Technology and Modern Food Safety with Darin Detwiler

then people working in food safety and quality assurance they're still going down the freeway at 65 miles an hour you can't just stop because people are making other decisions like we're not going to stop production right so anytime we're talking about adoption and adaptation with technology you're talking about a scenario where you're doing this while continually moving down the freeway at break speed so these challenges have to be understood and sometimes it doesn't come across as the simple story of the round Peg and the round hole or the one sze FS all or the Silver Bullet you have to talk about the complexity uh pre during and post adoption of technology and that takes again a lot more than just the food safety quality assurance expert hello and welcome to the next level supply chain with gs1us a podcast in which we explore the mindbending world of Global Supply chains covering topics such as automation Innovation unique identity and more I'm your co-host Reed and I'm Liz and welcome to the show hello everyone and welcome to the show before we get into our conversation today when you ate breakfast or lunch or dinner or whatever last meal you ate did you give any thought to food safety think about that for a second I don't know about you but I actually take it for granted the amount that goes into the safety of food not just in the United States but globally and today we have a really special guest his name is Dr Darren Detweiler and he's the CEO and founder of Detweiler Consulting Group he's been involved with food safety as an advisor and author associate professor of food policy and corporate social responsibility at nor Eastern University he's worked with the USDA the FDA he is all over the food safety modernization act and so much more he's been involved with this for over 30 years it is truly a personal dedication and journey for him and he left me inspired and I hope that he will leave you inspired as well we talked about a lot of things today technology the importance of collaboration courage and the importance of having a strategy so let's jump right into the conversation hey Darren how are you welcome to the show thank you very much for having me well we're glad you can carve out some time to be with us today I'm sorry we don't have Liz with us Liz had a family emergency she's taken care of but we really appreciate you carving out the time as I said now before we jump into our conversation would you just take a moment and just give a little background on yourself for our audience and just talk a little bit about your experience and what you're doing today sure so I have over 30 31 years of experience in terms of food safety and my experiences are a little bit different than I would imagine most people's I started the food safety business in 1993 after the death of my son two eoli I began working as an adviser to the secretary of agriculture on a variety of different topics over the years kind of transitioning out of the Navy I was a nuclear engineer on a submarine in the Navy wow you the quality Assurance inspector and I didn't really have much experience in the food industry but I was very aware of standards and inspection criteria and the reason behind them as one can imagine if we weren't meeting up to specific specifications requirements and inspection criteria for a submarine you're talking about the loss of a crew or a submarine and looking at the issues behind food safety at the time I had been in a situation where when I was conceptualizing you know why did I serve in the military it was the idea of I wanted to serve such that my children would not have to so there would be a better world for them and when my son was born while I was in the service I was wayed see and I remember thinking that I was only going to be out to see on a submarine for about a year into his life and then I have a whole lifetime to make up that period time missing as his father fig out the service so the whole idea of what I was doing with the Navy transitioned well into what I was doing with food safety just because I lost my son doesn't mean that my son lost his father and I would never want to live in a world like that so trying to help the USDA improve a fruit safety any way I could was a way for me to help achieve that and also try to make some meaning at least for myself behind his death I've served in various capacities where there it is working with labeling and consumer education with USDA working as a national advisory committee indan cultur I've worked with Nos and food safety I have consulted with the FDA and the CDC over the years but along the way I became a professor my doctorate in law and policy I've been an educator for a very long time and I've been a professor for over 15 years within the space and then comes being an author being a columnist being an adviser being a keynote speaker and basically a rather well-rounded I would call it set of experiences that puts me in a position where I have observed and been a part of the evolution of food safety over the last three decades I am almost dumbfounded here all struck you're pulling on so many emotional cords for me personally I didn't serve in the military but my father grandfather uncles great-grandfather all did and that's just one and then having two sons of my own and a daughter and family and all of this and when you have kids that changes and my cousin actually was in the Navy and served in a submarine and was deployed three times and it's different I wasn't prepared for this today Darren I really wasn't prepared for this conversation but wow there's so much to pull back here and we're going to focus and stay in on this food safety aspect before we jump in just tell us a little bit about what you do with your consulting company because you have deweer Consulting Group LLC what is the share of the work you're doing there so again it's one of those scenarios where I do everything from a lot of keynote speeches I do a lot of adding to corporate or state level or federal level sometimes even county level conversations around food safety I know a lot of us go to these meetings and there's many of the same predictable elements there's regulatory updates there's scientific updates there's teaching about this new technology or new procedures or here some data we've accumulated and assessed and I come in and actually I did at tedex talk about this a while back used to be that it came in and I talked about 1993 and I talked about my son's death but over the many years I have evolved this I barely talk about I mean I do I'm influenced by that but I talk about my experiences sitting in boardrooms meeting with Executives looking at the idea of the legacy of companies and future legacies and what does this mean and ultimately I try to put forth a message of Hope and encouragement validation in terms of the work that people are doing and bring together both the academic perspective the personal perspective but also that kind of I guess if you will inspirational message my work is there to improve food safety and there's so many people so many great people involved in food safety and if we can't cultivate and validate and celebrate the courage that it takes them to do their job then we'll lose that very human element that's needed behind everything we have to do in terms of food safety the amount of Courage that it takes to keep up with the challenges and the stresses and the daily momentum of the work we have to do and I look at it in terms of this look if I can't be supportive of the work that's being done out there and look at the people in terms of their courage and their herculan effort in food safety then who can so I work with various companies that want to look at their product or their service their role within food safety I help them understand the regulatory landscape I help them understand policies I help them understand the complexities of the landscape and in many cases I work with them whether it's at a conference or at an event I host podcasts and sometimes I'm guests sometimes of hosts of podcasts it is this idea of the positive and constructive discourse around fruits safety the evolution of food safety but also I guess the last thing I would add is working with media because many times those who are writing about the events they don't have the history behind it they don't have the sense of oh this is one more item in a long series of the seemingly endless cycle of failures and reform I'll talk with journalists sometimes and they don't know the difference between the USDA and the FDA or they don't know that oh we've had this problem many many times or they don't know they'll see that documentary poison that I was in that came out last year and they'll be surprised that I say that I avoid these Foods why do I avoid these foods and what does that mean and so a lot of it is just connecting those pieces from a neutral position I don't work for this food company and I don't work for that government I work with these various companies and entities and Gros groups and it's a very complex and Rich work environment in which my spheres of influence are cross with so many incredible people there's a lot there I want to just give a thought that came to mind you know because you talked about like all the stuff going on within food right and I look at it a little bit historically it's so funny because growing up my Dad read history books every night every night he read a history book and he would finish a book in two days and I'm not a strong reader like that I have dyslexia and so I always struggled with it and was like I hate now I absolutely love history and where we are and there's a famous quote from Henry Ford if you believe you can or can't you're right and it's kind of like to sum it up it's glass half full glass half empty and for generations and generations and generations you've always heard oh the world is burning and everything is terrible and this is that and then at the same time for every generation isn't this wonderful look at how advanced medicine look at how abundant food is and you could in very quickly in a convers say oh we're up to over 50% food waste but we could also say we're over 50% food supply the abundance of food for people we take for granted going to a grocery store and eating healthy stuff every day yes processed food we can go down that rabbit hole we can go down a lot of things but I think it's because of the history that you've had and experiences you mentioned something within talking about what you do it peaked my interest because I'm a technology guy but you said new procedures and new technology what are you seeing right now with new tech new trends what's the big thing going on in food safety right now I mentioned earlier Herculean effort and I'm going to go back to that just for one brief second because I believe that Herculean effort is this enormous amount of work strength and courage and while I did mention courage as well you know we can find how digital Solutions technology data collection analysis can help us with the work and strength what I often find is that when you have food safety quality insurance leadership who look at technology and Innovation there are two challenges they face one is that their goals that they want to achieve are not necessarily short-term goals many times within technology aspects you're looking at long-term goals but when you look at the investor because technology and these digital Solutions often require money too many times investors look at the need for short-term return on investment and so there has to be this balance between that short-term Roi and the long-term Roi and if you look at the endgame if you look at the idea of trying to break beyond that shortterm Roi and say that look down the road will be able to achieve this you have to have again that support that courage and the ability to look beyond that but the other challenge they face is that the people that often have the purchase or the decisionmaking powers are not the people that are going to be using that technology they're not the ones that would technically understand some of this and I've been at some of these events you know back when blockchain was the big conversation I was in meetings with Executives and they were saying things like well look we're going to wait until our competitors you know until so many people have this and then we'll jump on board later down the road because we don't want to be the first to adopt but we're not going to do anything until we're ready to adopt and I would say things to them like well okay but you can't not do anything until you're D you have to have things squared away your data collection your data storage your data security your data analytics who's going to analyze those data and don't tell me your it team it's completely different set of people than who would be actually doing your data analytics and then with your data analytics how are you going to test to make sure that it actually is achieving the goals you want to achieve you have to put a lot of foundational work into this before you even bring on board any type of digital or other type of Technology Solutions in order to do this and I would have these conversation over and over and over again where again these different forces meanwhile the people working in food safety and quality assurance it's like look they're still going down the freeway at 65 miles an hour you can't just stop because you know people are making other decisions like we're not going to stop production right so anytime we're talking about adoption and adaptation with technology you're talking about a scenario where you're doing this while continually moving down the freeway at break speed so these challenges have to be understood and sometimes it doesn't come across as the simple story of the round Peg and the round hole or the one sit fits all or the Silver Bullet you have to talk about the complexity uh pre- during and post adoption of technology and that takes again a lot more than just the food safety quality assurance expert I love the car analogies because I'm a car guy I'm also a technology guy so I love that as well I often use the analogy of a race car you can have a Ferrari you can have a Formula 1 car and you can have the best of the best but if you don't have a good driver and you don't have a good pit crew and you don't have a plan it's just a boat anchor someone will drive it into the wall right away you won't even finish the first lap but when you have the process the strategy the spot checking the maintenance and I think that's a big piece that people often Overlook it's like you can have the brightest shiniest newest coolest AI technology but how are you spot checking it how are you applying maintenance to it where are you evolving does that make sense I mean am I am I corre I'll add one more Lev even with the best car the best driver and the best pit crew and technicians and everything guess what you still have you still have seat belts and airbags because you predict the idea that things may go wrong and that you may need to have either redundant fire helmets exactly you're still predicting that there are invisible dangers or complications out there that may exist and again you can't make the assumption that just because you have the best of everything that these things can't happen and it could be that it's an internal problem or an external problem but you have to be prepared for that you have to have those plans in place and guess what you can't go oh you know what I should have put a celd in when you're going around the track you have to have thought about that in advance so it's not just moving down the track but it's that kind of pre during post Predictive Analytics but also the resolution stage and also the combining of all the different expertise even that driver that driver the best driver you can find still has some limitations in terms of their understanding of the engine design or certain elements TR exactly needs to depend on and trust those people around them even if they have completely different skill sets but they're all involved in the overall Act of making this successful so I'm smiling so big here because we talked about my dad in history books and you just mentioned something about you know like seat belts like the reason that we have them is cuz we learned from the history and that's what my dad would say it's like I'm planning for the future by looking at the past and you have three decades of experience within this field starting from a tragic spot with the loss of your son but leveraging skills that you have and knowledge that you have and then really diving in I'd like to Pivot here a little bit and if you could share because we learn more from our failures than we do our success successes because they sting so much right I always say like our failure is the new Wrinkle in the brain and it's this opportunity to really learn and to let it sit in so I was wondering if you might be able to share some of the bigger failures you've seen within food safety so that others could learn from it because as we're moving forward as you said technology for technology sake it's not it you need the whole team and leverage but ironically I made this statement just a short while ago none of of the big failures that I've ever seen had anything to do with technology I think one of the problems we have are you familiar with ESG ESG yes you're talking about sustainability and that the environmental social governance it's a very financial sector look insurance companies and investment companies look at this carbon footprint monitoring exactly yeah yeah I bring this up because I think what happens here is that if you look at most of these big food safety failures you will find that there were other red flags that were there all along if you weren't waiting for it to be so close to impacting the consumer and look for the red flag if you're looking at ESG you would have found other warnings earlier I've talked with some leaders I sit down in boardrooms from time to time and I talk with companies and they'll say you know well look we've had a pretty good Legacy when it comes to food safety after this event we had look at our Legacy we got this award we got this award we changed this award around I say well that's great to look at your past and think about Legacy but let's look at the idea of 30 years from now 30 years from now if you're not looking and in some cases whoever's at the helm of these companies 30 years from now are likely not even going to have been born or or around to have understood what happened in 1993 to really kind of put us into our current ERA of food safety right we can look at an array of Technology we can look at different things but here's the deal think about that job posting and the job description right for a seite executive for fsqa leader whatever I guarantee we all want courage but you never see a bullet with the word courage after it so how do we attract courage how do we cultivate courage how do we validate and celebrate courage and that something that I don't see nearly enough this is why I bring this into the work I do in terms of look if I don't do this then how can I ask other people to do it and and if we don't have this then how are we going to sustain this for the long term and how are we going to get past even the challenges we can't predict we need to have that courage it is such a human element and what's amazing is the Myriad ways you can define courage and explain courage but we all say at the end of the day yeah we want it that's right yeah it's not easy my dad would come back to be like and this is why you need to study history read we are running out a time I can't believe the time we're on already but I do want to close out with at least one of the questions we always ask or guest one of the questions we always ask and it's just our interest and just for people to get to know you a little bit but what's your favorite technology that you're using today is personally professionally just something that's impacting your life and you're like yeah I really value this what's your favorite piece this might not be the predicted answer but I'm going to say social media one of the biggest changes I've seen over three decades is that today as opposed to three decades ago consumers are considered to be stakeholders within the food system within the food industry the food supply food safety landscape more so today than ever before and I believe that social media has a great deal a role to play in that we are not only asking questions we are sharing information we're contributing like Cloud sourcing data there are studies out there that have proven that in some cases there's more information that are helping people find people that are ill even outbreaks through social media because people are quicker to use social media than they are to contact the County Health Department and say exactly like with this we have people that are not only passive but they're active and they're even generative in terms of information around food safety one of the biggest successes I think with the documentary poison that I was in is that it generated so much conversation around food safety people asking questions people pointing out this pointing out that but to me when I talk to people most often about food safety it's after it's too late it's after their child's already in the hospital or after they've already buried a child and most people are reactive to talk about food safety but to see with social media that people are talking about food safety and it's not just the I got sick from my family reunion it's the hey I'm gonna have a family reunion and what can I do to make sure that Grandma and Grandpa don't get sick or or whatever and I think that we talk about a lot of different data collection and Analysis typ Technologies but we have to realize that you said earlier we have to make sure that consumers are first and foremost and that their involvement in it they're never going to be dealing with technologies that the leaders behind the scenes would be using for data collection and Analysis and Regulatory Compliance and things of that nature but if you look at the role of social media I think it's significant to note and I think that it'll continue to be a significant element within the greater picture of food safety as we go forward yeah I couldn't agree more I mean I know that there'll be people out there social media is terrible like you said it wouldn't be the guest answer but I think that the yin and yang and the balance of the world the good and bad it's still getting a lot more awareness out there I can tell you myself I would look at things like oh that's not that big of a deal and now I'm like maybe I should pause maybe I should read in a little bit more and so just that right there can really help Darren I can't thank you enough for spending this time with us and sharing your back background and your history and really just sparking a fire and an interest into an area that is so vast I mean we didn't even touch on 204 today which is amazing um it sounds like we might have to have a part two that's where I'm kind of going as well but for now thank you appreciate your time thank you very much thank you for joining us on this episode of The Next Level supply chain with gs1 us if you enjoyed Today's Show please subscribe to our and explore more great episodes wherever you get your podcasts don't forget to share and follow us on social media thanks again and we'll see you next time

2024-08-12 15:36

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