you throw into the mix the fact that people aren’t even going to the grocery store in some cases, they’re having third-party delivery people that are picking up the groceries or picking up from the restaurant and shipping it home. So now restaurants are like we have to have packaging that keeps things colder or separates them from the hot foods or keeps foods hotter. Yeah. Or, oh, now we wanna make sure that there’s security devices so that the delivery driver can’t open and eat some of the french fries or whatever it is, take a bite of the sandwich.
So when we’re talking about keeping hot foods, hot, cold foods, cold, separating allergens, properly, labeling allergen properly, labeling ingredients, when we’re talking about secure through different modes of distribution and travel, there’s a lot of concerns there that in the last literally 10, 15 years have become far more of a concern than ever before. And at the same time, you have companies that are doing these kinds of meal prep kits, right? Yeah. Here are all the ingredients you need to make this. Here are the instructions, and everything’s in little bags and all that kind of stuff.
And I’ve witnessed how some companies develop innovation around how they’re trying to minimize plastic. And realizing that consumers are talking about the environmental impact, and they’re concerned about plastic.
Plastics’s so easy to use in packaging, and yet if you have a plastic container with plastic wrapped items in the container, and then the plastic is covered, ’cause food safety, we want to have it. You can’t just take off the lid and dip your finger in it.
[00:25:07] Cronan McNamara:
Exactly. Contaminate the other products in the bag.
[00:25:10] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
Yeah, exactly. So we need to have packaging that provides those kinds of food safety elements like temperature control.
We need to have markings on it for allergen and ingredient identification labeling. We need to have security measures in place. Like for food security food defense issues.
And, but we also have to keep in consideration, let’s go back to the airplane example we used about prioritizing food safety. You would question whether there was only one exit on your airplane. So let’s have two.
Okay. But we usually have three or four. Yeah, maybe five. Yeah. But if you wanna be safer, 1, 2, 2, 4. Let’s put seven, six. Let’s put 10. Let’s 20. Let’s put 30 doors. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s too many. On an airplane. Too many. At some point, we gotta realize that. Okay, now we’re impacting the structural integrity of the airplane.
Exactly right. So yeah. You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t, excuse me. Yeah. You have to have some packaging. You have to be innovative with materials, but there’s a point where too much becomes an environmental impact. And if you’re not labeling those packages properly, the legally required stuff, but also if you’re, so here’s an interesting last-minute issue I’ll bring up too. There are companies that try to get away with not putting all this information on the packaging because it takes up too much real estate, so we’ll just put a QR code on the packaging.
That’s great, but you’re making the assumption that everyone at the point of sale has the ability to access. Yeah, on a cell phone, you know that QR code, and you’re completely dismissing elderly people who may not have that resource or be able to see that information. There’s a lot to unpack there. Pardon the pun. But it’s not gonna be an easy solution that’s gonna happen tomorrow.
[00:26:56] Cronan McNamara:
Then, if it’s on the label, I find myself challenged to actually read it. Often, I’ll try and see the calories per a hundred grams or something, and compare two products, and I’m squinting to read them.
[00:27:07] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
They do manage to find the smallest font size, don’t they?
[00:27:10] Cronan McNamara:
Yeah, that’s true. Like in the last four or five years, this home delivery of restaurant food has just exploded, because of lockdown essentially. And then these meal kits, and we use them ourselves, we get delivered a box once a week with three or four different meals in it, and the recipes and everything. But it feels like they haven’t thought through a lot of the aspects, especially the restaurant delivery, because that has just become like, a restaurant is now a takeaway where it never really was designed to be, but every restaurant’s doing it, and it’s very popular.
[00:27:44] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
There are some foods that are more logical, right? You’re like, pizza delivery. We’ve had pizza delivery for. As long as I’ve known pizza, it seems, but why would someone want nachos? Those nachos are not gonna be crunchy after they’re delivered.
Exactly. Why would someone want french fries? What? There are so many foods that it’s not gonna be good ones delivered. But it’s crazy when you think about it like that. But I do have a general rule of thumb in that a lot of things we’ve been talking about here are convenience. When convenience goes up, food safety risk also increases, and you always have to ask yourself that question. I can buy an apple. But I also know that I can buy an apple that’s been pre-sliced and it’s in a package, or I can buy any kind of produce out there, but I can also buy it where it’s pre-chopped and pre-cut and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You’ve got more points of failure potential there. You’ve got more opportunity for failure to take place. Same thing with, I can make a recipe at home. I know that I have control over the temperatures, over the cooking times over the ingredients.
So many things. And when you’re buying something ready to eat and it has an ingredients list that’s longer than a book. That convenience now is met with an inherent higher risk.
The impact of MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) on companies
[00:29:01] Cronan McNamara:
That’s true. And that we can talk about this all day, but I’d like to move on to another challenging topic. And this is the new regulatory environment in the US, which you’ll be very familiar with, being based there and doing mostly of a lot of your work over there. This new MAHA regulatory ambition and framework, how do you see that shaping the way companies and suppliers are going to need to manage food safety in practice?
[00:29:29] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
I hope that any administration, anyone in a leadership position at a federal level, would understand and make positive improvements in food safety. But I think that one of my chief concerns is this difference between intent and effect.
If their intent is to simply remove certain items or to make certain changes, that’s one thing.
But if they don’t develop a process, if they don’t justify, if they don’t really embrace the science and the data behind the decisions that are being made. Yeah. And industry and consumers and constituents see that, okay, it applies here, but it doesn’t apply here. There’s no consistency. Or this seems like a one-off, and yet this is still going on, so it’s not widespread, or it’s not universally applied.
Then the effect is ultimately worse than the intent. We also know that it takes a long time for not only policy to be written and passed and implemented, but also to be adopted by an industry. So the last thing we want to have is an inadequate or incomplete policy that is now being implemented, and there’s a promise to the consumer, but that is either an unfunded mandate or it’s an inadequate process that ultimately does not make the consumer any safer than they really were. So we have wins that are celebrated at a point in time. Yeah. But we have losses that will continue to be measured and borne by the consumers, the constituents.
[00:31:12] Cronan McNamara:
For sure. Like MAHA, what I meant by MAHA is the Make America Healthy Again. So yeah, I think what you’re saying is, quick wins and effective slogans are one thing, but have to be underpinned by good science and process and thinking about the impact of the things across the whole spectrum of food safety challenges, not just a simplistic decision that looks good on a five-minute newscast.
[00:31:35] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
We know that some of the most effective policies in the United States and across Europe took a long time to make it come to fruition. And some of these acts, some of these policies, some of these regulatory changes spanned across multiple administrations. So it’s anytime I hear the idea of a quick fix. You gotta realize that may be part of a benchmark to achieve the bigger goal. That is not the goal. We have to not lose. Yeah. Sight of the bigger goal. Actual goal, and get distracted by a small victory.
What impact do you see AI and data analytics having on food safety in the coming years?
[00:32:12] Cronan McNamara:
Okay, we’re gonna move on. This is one of my favorite topics. So we’re gonna talk about horizon scanning, risk, and a bit of AI.
There are new technologies, new data, and new AI capabilities exploding again in the last few years. So things are changing rapidly in many ways, including the AI emerging in the last number of years, a short number of years, one or two years, which is transforming our capabilities around things.
But what impact do you see AI and data analytics having on food safety in the coming years, and are food companies starting to embrace it and use it?
[00:32:49] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
The good news is that there are companies that are starting to embrace AI technology. I don’t know if they’re really embracing it for food safety all the time.
A lot of times, it’s how can we squeeze more profit out? But to me, the biggest thing about AI or any kind of data collection and predictive analytics something that you know a great deal about.
By the way, congratulations on your 20th anniversary here.
Is the idea of it’s one thing to think about how we can respond faster, it’s a better scenario to look at AI and predictive analytics in terms of how we can identify and prevent, and mitigate the problem earlier. Again, I talked economically about the idea that if we can identify, detect, and mitigate before a problem goes out into commerce before we have to recall it.
Before we’re dealing with a re with an outbreak, right? It’s gonna be a greater economic impact, and it’s gonna show greater value in terms of that artificial intelligence or the predictive analytics the teams that are using that. Technology to do that is where I believe true food safety can be.
Now. Yes, you cannot predict everything. But when we hear companies talk about it solely in terms of being reactive, you have to include the predictive ’cause. If you’re not investing in it for the predictive capabilities, then you’re not even gonna be able to predict things or act proactively.
So my advice to suppliers and manufacturers and retailers and everyone in the food industry is don’t use artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics to respond to the crisis. Don’t wait for the crisis. Use it to prevent the crisis in the first place. That’s not only the greatest value of the technology, but it’s the best measure of a true leader.
[00:34:34] Cronan McNamara:
Absolutely. That’s your take-home message right there. Proactive planning, investment in capabilities to prevent those outbreaks. AI could help us quantify the savings it’s producing by preventing potential outbreaks. Which can help justify the investment in the first place.
Clean labels
[00:35:01] Cronan McNamara:
Consumers now prefer no food additives and preservatives. How does this impact the food industry and maybe even food safety?
[00:35:19] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
I’ve said this a lot for a long time. Political speed is slow, industry speed is medium. Consumer speed, behavioral change, preferences, buying patterns, those are the fastest changes. I think that consumers need to realize that, technically, they vote with their food money.
The idea of if you are not getting what you want, if you’re not getting adequate labeling, if you’re not seeing companies provide the information or the ingredients or the care that you need. The fact that you can go to another restaurant, you go to another retailer, you go to another brand.
That is ultimately what these brands, what these companies don’t want you to do. They literally don’t want you to be educated enough to be able to make those decisions. So being educated, voicing your opinion, voicing your preference, your behavior, your demand, your expectation is critical.
But I think that I really agree with some of the European views on the idea that we don’t need to make separate laws for the food industry. The food industry needs to follow existing laws. And that we need to also be holding them accountable in terms of if you are not truly labeling it for whatever aspects, the ingredients, allergens, safety, quantity, quality, that kind of stuff, you should be held accountable for it.
[00:36:47] Cronan McNamara:
Absolutely. Yeah. At a recent food fraud Workshop, one of the main leaders in the UK food fraud investigations. “He says a crime is a crime.”
“I don’t treat it like any other different type of crime. I just investigate crime.” And he’s focused on food fraud, but he just sees it as a crime. As a crime. So I think that’s a great way to look at it.
Are public-private partnerships a solution to food safety?
Let’s go to this last question from Tom Sidebottom.
So he says, thanks for the comprehensive discussion to you, Darin, and the overview of food safety. And he asks what your thoughts are about establishing a non-government organization that can fill in where regulators can’t get to for lower risk products, and would that give consumers confidence?
[00:37:36] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
Interesting question. I agree 100% with Tom, the idea of public-private partnerships. Yeah. Especially when you look at the idea that it’s such a growing global solution out there where you have these public-private partnerships, if you will, that kind of bridge, they go beyond a political administration. They go and act as a thread that could be seen as running throughout the ever-changing tapestry, political, economic industry change. But you have that constant thread throughout that tapestry. I think it is, in today’s day and in the future of food safety, because we really do have a global supply system.
And we can’t be looking at food from our backyard or from our local jurisdiction, from our state, or from our federal government. We have to be looking at it from a bigger picture. I think that if what he’s saying could be simplified, just saying the idea of an entity that provides for that public-private partnership, I’m 100% in support of that and think that it’s long overdue in certain areas.
[00:38:39] Cronan McNamara:
Yep. I think so, and we’re involved in a few industry-led initiatives in fairness, but with strong government engagement and oversight. And I think those last through multiple administrations and have the kind of drive and the funding from industry, but also the collaboration with government to collect data, provide analytics.
What does the future of food safety look like?
[00:39:00] Cronan McNamara:
We’ll wrap up. I think I know your one clear message to food industry leaders, and that would be to prevent rather than respond. But finally, I’d like to ask you, looking ahead 10 years, what does success in food safety look like to you? What does the headline say that you’d love to read in 10 years?
[00:39:19] Dr. Darin Detwiler:
What’s crazy is the headlines are always gonna be about failures. They’re never gonna be about the successes. But if there could be a headline about it, yeah. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a headline, annual foodborne illnesses were reduced by 50%, and that’s not realistic because there’ll never be an end to foodborne pathogens, and the idea of reducing by 50%.
But the idea of reducing it by 10%. Some people say that’s unrealistic. I would be happy to see that it was reduced by 1%. And I know 1% sounds like really low-hanging fruit, but we haven’t seen it. Imagine reducing it in the United States. You know, when you have 3000 deaths every year. 1%. Yeah.
That’s 30. That’s a classroom of students. Imagine if the headline were saying a classroom of students was saved. That could happen. And I don’t want anyone to become the next Riley Detwiler, my son who died because of a failure in food safety. And he didn’t even eat the food that contaminated him. He got sick from a person-to-person contact with another person who had eaten that. We have this all the time. So the idea of seeing a headline that says that there’s recognizable and data-backed evidence that shows that foodborne illnesses have reduced by even 1%. That to me would be a success that I would love to see.
Would I love to see higher numbers in terms of 10 per 5%, 10% reduction? Of course. Yeah. But right now I’m struggling just to see that 1% reduction. That’s, and I think that it requires advocacy changes in regulation, changes in industry, and the continued herculean effort that we’ve seen across every meal, every production line, every company, and every job that has anything to do or even peripheral to do with food safety.
[00:40:59] Cronan McNamara:
Every day, people go to work, and they have to continue to deliver that effort. So I think that’s a great place to leave it. Let’s go for that 10% Darin, and bring data, AI, and all of those other aspects together and keep fighting that fight, through conferences and podcasts and articles and books and all of these things that we need to do.
Thanks so much for being here today. Appreciate it. Thank you very much, and I look forward to sharing when I interview you. My interview with you comes up pretty soon. So thanks everyone for joining. Thanks for the questions, and thank you, Darin. And talk again soon.
Bye. Thank you very much. Bye everyone.
