🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

Cyclospora cases have topped 30,000. Eggs, jalapeños, blueberries, and infant formula are all being recalled at the same time. In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop!, Matt and Francine ask the question everyone's TikTok feed is already joking about: is there anything left in the food pyramid that hasn't been recalled?

The episode walks through every major outbreak of the summer, one pathogen at a time, before digging into the supply chain quirk (the terminal market) that makes some recalls nearly impossible to fully contain.

In this episode:

💩 00:00:00 The New Food Pyramid

💩 00:05:16 2026 Outbreak Update by Pathogen

💩 00:09:21 Driscoll And The PFAS Strawberry Whistleblower

💩 00:11:02 The Egg Recall: 19 Million Eggs

💩 00:14:01 Salmonella In Jalapeños Hits Over Two Dozen States

💩 00:17:28 How Consolidation Created The Terminal Market Workaround

💩 00:21:51 Who's Liable When A Recall Traces Back To A Terminal Market

💩 00:29:52 Starbucks Sandwiches And A Trunk Full Of Egg Salad

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

The FDA Is Investigating 11 Foodborne Outbreaks Right Now — Here’s What to Know About Each One: https://www.foodandwine.com/fda-foodborne-outbreak-investigations-12034027 

CDC Current Outbreaks: https://www.cdc.gov/foodborne-outbreaks/outbreaks/index.html 

Get the Facts: Is the number of food recalls rising? What data shows: https://www.kcra.com/article/us-food-recalls-trend-analysis/73415731 

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“Francine and I do not lack content, but we would really like it if these outbreaks came out every other month or so, so we could keep up with them.” – Matt Regusci

“We'd be talking about the eggs right now if the lettuce wasn't so bad because the eggs are bad, too. The lettuce is so bad that the eggs are kinda just sliding under the radar.” – Francine L Shaw

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

Nearly 21,000 Americans are confirmed sick with Cyclospora, and three different government sources can't agree on the actual number. When the administration finally addressed it, the best they offered was a joke. In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop!, Matt and Francine break down what accountability was supposed to look like, and the eight concrete fixes still sitting on someone's desk.

They walk through the math behind the conflicting case counts, why the government's own numbers may be undercounting sick Americans by a factor of 10 or more, and the specific policy changes that could stop the next outbreak from disappearing into a spreadsheet.

Spoiler alert: the real number of people sick could be well over a million, and nobody in Washington wants to say so.

In this episode:

💩 00:00:00 Bill Marler's Article: Govt’s Response to Cyclospora

💩 00:06:09 CDC's Three Conflicting Case Counts

💩 00:08:32 The Government’s Flawed Food Safety Advice

💩 00:09:48 The White House's Silence So Far

💩 00:11:15 Extrapolating The Cyclospora Case Count

💩 00:13:42 Eight Recommended Fixes For The FDA

💩 00:19:51 Reviving The Microbiological Data Program

💩 00:24:48 FSMA 204 And The Water Rule

💩 00:29:06 The Economic Cost Of Outbreaks

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

Use the code POOP for 25% off the Food Safety Consortium Conference: https://www.eventleaf.com/e/FoodSafetyConsortium 

Check out the article we’re discussing in this episode: 

• Food Safety News: The Fifty-State Cyclospora Count Is 20,927 This Morning. The President Has Said One Thing About It. The Secretary Says It Is Under Control. Here Is What They Should Have Said Instead.

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“ I do believe the states should be able to make their own laws, but I do think that the federal government should also have laws pertaining to food safety, and those laws should be statistics.” – Matt Regusci

“Food safety's not political. We're talking about people's well-being.” – Francine L Shaw

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

Over 20,000 people sick, five different versions of the same denial, and a produce giant that helped write the very traceability rules it's now dodging. In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop! Matt and Francine dig into the Cyclospora outbreak tied to Taylor Farms lettuce and the Taco Bell connection everyone's talking about.

They break down how Bill Marler builds a case against a company, why epidemiology (not a lab test) is what actually proves where an outbreak came from, and why Taco Bell's fast, transparent response is saving its reputation while Taylor Farms' spin is making things worse.

In this episode:

💩 00:00:00 Lettuce Ordering Mishaps

💩 00:05:05 Bill Marler's IAFP Article and Cyclospora Update

💩 00:10:32 How Epidemiology Proves an Outbreak's Source

💩 00:13:31 Taco Bell vs. Taylor Farms' Response on Cyclospora

💩 00:17:12 The Jensen Farms Cantaloupe Case

💩 00:21:02 Lettuce Sales Drop 20%

💩 00:22:35 Taylor Farms' Shifting Statements

💩 00:26:38 Taylor Farms Helped Write the Traceability Rules It's Now Sidestepping

💩 00:30:52 Why Taylor Farms Will Be Remembered in This Outbreak

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

Use the code POOP for a 25% discount for the Food Safety Consortium Conference: https://www.eventleaf.com/e/FoodSafetyConsortium 

Take a look at the Bill Marler articles mentioned in this episode:

• At IAFP I Was Told It Was American Sewage, Not Mexican Lettuce. That Gets the Parasite Half Right and the Continent Entirely Wrong. 
• Here Is Everything Taco Bell Has Said About Cyclospora. The Company Was Already Pulling Lettuce When It Told Reporters Nothing Had Been Confirmed. 
• Taylor Farms Has Now Written Five Different Versions of the Same Statement. The Newest One Says It Ran Two Thousand Samples and Found Nothing. Ohio Just Added 1,437 Cyclospora Cases in a Week and the Fifty-State Count Crossed Twenty Thousand.

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“If you needed a positive test for a product to confirm that product really was sold and consumed and got that person sick, consumers would rarely get compensated for anything. And you don't. In food safety law, epidemiology works.” – Matt Regusci

“I'm astounded at the arguments that people are coming up with about why it's not and why it can't be Taylor Farms when there's so much evidence pointing to the fact that it is.” – Francine L Shaw

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

Food safety culture has been the industry's favorite buzzword for years, but what does it actually look like once you're standing on the production floor? 

Food safety writer and consultant Azure Edwards joins Francine and Matt to talk about the real gap between the policies companies write down and the decisions people make when the pressure is on to get product out the door. This episode covers training, data feedback loops, and where AI genuinely helps versus where it falls short. 

Spoiler alert: the industry's problem was never a lack of data. It's turning that data into something the floor and the C-suite can actually act on.

In this episode:

💩 00:00:00 Introducing Food Safety Consultant Azure Edwards

💩 00:05:07 The Gap Between Training Requirements and Production Floor

💩 00:06:31 Food Safety as a Business Structure

💩 00:09:07 Building Actionable Modules for Food Safety Culture

💩 00:10:44 Food Safety Data Feedback Loops

💩 00:15:29 Why Floor-Level Reality Gets Diluted Before It Reaches Leadership

💩 00:21:16 Getting Food Safety Into Decisions Earlier

💩 00:28:15 Azure’s Career Across Produce, Beef, Seafood, and Lab Testing

💩 00:35:18 Where AI Actually Helps in Food Safety

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

Connect with Azure Edwards on LinkedIn and on her website (Pacific Blue Horizon Group). 

Azure’s Food Safety Tech Articles: https://foodsafetytech.com/?s=Azure+Edwards 

Azure’s Food Safety News Articles: 

• The food industry’s training problem is the system it keeps paying for
• Food safety and the Campbell Soup Company

Episode discussing Azure’s article: The Failures of the Food Industry's Pizza and Stick Approach to Food Safety | Episode 154

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“ When people are in a situation where they have to make a decision, it's gonna be the one that's gonna give them the result that they need, and oftentimes that's just getting it out the door and keeping their job.” – Azure Edwards

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

The FDA's top produce safety post sat empty for over a year, and when it comes to leafy greens, berries, and bagged salads, that's not a small gap. Now Dr. Donna Garren has the job, arriving with a three-decade resume that reads like a tour of nearly every food trade association in the country. 

In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop!, Matt and Francine ask the question nobody else seems to be asking: does the person in the seat actually change outcomes?

This episode is a deep dive into Garren's career, what the Office of Produce Safety actually does, and whether decades of political skill can move an agency stuck in reactionary mode.

Spoiler alert: She's not bringing a magic wand. She's bringing decades of relationship capital, and that might be exactly what this role needs.

In this episode:

00:00:00 Meet Dr. Donna Garren, FDA's New Director of Produce Safety

00:04:25 Garren's Food Science Roots

00:07:24 Two Decades of Lobbying

00:17:55 What the Office of Produce Safety Actually Does

00:22:57 Garren vs. Her Predecessor: Political Skill vs. Scientific Pedigree

00:28:33 Stakeholder Engagement and Training ( Industry Outreach and Consensus-Building) 

00:34:47 Translating Science for Farmers

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“I think the FDA has been in reactionary mode as opposed to preventative mode.” – Matt Regusci

“You can't keep doing what we've been doing. You've gotta do something different.” – Francine L Shaw

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

Fountain soda ice that turns pink overnight. Gas station sushi. A charcuterie board that's been sitting out since noon. 

In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop!, our hosts Matt and Francine play a rapid-fire game of "Would You Eat It?" testing real-world food safety risks like bacteria growth, mold contamination, and foodborne illness exposure against their own personal judgment calls.

From the five-second rule to bulging cans of chicken broth (a classic botulism red flag), the hosts debate food expiration dates, cross-contamination, safe food handling, and where their personal risk tolerance lines actually sit. 

Spoiler alert: even two food safety experts have their guilty-pleasure blind spots when it comes to food poisoning prevention (raw cookie dough, anyone?).

In this episode:

00:00:00 Would You Eat It? The Five Second Rule

00:04:06 Gas Station Sushi, Rare Burgers and Childhood Habits

00:06:54 Bacteria Contamination in Self-service Ice Machines and Soda Fountains

00:09:21 How Long Is Too Long in the Temperature Danger Zone?

00:10:59 Sell-by Dates, Expiration Dates and Real Life

00:12:54 Cross Contaminaiton Prevention and Salmonella Risk

00:17:03 Moldy Bread and Wild Mushroom Foraging Risks

00:17:56 Sharing Food and Drinks: Saliva Transfer Risk

00:20:09 Bulging Canned Goods and Botulism

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“Anything that's been in the car overnight, no. Disgusting. Yuck. There's no redeeming value.” – Matt Regusci

“They can kill you quickly. You grab the wrong mushroom, you'd be dead very quickly.” – Francine L Shaw

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

Nearly 7,000 people are sick, the CDC's own case count can't keep up with what individual states are finding on their own, and six months ago the agency quietly stopped requiring labs to track Cyclospora at all. 

In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop!, our hosts Matt and Francine break down how an outbreak this size is unfolding in near-total darkness. This episode covers what Cyclospora actually does to the body, where the current outbreak started, and the funding cuts that gutted the surveillance system meant to catch it. 

When you stop counting the sick, the numbers go down, but the problem doesn't.

In this episode:

00:00:00 The Educated Food Safety Guess That Turned Out to Be True

00:04:46 A Food Safety Project Three Years in the Making

00:08:04 Tracking the Cyclospora Outbreak

00:12:27 What Is Cyclospora? Symptoms, Transmission, and Sources

00:17:53 1,645 Confirmed Cyclospora Cases and Nearly 7,000 Suspected

00:19:03 Suspected Sources and the Taco Bell Connection

00:23:49 CDC Funding Cuts and the FoodNet Tracking Rollback

00:28:28 How a Systemic Contamination Event Actually Happens

00:35:29 The Supplier is Confirmed — It's Taylor Farms

00:47:02 Taco Bell's Statement and IFPA's Pushback on the Produce Link

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

Have a look at the articles mentioned in this episode:

• Two Friends Warn About Cyclospora. In the Morning I’ll Carry the Same Message to Puerto Vallarta: We Stopped Counting the Sick and Holding those to Account
• Cyclospora by State: Three Different Counts — the CDC’s, the State’s, and the Media’s
• CDC, FDA link Taco Bell lettuce supplier to multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak
• The Cyclospora Outbreak Now Has Two Names on It — Taylor Farms and Taco Bell. Both Have Been Here Before and So Have I
• Parasitic Outbreak Linked to Taylor Farms Lettuce Supplied to Taco Bell

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“When you have 7,000 potential cases, it is a systemic problem.” – Matt Regusci

“Of course the numbers are gonna decline. They're not counting them.” – Francine L Shaw

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

A crowded elevator in St. Louis. A stranger's badge. A conversation that led food safety consortium founder Rick Biros to a mother named Dana and to Kayla, her daughter, who died of E. coli O111 in 2007. 

In this third installment of the 2026 Food Safety Consortium preview series on Don’t Eat Poop!, Matt, Francine, and Rick sit with a story that silenced a room of industry veterans, then turn to what's ahead at this year's conference.

This episode blends raw human stakes with a practical look at what's coming to Food Safety Consortium, from AI adoption and allergen transparency to the traceability deadline barreling toward the whole industry.

Spoiler alert: the best food safety conferences aren't built on data alone — they're built on stories that make the stakes impossible to ignore.

In this episode:

00:03:29 The Power of a Food Safety Story

00:06:50 The Elevator Encounter: How Rick Met Dana and Heard Kayla's Story

00:14:30 Food Safety: From a Job to a Career, to a Passion

00:17:02 Business Outcomes From Investing in Food Safety

00:20:59 Allergen Panel featuring Marriott, Universal, Aramark, and Red Lobster

00:22:19 Risk-based Pest Control and the Search For a Produce "Kill Step"

00:23:46 Alpha-gal: The Tick Bite That Can Mean No More Red Meat

00:29:30 AI at the Food Safety Consortium

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

Connect with Rick

Take a look at Kayla’s story on Food Safety Tech: Food Safety Fate

Use code POOP for 25% off the 2026 Food Safety Consortium

Check out the rest of the series with Rick:

• Behind the Scenes of the Food Safety Consortium: Curation, Speakers & 15 Years of Evolution with Rick Biros from Food Safety Tech | Episode 170
• Food Safety as an Investment: Inside the 2026 Food Safety Consortium with Rick Biros | Episode 173

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“There wasn't a dry eye in the audience. I read the story, and I just said, ‘Wow, folks, that's why you do what you do.’” – Rick Biros

“These situations are 100% preventable. Somewhere along the way, somebody did something wrong. We are never gonna stop all of them. We're not gonna eradicate all of the foodborne illnesses. But we could certainly reduce them significantly.” – Francine L Shaw

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

Every corporate food safety crisis seems to follow the same script: a somber press conference, a pledge to prioritize safety, a promise to retrain the people at the bottom. But what if the missing ingredient isn't more data or policy — it's story? 

In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop!, Dr. Darin Detwiler and Gennette Zimmer join Francine and Matt to make the case that food safety culture is built on the stories we tell, and the ones we're afraid to.

They explore how storytelling shapes food safety culture, why credentials don't always equal true expertise, and why so many food safety conferences still don't reflect the people most affected by failures.

In this episode:

00:00:00 Storytelling as the "Mortar" of Food Safety Culture

00:03:57 Darin's 30 Years of Teaching Comes to a Close

00:12:39 Teaching Through Storytelling

00:19:43 Peanut Corp, Baby Formula, Boar's Head: A Pattern of Ignored Warnings

00:24:00 The Corporate Crisis Playbook

00:26:48 The Families' Food Safety Forgets

00:31:00 Storytelling Talk at the Food Safety Consortium

00:40:46 How Storytelling Impacts Audiences

00:44:15 Diversity and Representation in Food Safety

00:49:34 The Three Dimensions of Storytelling

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

Connect with Dr. Darin Detwiler on LinkedIn

Connect with Gennette Zimmer on LinkedIn

Confessions of a Food Safety A**hole podcast

Take a look at our past episode with Darin and Gennette: What Happens When You Speak Up For Food Safety with Food Safety Icon Dr. Darin Detwiler and His Wife Gennette Zimmer

Get 25% off the 2026 Food Safety Consortium with discount code POOP

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“ When the people who are your intended audience do not see themselves reflected in the conversation, that's hard for buy-in.” – Dr. Darin Detwiler

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______

🍽️ Francine and Matt are building a global, fun, and inclusive Food Safety Family! From the C-suite to the kitchen, they’re making safe food the norm everywhere.

👉 Follow Francine and Matt on LinkedIn for more food safety insights and updates.

A janitorial contractor forged IDs for 336 of his 353 workers, and two dozen of them were children as young as 13, cleaning industrial equipment inside a Perdue Farms slaughterhouse. 

In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop!, Matt and Francine dig into a case that took six years to reach sentencing, exposing how easily child labor laws can be circumvented when a subcontractor controls the paperwork. Along the way, the story opens into a much bigger problem: stolen identities, the real people left cleaning up the damage, and what food companies should be asking their staffing vendors.

Hiring the cheapest staffing vendor might be costing you a lot more than you think.

In this episode:

00:00:57 Child Labor Laws in the Food Safety Industry

00:09:35 A Janitorial Manager’s Guilty Plea for Forged IDs

00:13:17 Why Slaughterhouses are No Place for Kids

00:18:50 Forged Licenses, Birth Certificates, and Stolen Social Security Numbers

00:23:58 Déjà Vu: The 2023 Packer Sanitation Services Case

00:25:54 Identity Theft Victims and Corporate Security Fallout

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

Take a look at the two articles we mentioned in this episode:

• Sentence scheduled for former janitorial services manager who forged IDs for hundreds of workers
• Workers for slaughterhouse cleaning firm that hired children repeatedly used stolen identities to get jobs

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“A slaughterhouse is not for children. These places are dangerous for adults. I'm not saying they should be shut down. I'm just saying you have to be 100% aware of your surroundings in a slaughterhouse.” – Matt Regusci

“It's like everything else. You get what you pay for.” – Francine L Shaw

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Together, we can raise awareness and make a positive impact in the world of food safety!

Share your thoughts and feedback on the show, and feel free to offer any topics you would like to hear discussed.

We'd love to hear from you!

📲 Connect with Francine, Matt, and the "Don't Eat Poop!" show on LinkedIn!

📕 Check out Francine's book Who Watches the Kitchen?

🎙️ BE A GUEST ON DON’T EAT POOP!

Fill out this form to tell us more about yourself. We’ll reach out via email within 30 days with next steps if you’re selected.

_______

Produced by Ideablossoms

_______