"Today we're learning something new.
heard it before. This isn't a class, this isn't a checklist, and this definitely isn't
a lecture. This is real conversation about what actually happens between the farm, the kitchen, and your plate. I've been 25 years in this industry, and I can tell you, food safety is one of those things, everyone says they care about, until something goes wrong. And when it does, it's not theoretical anymore. It's real and it hits hard. So we're building something here. A series of conversations that break this down in a way that actually makes sense with people
who live it every day. The segment is brought to you by Testo and North America. You'll start to see where tools, data, and real-world application fit into all of this without forcing it. Today's
the starting point, the wake-up call. Why food safety actually matters? I'm your host Carl Fiyadini,
along with Eric Moore from Testo, North America. Let's get into it. Eric, my man, welcome to the program. Hello, hello. I'm happy. Very happy to be here. Me too, man. This is really exciting, because I feel that food safety is one of the pinnacle topics, not just in food, but in general. I feel like there's a major push when it comes to like social media and what people watch and listen to and consume. Food safety is one of those things that sits high in that category. People want to consume
and learn about it. For sure, Chris, you know what? Oddly enough, like the pandemic actually really ratcheted up. People awareness, understanding, and interest in, you know, food safety and also the two of the level like environmental safety, if you will, you know, and being aware of what's going on in your surroundings and things like that. So it's definitely on a lot more people's radar that it then it was, say, six years ago. Well, the think about it is not everyone understands where it
“comes from. How do you, you know, is it because it's cross-contamination? Is it shaking somebody's hand?”
And, you know, putting your, you know, wiping your mouth, it's so much deeper than that. It's complicated. Right. But it isn't, it's the same time. It that makes, if that makes sense. It's like, I don't know, trying to make a trying to make biscuits, right? It's not that hard, but it is. Everything is science. Everything has to, everything comes down to a science. Listen, last week, we can have a go. I got a stomach bug. And I was at a commission for
probably almost 10 days. And I don't know how it happened. I don't know where it came from. I can tell you that it was brutal. And I'm okay now. But I tell you, it was, you know, these things make you really, when you have moments when you're not in the pain of it, you do some serious self-reflecting on life. You know what I mean? That's pretty, it's pretty interesting how it goes down.
“Yeah. Hey, though, let me let me ask you something. Did you, did you seek medical care?”
I think you got sick. I'm glad you're better, by the way. Thank you. As it turns out, I am I'm married to a nurse and my mother-in-law is a nurse and my brother-in-law is a nurse. And I'm surrounded by, by good people that, you know, obviously, if I have to go when I go in, but I was taken care of well. Obviously, that's awesome. You have, you have a good, trained medical staff in a, in close support is we go further down the pathway here and we talk.
Just keep that in mind, right? Like, is that isn't unique? Well, it might be unique to be surrounded by so many, so many nurses and medical practitioners for you, but not seeking medical supports when your stomach is upset is extremely common. And, you know, is our conversation progressing out. I'll try to bring that back into the back into the story here. Well, if I can give you, well, let me say it like this, if I didn't have that support, I don't know that I would have gone.
And, you know, I'm stubborn. I'm one of those people. And, and the reality is for me,
it would take a lot for me to just have to go bring myself to the urgent care or emergency room.
“Most people know if you get too dehydrated, you should, you got to go, you got to get fluid,”
but I even know that, but I would wait till the very end. Well, but you're not unique, right? Like, the vast majority of people, and isn't just in, say, like Florida, or where I'm at, where I live in Tanzalvania, or it's not a U.S. thing, it's not a North America thing. It's a person thing, right? We just, unless we're really, typically, right, unless we're like, been over in pain, like, to what
You were just saying, like, going to get medical help, like, you'll just gut ...
that is, that is extremely common, and that's what makes, like, the whole topic of food safety,
“and illnesses related to food, and things like that, it makes it, like, very, very”
complicated to, to, to, to put a lot of, a lot of statistics around, and that's where you'll, you'll see whether it's in literature, or eating on the news, when news agencies talk about this, or run, run stories about, you know, something that's happening nationally, or reasonably, because of, because of a, because of employees, or because of a food recall or something like that,
they always talk about estimates. And the reason for that is that the vast majority of people
that start feeling sick out of the blue, they never seek medical attention, right? Their medical attention is a bottle of Pepto Bismal, or some tons, or something like that, in, you, you rest for 72 hours, two days, something like that. Well, that's the truth. I think a lot of this comes back around, people who are sick, tend to still go to work, right? And when you do that, that is what opens a lot of this Pandora's
“box. Everybody in the business says they care about food safety, but the truth is,”
what does that actually look like day to day? Yeah. Well, and that's, that is the very polarizing topic that I will tell you across the industry, as well as across the sort of regulatory and industry audiences, or, or world, people going to work sick. And that is, it is a very, very, very challenging topic. Part of it is, it's all about an individual's or a, you know, a family's economic well-being. That's just obviously super important. And it gets, it gets
like super nuanced and complicated, because, you know, if you're a, if you're a line worker, a line cook, or you watch the dishes, all of which I've done, you know, back at many, many, many moons ago, if you don't go to work, you're not getting paid. And if you're not getting paid, you might not be able to pay your bills. And if you're not paying your bills, somebody might not eat. And so it's, it's, it's kind of a vicious cycle. It gets very, very, very tricky to, to manage,
especially as an employer. It's hard for, whether you're a kitchen manager, executive chef, single, proprietor owner, that gets really hard when, when you're in the thick of it. Some of the biggest challenges you have, you have cross-contamination, you have temperature abuse. Like a lot of these things, it's a spectrum. When you're talking about food safety, it's, it's not just like one thing. Uh, it's a multi-layered category of potential challenges. All right, Eric, in the food industry,
there's risk factors. And there's layers of them. What does it look like for the average person for them to understand that properly? Great point. Great topic. It really high level. Let me, let me sort of paint a picture in the United States. Uh, and I could, I could actually get into global statistics, but let's just focus on the United States, right? The, the centers for these control, they estimate, right? There's that word that I brought up earlier, estimate, because there
is widespread under reporting by their estimates, um, which are based on historical, um, illness, actual factual data from hospitals and medical providers, uh, and things like that. They estimate
48 million people suffer from a food borne illness on an annual basis, right? 48 million people. That's
“a lot. It's actually one, and I think if you break it down, it's like one and every six, six people”
get some sort of food borne illness at least once a year. Um, of those 48 million, 128,000, it's so sick that they, they need to be hospitalized of those 128,000, and again, these are all estimates. Um, 3,000 people are estimated to die every single year from some sort of food borne illness, right? And the reason I, the reason I, I want to provide that sort of foundational component is that, you know, the, the, the centers for these control along with the FDA for the last more
than 20 years, they had done these, these very, very in-depth, uh, research studies, um, to go and 5 or 10 year periods where they look at, you know, illness, actual illness statistics, right? So, so, so from, um, from people actually going and seeking medical care, they cross reference those with, um, like restaurant inspection reports and things like that. In the output of that,
from the first 10 year study of this was they identified five leading risk factors that were,
That were the, the essential cause of almost all food borne illness outbreaks.
are improper folding of food, right? So, whether it's hot food or cold food, it's being,
“it, it is it within what is classified as the safe temperature. And I'll generalize this, right?”
For cold food, it's got to be below 40 degrees in general, uh, and for hot food, um, depending on where you live in the country, it's either got to be above 140 or above 135 degrees Fahrenheit. And when you have food that falls within that window, the above, say, above 40 degrees and below 140 degrees, that's about the danger zone. That's where bacteria, um, and proliferate very, very rapidly. And that, that, that, that is, the leading largest cause of people becoming ill. The, the next one is
personal hiding. You, you kind of indicated that just a, just a minute ago, right? People going to work sick. Um, there's also, it also relates to improper handwashing, right? Someone picks their nose, they forget they don't wash their hands. Staff is a naturally occurring component inside of your
“nostrils. And there you go, that you could, you know, if you're shedding, um, if you're shedding”
staff, then you could actually be the root cause of, of a staff outbreak. Um, inadequate cooking is the
third one, right? So if I've got a piece of chicken, and this is just interesting salmonella,
which commonly found in raw poultry, uh, it's just a naturally occurring thing. Uh, if you don't cook the poultry, right? Then you don't eradicate that bacteria. And if you ingest it, then, you know, up to 72 to, uh, so many hours later, you could become ill. So improper holding or personal eye being inadequate cooking, um, the next is contaminated equipment. And this gets into actually like, when you're in an establishment or you're operating in a establishment, allowing people the, um,
the time to properly wash rinse sanitize, um, and not just like, use a, use a cutting board in a
knife to, you know, got up meat, poultry, you know, make meatballs or, or meatloaf, and then go back
over and use it. It's a classic cross contamination, example, right? You then go and you would, you would cut some sort of vegetable or product that is at ready to eat that isn't going to go through any additional thermal processing. But that's where this contamination component begins to come into place. And then the final, the final one, which I'm sure, yeah, you'll, uh, you'll get this is a painting food from unsafe sources, um, right? Some people probably, they're
like, who, like, who's going to do that, right? Like, who's going to buy like food from somebody that they don't trust? Well, it happens more frequently than then one, like, then one of my guests, especially when, you know, you're running a restaurant and you were, let's say your, your, your vegetable perveyor just pulls up and said, hey, you know what, I got a crazy deal on this, this side of beef, you want it. And, I mean, depending on, like, who you are, where you work and, and what your,
your, your, you know, your, you know, Elstatement looks like what your, what your operating budget is. Like, you might be like, yeah, man, I'll, I'll take that. And you have no idea where that me came from, how it was treated, was appropriately slaughtered, anything like that. So, those are the five things, right? All those numbers die throughout earlier, you know, one in six people, 120,000 people hospitalized in 3,000 in deaths, all of those, those five things are the
“causes for, I think the specificity, 75% of through borne illness, you know, issues, right? It's”
those five things. Now, I'll say, to get improper voting, poor hygiene, inadequate cooking, contaminated equipment in unsafe sources. And three of those are really, really quite controllable, depending on who you talk to. Well, make sure wonder, like, how much of food safety is actually controlled versus, you know, just hoping nothing goes wrong? Well, yeah, that's a, that's, I mean, that's, that's a good one, right? In my, my personal philosophy, I do my best
to plan for contingencies, right? Like, and that's where, like, I, I have sort of evolved into this, this, this sort of, I have a, I have a risk of versus you on a lot of things, especially when it comes to, like, my professional, my work, right? My career, the thing that I do and, and the things that I try to try to help are my organization, create, right? It's, it's to avoid risk is to
Engineer risk out of processes.
They're, they're, they're kind of, they'll cover their eyes and be like, all right, I'm just going
“to hope and pray. You never really think about these things when you're younger. Like, I can't”
tell you how many times I've had, you know, you know, order a pie at night, it sits out overnight, you wake up in the morning and you just open the box right there on the table and you just knock it down. I don't think about any problems there. You know, and, and, and I can't tell you how many times I've done it and, and, and, and, and, uh, lift a talk about it. That's, you know, the mean, like, well, you, yeah, you, you and me both, and, and that's where, like, it's so, it's so layered and nuanced,
um, I mean, that's a, that's an interesting, you know, specific example. You, you, you brought up,
right, um, because the products that you're talking about, right, like, it really gets into, just, like, you would say earlier, the science behind all of this, it, and it becomes like the science of bacteria and I don't think we necessarily need to, to, to, to, to tell, like, head over yielding to that, but, um, change the, change the, change the example you used to fry rice. You know, for, or to, to macaroni and cheese, or, or some sort of, like, like wet, low-main, um,
you know, that'll, that could change the scenario, uh, quite quite a bit. It, you know, of, oh, I'll lift that out of my counter all night, or I left it out. I, I went out Friday night, came home, had this left it out. I slept all day Saturday, Sunday, I'm, you know, still nursing my, my, my, my, my, my party time, and, you know, I consume this for brunch, and, you know, two days later, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm not leaving the bathroom. Uh, so there's a lot of this come
down to, uh, human error, or processes breakdown, lazy people in general, like we're talking about
“food industry right now, specifically. Where do you find most of the challenges?”
Well, you know, I, I think, let, let me say it this way. I don't think anybody that works in any food establishment, anywhere, regardless of where it is. Nobody, nobody's working there, like, to lie to intentionally, like, make something unsafe, right? The, by the, like, that just isn't how humans are wired, right? Like, at least you're some diabolical evils genius, right? Or, like, that just isn't, it isn't, it isn't happening. Human error, absolutely, that happens, right?
And, you know, is that through lack of lack of adequate education? Maybe lack of adequate training by, by all needs, right? Like, it, if, if an individual, like, under cooks, uh, a raw animal product, and, you know, it then gets, it, it's getting served. And what if they weren't properly trained? I can remember, like, back in college, right, when, you know, my graduated with a hospitality degree, I had to high level cooking, you know, um, I mean, nothing like culinary, institute of America,
or formal culinary training or anything like that. But we had to, to cooking classes that we had to take, that were, you know, that were semester long. And, I mean, I specifically remember standing in our, in our kitchen, and the chef that it was our, our professor telling us how to judge the dumbness of meat by, you know, moving your thumb, it closer, like, it holding your,
“your hand out. And then, as you make a fist, right? Like, that's how you judge dumbness of meat.”
Is that an adequate way to really train somebody and educate somebody on how to properly cook, you know, cook steaks? I think, you know, over time, we learn that no, it really, it really isn't. Airs do occur, but I think they are a lot of times situationally based, right? And I think you, you, you just mentioned this like a process breakdown, um, you know, where I think that, you know, people will get, um, sort of, and I use this term in America in the weeds, right? Like,
it's, it's, it's peak production time. It's, it's the, the height of, of the dinner rush or lunch rush, breakfast, whichever, you know, kick your meal. And, you know, people will maybe not take the time to do things in the safe way, because they feel it might take a little bit more extra effort or time. Whether that's a line cook or that's a kitchen manager, executive chef, fill in the blank.
It's up to the leaders in those environments, right? To, to say, wait a second, we have this process.
It's one, two, three, four, right? Don't skip three or just skip two, because that creates a breakdown,
Those breakdowns that, you know, again, I'll relate all this back to, to what...
earlier about illness estimates in the US, right? One in six people, uh, 128,000 hospitalized 3,000 deaths. When in those processes break down, that those are the potential hazards, right,
“with the results of significant breakdown in a process. Those are, that's what happens.”
And, you know, that can be really, really life-changing for those individuals that are involved in a situation like that. Well, I have to tell you, I mean, I'm obviously, uh, I've been in this business a long time, and I've been around a lot of people who work in kitchens. Years ago, it's, for traditionally, I should just say, they didn't use thermometers or anything like that. It was. You, you feel it. And they knew it was, uh, you know, it was just something that, you know,
the repetition and learning and whatnot, you just know when it's done. I think we've got into a point where it's changing today. You know, we had, uh, a month or so ago, we had Chef Thomas Manzac come into the studio. You know, we were talking about sticks. He brought in a, uh, plus nine
why you. And, uh, it was a, yeah, it was, uh, man. It was amazing. Oh, man. It was delicious. It was right.
And we, we got into this conversation about how, and, you know, Aaron actually, uh, want to test those, you know, you know, Aaron, he was, so he was, he was in studio as well. And the conversation came up and, and ultimately, Chef was like, in our kitchen, everything is, is, is tempt. The thermometer is used each and every time. And it's not just for accuracy, but it's to make sure people don't get hurt. They don't get sick. And I think, I think the whole culture is starting
to shift that way. And I think that's a positive thing. I, I, I, I agree. I agree. I agree.
“Completely. I'll challenge anybody. Like, if you, if, if you want to figure out, like, if you,”
like, you know, rare to medium rare or to make sticks, ask the next time you go somewhere that where you're getting sticks, say, hey, do you guys take the temperature of the steak? Because if you do, I know the exact temperature I want might the inside of my steak cook to. You, you say, like, 118 to 120 degrees. And you will be a very happy camper. There are lots of opportunities in the technology available today is drastically faster and more accurate than, you know,
when I was in, you know, when I was in college in the mid to late 90s. This is the things that are available today. I think those are, those are part of day, day, day, day, day, day, enable better practices, if you will. What do you think is, is a, is a, is a huge positive? Once you build your protocols and you have your, you know, like a lot of people have their
has that plans and their processes and their critical control points and they figure out, hey, like,
what's what? And, you know, how are we going to tackle these things? I think it's, I think it's natural, it's a natural progression to want to temp check everything. Because, you know, for the fact that temperature abuse is, is a big deal. You know, and it's not, and I don't think that things are done purposely. It's just a matter of, you, you being the unlucky one if it happens to you. The data actually supports what you're saying, right, like improper folding. If you're not holding
hot food hot and cold food cold, you run the risk of food not being, not being safe for your customer. The better you can put a system, a process with supporting components that help deliver those results, right, or help you achieve the consistency in, in all of your policies and programs
“that you will. That's when you really start to figure things out. And that's what I kind of brought”
it up like super, super quickly earlier. Like, it's engineering risk out of the system or the process.
That's something that I've just always tried to do for the last, you know, 20 plus 25 years
in working in food safety. It's like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to sit, I'm going to watch, I'm going to analyze what's going on here. And then I want to figure out ways to make it easier and safer at the same time. A lot of time to come down to something as simple as a thermometer. It's, it's as simple as that, you know, just temp, temp to meet, you know, for all the different proteins, you know, how many pork dishes, how many chicken dishes, how many beef, you know, just
probe it. That's all you have to do. Testo carries all of these products. It's something that, you know,
Obviously there's going to be links and everything, you can find all over, wa...
But at the end of the day, it's simple stuff and it saves people, headaches, aggravation, pain,
even their lives. Even like one step removed, you know, from just actually probing food and taking, you know, individual product temperatures, right? It's, it's knowing that you're holding equipment hot or cold, right? Like if you've got memories, right, they're holding, you know, soups, cast roles, whatever, or your refrigeration units, it's knowing and ensuring that they're operating at the right temperatures as well. It's a blend of both, you know, pieces of technology,
a different different stages and places within the, you know, the whole, like culinary, creative process, if you will. Well, look, I'll tell you this. This will be my last story for this segment. But a few years ago, we went to, we went, it was a four-star hotel, older place, but nice. I'm not going to name it out. I'm not going to call it out. I knew. I knew when I walked in
“to the front desk and I saw fruit flies. And I think in, wow, that's, that's weird that there's”
fruit flies here at check-in. And then maybe 50 yards, you know, down the corridor is there, is there dining room, which was open. We, you know, we got in late. It was like maybe close to midnight, but it was still open. There was still serving some food. So we go in and as soon as you walked in, you know, crossed the threshold into the dining room area, I saw the bar, I saw fruit flies, and I was like, oh man, this isn't going to be good. Sure enough. And let me tell you something,
but just for the record, I normally, I don't get sick. I have a steel stomach. Like, I can, I can manage myself really well. So I, you know, I said, you know what, I'm going to have a burger. It's on the menu. I'm going to do it. Sure enough. Next day, I got hit. And, and, you know, I, I brought up twice on this particular, on this, right here, now in this segment,
two different times where I had some sort of, you know, food bugs, stomach bug. Never happens to me.
But when it does, I literally, I literally passed out with this one. Yeah, I was bad. I mean, I hit my head. It was a, that's not fun. It was brutal. Yeah, I was really, I thought I was having a hard attack or something. My wife, you know, it was a whole, a whole thing. But all this to saying,
“you know, you have to, when you walk into a place to eat, be aware of your surroundings.”
I always checked a bathroom. If it's a dirty bathroom, it's a dirty kitchen. It's got truest, it's the truest, I'm saying in the world. Look for fruit flies. Look for all those things. And if it is, man, walk out. Leave. That's all. Yeah. I don't, I don't, like, I don't go to overboard, like, when I go out to eat anymore. But for a long time, my wife wouldn't even go in there. Like, you just pick everything apart. Like, it's no fun. Like, you have to eat with
you, you know, you kind of nailed several, like, key indicators of, you know, like, how do you, how do you know, like, where you are dining if it is, say, for reputable, etc. You know, there are certain places in the U.S. where the local regulatory jurisdictions have tried to take some of the guesswork out of that, where they, they're required to actually post their health department rating. Even those places, they could have an A placard in the window. Just keep in mind. That's
a spot in time and inspection that resulted in that in that rating that they may or may not have had prior knowledge of, of it actually taking place. So being able to, like, have good judgment, I think, go, it goes a long way. It goes, it goes a, it goes a heck of a long way. All right,
guys, listen. So for our first, first segment here, I think this one pretty well. I'm, I really,
I want to start getting a little deeper into, into food safety, man. I, I think it's going to be cool. I love to get into cross contamination and there's just so many other, there's are, so many things I think people are going to want to adhere to. So what all that to say, I appreciate your time. I appreciate your hanging out. I love doing this together. How do people find you? Best of no, you can find Testa on Instagram at LinkedIn. It's under just Pesto, North America.
“If you want to check out my background, see what I'm about. You can look at my LinkedIn profile.”
It's Eric 4, 0, 0, 1. Got a lot of stuff there, links and things like that. So feel free to check it out. Carl, this has been awesome. I've had a blast too. I look forward to continuing our, our conversations and yeah, then, let's keep it, keep it rolling. Excellent. One of these days is going to get you down to the studio as well. In the meantime, I'll get you on side B and we are out.
