Jeff and Jenny welcome a special guest for a close up look at how the food industry has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly when it comes to food safety.

Laura Dunn Nelson is the Vice President of Food Safety and Global Alliances at Intertek Alchemy, which offers a wide range of training solutions for frontline employees to work safer, smarter, better.

She talks to Jenny and Jeff about the unprecedented challenges food companies have faced during the pandemic and how companies have had to find a way to keep their employees safe. In addition to infectious disease prevention measures, Nelson covers the food industry’s changes related to preventative maintenance and supply chain management. She also has some advice on how companies can enhance their safety culture.

Nelson helps Jeff and Jenny analyze the high-profile January Recall of the Month. Nestlé issued a massive recall of 763,000 pounds of Hot Pockets that could be contaminated with pieces of glass and hard plastic. How well did Nestle Prepared Food manage the crisis? Jeff and Jenny give the company high marks for how they communicated through the recall.

Jenny and Jeff welcome a food safety expert to analyze a salmonella outbreak linked to onions from a California supplier that sickened hundreds of people across several states.

Dr. Jennifer McEntire, Vice President of Food Safety at United Fresh Produce Association, offers some perspective on this far reaching recall that impacted all 50 states. Dr. McEntire explains how this onion recall raised the attention of the food industry, as well as how an outbreak investigation unfolds.

This episode also features a discussion on how salmonella can be found in pet foods.  Pet industry veteran Vicki Ford talks to Jenny and Jeff about what pet owners should know to keep their furry friends safe.

In this unusual episode of Breaking Bad News, you’ll learn more about head meat and cheese than you probably ever wanted from hosts Jeff Hahn and Jenny Gregorcyk. But that’s not all. The recall of more 38,000 lbs of boneless beef head meat products from Canada brings up the importance of the complex inspection process to keep imported food safe in the United States.

July 2020 was a surprisingly slow month with food recalls. Jenny and Jeff discuss why a head meat recall would garner so much media attention and analyze how the company communicated the recall.