Carolyn Schnare:
Welcome to Convenience Matters. I’m Carolyn Schnare with NACS.

Chris Blasinsky:
And I’m Chris Blasinsky with NACS.

Carolyn Schnare:
So safe food preparation and handling is important for literally everyone from retail to restaurant to home kitchens. And Chris, we’ve talked about this on previous episodes and you’re super highly involved in projects at next. So I’m just going to ask that you introduce our guest today since you know him quite well.

Chris Blasinsky:
Sure. And I would say that we’ve had – before I introduce our guest – the previous guest was Ben Chapman and his colleague on the “Risky or Not” podcast is our guest today, who is Dr. Don Schaffner, who is a Distinguished Professor and Extension Specialist at Rutgers University. So welcome Don.

Don Schaffner:
Hey guys, thanks for having me on. As Ben and I like to explain we have an open podcast relationship. We’re primarily partners with each other, but we’re allowed to go on other people’s podcasts.

Chris Blasinsky:
Yeah, I think you did feel a little bit like he cheated on you when he was on.

Don Schaffner:
Well, I just want to go first, you know. It’s all about like how important I am.

Chris Blasinsky:
Oh yeah. You guys aren’t competitive at all are you? {laughter}

Chris Blasinsky:
Well, I think you know, my best way to introduce you is to re-engage our audience with the early days of COVID. We’re going back to early March and I’m just going to say that there was a guy who got on YouTube in scrubs and…yep, you’re already smiling what I’m talking about…And you went fairly viral picking apart exactly what this individual was, was saying and putting out there into the world because people were following the lead. It’s a very scary time. We have little information that the public was receiving. So ever since then I’ve always kind of like…I have like my Don-meter. I’m going to check with Don whenever I see things like that. So kudos to you and thank you for putting science first and getting that out into the public.

Don Schaffner:
You know, that was an interesting one. And that certainly did bump my Twitter follower count. It got a lot of engagement, which I think was good. And of course, remember at the time we didn’t really know how COVID was transmitted. Now, we’ve since learned that absolutely this guy was wrong. And absolutely I was right. I had a pretty strong feeling though, that if people were going to get COVID from their groceries, we kind of know it already. And now what we know is that the disease is spread by person-to-person contact, that is spread by being close to people for an extended period of time, particularly indoors, and as far as we know, it is not spread by food. It is not spread by food packaging material. And so, yeah, it was good. And I got a lot of people telling me, ‘well, how, how dare you tell me, I feel safe, I want to do it.’ And I’m like, that’s fine. Go, ahead and do what you want. But I got an equal and maybe even greater number of folks saying, thank you so much. I tried to do that once, and I about had a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t face doing it. Thank you for giving me permission to say that I don’t have to do it. And I’m like, yeah, you’re welcome. I mean the riskiest thing about when it comes to COVID-19 and the grocery store is going to the grocery store. And so finding a way to stay out of the grocery store to minimize the time that you’re in the grocery store, those are the things that we need to do to minimize risks. And so, yeah, thanks for that. I do think about that every now and again, and I’m glad that I was right and that he was he was a lot of nonsense.

Carolyn Schnare:
Yeah, I even found people up to this summer that I know that were like, yeah, I’m wiping down my groceries. I’m like, stop, please. Like every…almost every scientist in the world, they say you don’t have do that. Anyway, going back towards our topic, which is food safety. So all these microorganisms, they all can hurt us and they can also be beneficial to us. But one of the things that people did, as you said, stopped going to grocery stores, continued going to convenience stores for the most part, but then also started just ordering everything they could to be brought to their house. And I think personally, it was one of the best things and I still use it sometimes – grocery delivery – but sometimes I kind of like going out in public and whatnot, but in terms of grocery delivery and food delivery, it was, it was a staple of early pandemic life. And I think still a lot of people have just gotten in the habit of it. So I know Chris, you can even add a little more to this, but there’s been some work in the FDA, I believe, that was about food delivery and the safe handling, but not only even the safe handling, but practices because there really weren’t guidelines before. right? It was kind of the wild west.

Chris Blasinsky:
And you know, to back that up, it didn’t come out because of COVID. FDA and Don is with the Conference for Food Protection. This was being looked at well before COVID, but Don I’ll let you take it from there.

Don Schaffner:
Yeah. So, you mentioned the Conference for Food Protection. The Conferences are really interesting bunch of food safety nerds. They get together every two years to help FDA write the model Food Code. And the FDA model Food Code is not really a regulation, it’s guidance to states and territories to basically help them ensure food safety. So I live in New Jersey, which means that the safety of restaurants and grocery stores in New Jersey is regulated by the New Jersey Department of Health and the New Jersey Food Code. And the New Jersey Food Code is based in part on the FDA model code. Now we’re in the process of modernizing our state code to tie it exactly to the most current version of the FDA code, which happens in some states and not in other states. But the bottom line is that FDA realized – actually it was actually USDA that proposed the issue – USDA realized that there was a lot of stuff getting sent through the mail. And so they charged a committee, a Conference for Food Protection Committee….although the conference exists for FDA, it really has involvement from FDA from USDA and from CDC and in certain cases from EPA as well. But there was a committee chartered to look at the safety of mail order foods, and then that committee delivered its report, and then in the last CFP two-year cycle, which was extended because of the pandemic, they took that same committee, they rechartered the committee, changed the membership, and broadened the scope to not only include mail-order food, but also third-party delivery businesses. So, Uber Eats and Grub Hub and basically people that are not your Domino’s Pizza guy, bringing you your food from your restaurant. Because the Domino’s Pizza guy he’s already covered under the food code because he’s an employee of Domino’s, but Uber Eats and Grub Hub and the like, and Instacart for groceries as well, those folks are contractors and so they’re not technically employees of the restaurant. And so, there was a real need to have guidance on how to do these kinds of businesses. And then in fact, FDA is now more fully engaged. They recently had a summit on e-commerce they called it or, business-to-consumer B2C businesses. And so they’re interested. And of course the thing they kept saying throughout their e-summit was FDA – I forget the exact language, it was so funny, they said it several times – “FDA may or may not make a policy or guidance based on what we find through this summit.” And so, obviously they’re listening, they know it’s a hot issue. One thing that I’ve said about the pandemic is what the pandemic has done from my perspective.

Don Schaffner:
It has catalyzed things that were already happening right. Work from home was already a thing, but now nobody bats an eye when I want to work from home. Delivery services – whether it was mail-order foods or whether it was third-party delivery services – those were a thing that was happening, but the pandemic has catalyzed those. And so I think it’s good for FDA for getting involved with, I won’t say getting out in front of this, but good for FDA for getting involved in it. It’ll be really interesting to see what they do because from a regulatory and from a statutory perspective, I’m not sure how it would actually be regulated. And we heard from a lot of food safety scientists and business people, but who I really wanted to hear from at the FDA summit – and maybe we’ll hear from them eventually – would be the lawyers. The lawyers who understand the Food Code and food regulations. I want to hear their legal interpretation of exactly do we need new laws, new regulations? Are we going to do it all based on guidance? It’s going to be interesting times the next the next decade or so.

Chris Blasinsky:
You mentioned things that have been exasperated by COVID one of them being hand-washing. You know, all of a sudden I need to stand at the sink and sing “Happy Birthday” in scalding hot water…

Carolyn Schnare:
My watch tells me if I didn’t do a good job. I’ve got like gamification on my Apple Watch. It’s like, ‘no, you have five seconds left.’ I’m like, what if I just shake them?

Chris Blasinsky:
Well, somebody on this podcast did a study on hand-washing and that’s not the same guidance that you that’s out there.

Don Schaffner:
Yeah. So, first of all, I’ll say I have an Apple Watch. See, I’m proving it. I’m showing you guys on the camera. I have not turned on that hand-washing feature. One thing you mentioned is scalding hot water. Recently, we’ve been trying for years to get the Food Code, the Conference for Food Protection, to take up this issue of water temperature. And recently we were able to get the Code changed. For many years, it said 110 degrees Fahrenheit, which is ridiculous. It’s the temperature that will liquefy bacon grease. And so that’s great. If you want to liquefy bacon grease, it’s not so great if you want to wash your hands. And I think until recently the Code said 100 degrees, but even a hundred degrees is not super comfortable. And so we did some research that we studied 60, 80 at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Don Schaffner:
And what we discovered was it didn’t really matter what temperature, that the person-to-person variation was bigger than any variation that you would see with temperature. So the bottom line is the temperature doesn’t matter. Where I think temperature matters is in terms of comfort. And so I think a lot of hand-washing comes down to technique. You want to have good technique. If the water’s too cold, if the water’s too hot, you can’t do a good thorough job. And so my advice has been, and now it’s mostly going to be in the Code is to use water that is at a comfortable temperature. Find a comfortable temperature for washing your hands and then do it. And then realize, too, if you can do it, wash your hands – well, I mean, unless you have OCD – wash your hands until they feel clean.

Don Schaffner:
If you have OCD, you should see a psychiatrist about that, because that’s some serious business. But you can over-wash your hands. And so you want to…My advice is if you have poop on your hands, wash your hands. If you have chicken juice on your hands, wash your hands. Otherwise think about alternatives. You can think about using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. With the pandemic and with our concern about COVID many people are using more alcohol-based hand sanitizers, and that’s a fine alternative. Hand washing will remove germs from your hands, but hand washing is really in my mind designed for removing debris from your hands. If you have physical debris on your hands whether that’s poop or chicken juice, or just, I don’t know, dirt from digging in your garden, you want to get your hands clean.

Don Schaffner:
And soap is really good for that. But, and then again, soap it’s removing that debris, will also remove bacteria that you have on your hands. And that’s a good thing. But again, with bringing it back to COVID briefly for a minute, one of the things that the message we were hearing with COVID is wear masks, stay away from people, wash your hands. And sometimes even the ‘washing your hands’ came first. And I want to tweak that message. First of all, stay away from people, that’s by far the most important thing you can do. If you can’t stay away from people, wear a mask and oh yes, washing your hands was good before the pandemic it’ll be a good thing to do after the pandemic. But don’t think that just washing your hands really vigorously while going out and letting people huff in your face is going to stop you from getting COVID, because that’s not how we get COVID. That might be how we get other diseases, but washing your hands is really not the make-or-break tactic when it comes to preventing the pandemic.

Carolyn Schnare:
Let me ask you this, in terms of preventing getting someone sick if you’re making their food. I’m not specifically talking about like my own family, I mean that’s a whole different matter. But foodservice, convenience retail let’s bring it back to that. I was listening to one of your episodes, I don’t remember if it was a couple of weeks ago, but it was talking about like hand-washing as it goes…no, it was this week…anyway – workers and how they, I think you said there was only like three hand washes, or you can only do like three prep things before you should wash your hands again?

Don Schaffner:
So the Food Code says there’s a certain number of times when, in certain situations, when you need to wash your hands. And people have studied this and they’ve discovered that if people wash their hands as often as the Food Code dictated, they should wash their hands, they would spend somewhere between 25% and 50% of every hour literally walking to a handwashing sink or being in front of a handwashing sink. And so in my personal opinion, that’s an indication that the Code needs to change. The real, central issue, when it comes to handwashing is if somebody is sick with norovirus or Shigella or some other diarrheal disease, I don’t care how much they wash their hands, I want them not in the restaurant. And so the solution, I think to foodborne illnesses from workers, is a good, sensible sick policy that doesn’t incentivize workers to come to work while they’re sick.

Don Schaffner:
That’s the most important thing. And then yes, of course, people should wash their hands. I would love to see an alternative where if people’s hands are not physically dirty, that they can use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Right now that’s not allowed in the Code, but you know what we did 20 years ago? We made a change in hospitals and we saw compliance skyrocket, because guess what? Doctors and nurses are busy people. They don’t have time to wash their hands, but if you give them an alcohol-based hand sanitizer as an alternative, then they’re going to do that. Of course, if they got blood on their hands, of course they’re going to wash their hands. If you’ve got chicken juice, you’ve got poop on your hands, yes of course, wash your hands with soap and water. But if you don’t have those interfering compounds, we don’t have that physical debris on your hands, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Again, I kind of like to bug the FDA about that. And I’m sure they’d be happy if I didn’t talk quite so much about that. But, but I mean, I think the science would support that. We’re not yet there in terms of the regulations, but I’m confident that eventually we’ll get there.

Chris Blasinsky:
When we were at the NACS Show back in October, we had a food safety session and the presenter got to use the word poop. And so I said I think this is the first NACS show where we’ve had a session where someone gets to say poop. And I think in terms of this podcast, you’ve said it now like four times. So this is going to go down as the poop podcast.

Don Schaffner:
Well food microbiologists are interesting folks. We like to talk about vomiting and diarrhea often while we’re socializing over lunch or dinner. So if you’re uncomfortable…I’m a very squeamish person, but really vomit and diarrhea don’t bother me so much. Blood, on the other hand, if I see blood or go to get some blood work done, I always look away because that just freaks me out.

Chris Blasinsky:
There you go.

Chris Blasinsky:
It’s you and Mike Rowe. We met him a couple of years ago and he was the other one that talked about poop. So you and Mike Rowe have that unique distinction.

Chris Blasinsky:
You have a lot in common.

Don Schaffner:
Wow. Well, that’s an interesting comparison, I’ll have to think about that.

Carolyn Schnare:
Chris, you always tell me we should name our podcasts using like Search Engine Optimization or SEO. So in the title, if I use poop, I mean, it’ll get some listens. Just saying.

New Speaker:
Might not be the listeners you want.

Chris Blasinsky:
It’s going to be the ones we deserve. {Laughter} So I don’t remember when the first time I saw you on stage actually, was it IFP? I think that was…shoot, where do they make the baseball bats…Louisville. It was on the 5-second rule, which I just thought was hilarious, but I mean, you put out a legit study on 5-second rule because you know, there really is no 5-second rule. Is that kind of the gist of it?

Don Schaffner:
You know, that research is interesting because it kind of depends upon how you look at it. If you look at it, did the research show there was some period of time that was so short that no bacteria transferred and the answer to that is no. We always saw at least in some experiment, under some set of conditions, we always saw some bacteria transfer. But on the other hand, under certain circumstances, did more bacteria transfer over a longer period of time? And the answer there is yes as well. So, depending upon the food and depending upon the surface, more bacteria would transfer and then two other really important points with respect to that, we saw the one thing really facilitates bacterial transfer and that’s moisture. So one of the foods that we studied was watermelon. Guess what? You drop watermelon on anything, any bacteria on that surface are going to go to the watermelon because they moved.

Don Schaffner:
They don’t have legs. They may be at flagella, but they basically move with the water and so the bacteria will go where the water is. And that’s how you get transferred. If you drop a dry food on a dry surface, you’re going to get much less transport. And then the other thing to realize about our study is we loaded up these surfaces with high levels of a non-pathogenic microorganism. If you drop something onto a surface that is free of pathogens and you pick that food back up, well, there’s no spontaneous generation – there were no pathogens on that surface to begin with, so of course, none of them could transfer. And so my advice to people is, be sensible about it. If you drop food into dog poop, maybe don’t eat that. If you drop watermelon onto a kitchen floor where your dog has just walked, maybe don’t do that. If you drop a dry piece of cereal or a chocolate chip or a nut onto a clean carpet or a relatively clean area of your kitchen, it’s fine. Do what you want. I’m just telling you the science, do what you want.

Carolyn Schnare:
But what if it’s covered in dog hair?

Don Schaffner:
Well that’s a good question. You have to ask yourself how clean is your dog and do you mind a little dog hair? I try to avoid eating dog hair, but we’ve got two here in the house, you could probably hear them in the background, and I’m sure that I do eat a dog hair now and again.

Chris Blasinsky:
That’s just by nature of having a dog.

Carolyn Schnare:
That’s true. So one of the things I love about your show and Chris teed it up in the beginning, that you are the host of “Risky or Not.” And it’s a great short show generally anywhere between eight and maybe 15 minutes, depending on how fired up you guys get on whatever topic we’re talking about and everything from can you eat raw mushrooms? And I’ll say that I’ve changed some of my eating habits. Thank you. I don’t eat raw mushrooms anymore because you said that was risky. I do eat expired yogurt if I have to, because that’s okay. And hours old hotdogs I’m okay – I could apparently survive for like…a hot dog could be out for like three days, as long as it’s not touched by air and you can eat it. Anyway, going through all that, Chris and I thought we did the same thing with Dr. Ben. We talked to him about some risky or not behaviors. So can we throw some by you?

Don Schaffner:
Yeah sure, let’s do it.

Carolyn Schnare:
All right. One of my first ones, this was…we almost got into a heated discussion at our last team meeting the other day…we talked about water in a sealed bottle, but tap water. So like a Nalgene bottle, for instance, or whatever, sorry, brand name and you put water in there and you seal it, close it up and you go home and you come back like the next day or later that day. Can you drink it? Is it safe?

Don Schaffner:
Yeah. In fact, one of the early questions on “Risky or Not” was water on a bedside table. So I’ve got my water bottle here. Mine happens to be carbonated. I like that. And then I will fill up a big pint glass like this at the beginning of the night, I will set it on the counter. The risk there is, do I turn over and flail on my nightstand during the night? Only once – I do this every night and only once I knocked it on the floor. So I think I’m pretty good. But is it perfectly fine for it to sit there? Yeah. There’s not really anything in the water. That’s going to be there to support the growth of pathogenic bacteria. And so it’s probably just fine to sit there in an open glass or in a closed container is probably fine. Now, of course, what happens over time? If you like cold water, like me, the water heats up and it maybe doesn’t taste as good, but from the point of view of just sitting around for overnight or for a day, yeah, there’s not really anything there that’s going to allow any…if any pathogens were there, there’s not really any nutrients there to allow those bacteria to get multiply up to higher levels.

Carolyn Schnare:
So Chris, you were right.

Chris Blasinsky:
That’s ’cause I listened to the podcast.

Carolyn Schnare:
Oh no, it’s on record though. You were right.

Chris Blasinsky:
Point for Chris

Chris Blasinsky:
Point for Chris. What do you have, Chris? What’s your question?

Chris Blasinsky:
So I think you kind of already answered it with the pies, but you got on apple, what about pecan?

Don Schaffner:
You know this is a really good question and this is one of those things that we claim on the podcast is not to dither or equivocate and come up with straight-up answers. And unfortunately with pecan pie, the devil is in the details like what’s the recipe? How long did you bake it? I mean, the pecan pies that I’ve had tend to be…they have a lot of sugar in them, and then sugar lowers the water activity. Water activity is a measure of available water for bacterial growth. My guess is a pecan pie is generally not going to be risky, but you know, the problem is, am I now declaring all pecan pie forever in the world to be safe? Well, I’m a little hesitant to do that here on your podcast, without at least a little bit longer to dither and equivocate and to have Ben to provide the more risk-averse perspective on this.

Don Schaffner:
And so but generally speaking, yeah, I mean, again, what you really want to do…I really wish somebody would invent a home water activity meter. Now these are expensive instruments. They cost $5,000, $10,000. So people don’t have them in their home. Even, I don’t have one in my home, but there’s so many times I would love to just take a food and take it into the lab and measure the water activity because my guess is the pecan pie is going to have a sufficiently low water activity that it will not support bacterial growth. But again, the devil’s in the details, unfortunately.

Chris Blasinsky:
I think Ben debunked our colleague who was on the previous podcast where we did “risky or not,” he talked about leaving pizza out overnight and Ben was very clear. It’s like, okay, well, does it have vegetables on it? No. Okay. Well then probably okay.

Don Schaffner:
Yeah. It’s got cheese, which is already a relatively well-preserved food. It’s got tomato sauce, which has a low pH. The bread is baked. So again, it really depends upon what’s on the pizza,

Carolyn Schnare:
Well, this has been incredibly interesting and I learned things. As we are surrounding near holiday time, then it’s good to know what kind of pies that are sitting on the countertops we can’t or shouldn’t or can eat. So thank you for that. So I know we’ve said “Risky or Not” a bunch of times, you have another podcast as well – “Food Safety Talk” – that one’s longer, right? That one’s more for maybe individuals who know more in terms of food safety or serve food?

Don Schaffner:
You know, it’s hard to say. I mean, we started doing this, we’ve done “Food Safety Talk” for almost a decade now or more than a decade, I think. And so it’s really the chance for Ben and I to explore in long-form to explore food safety issues. And we talk about what television we’re watching and what sport his kids are playing. And it’s, so it’s a little more, it’s just a longer, more social gathering, but it gives us time to get into stuff that doesn’t have like black and white answers. And we can talk about foodborne disease outbreaks that are in the news. And so we can also take listener questions that are not as clear cut as “Risky or Not.” And so I would say they’re complementary, one’s long-form one short-form.

Don Schaffner:
It takes about the same amount of time net net, because “Risky or Not” comes out three days a week. But if you add up six episodes – two weeks worth of “Risky or Not,” that corresponds to about one episode of “Food Safety Talk” in terms of length. And we’ve tried to put out “Food Safety Talk” about every two weeks or so. So, probably net-net on a minutes-per-day basis, they’re probably about the same. And again, just depends upon what your style is. And certainly I mean, I encourage people listen to whichever one you like or you’re allowed to listen to both.

Carolyn Schnare:
I love it. I love it. And Chris also mentioned you have a very maybe humorous or interesting, or all of the above Twitter account. So what’s your Twitter handle? Where can people find you outside of your two podcasts?

Don Schaffner:
Yeah, so I am @Bugcounter on Twitter. So like ‘bug’ like the insect and ‘counter’ as in someone who counts things, of course I’m not talking about insects, but about microorganisms, which we colloquially referred to as bugs. I’m nominally a quantitative food microbiologist and so I like counting bacteria and being able to measure things quantitatively and so I went with the Twitter handle of Bugcounter. And, it’s got a mixture of food, safety stuff, it’s occasional political commentary Retweeting people I like or things that I just find funny. So I’m always a little embarrassed when somebody that I know from the professional world follows me on Twitter because I’m apt to say almost anything after a glass or two of wine, or Retweet something a little bit controversial, but hey it is what it is.

Chris Blasinsky:
You know, and I will say thank you, first of all, because I think throughout the pandemic and whatnot, there were voices of reason that spoke to the science and I think that you were definitely one of them. The narrative got away very, very quickly and it took some backtracking to actually go back and find the stuff that was actually peer-reviewed and…

Don Schaffner:
Yeah, and it was tough at the beginning of the pandemic because we didn’t have a lot of peer-reviewed stuff. But the good news is we’re getting better. We’re figuring out the science, we’re figuring out what really does matter in terms of risk. But thank you very much for that.

Chris Blasinsky:
Absolutely.

Carolyn Schnare:
Well, that certainly gets us to food safety matters as well as convenience matters. And Dr. Don, thank you so much for joining us today and Chris as well. And thank you for listening to Convenience Matters.

Convenience Matters Outro:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

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