Food Safety Talk, a bi-weekly podcast for food safety nerds, by food safety nerds.  The podcast is hosted by Ben Chapman and barfblog contributor Don Schaffner, Extension Specialist in Food Science and Professor at Rutgers University.  Every two weeks or so, Ben and Don get together virtually and talk for about an hour.  They talk about what’s on their minds or in the news regarding food safety, and popular culture. They strive to be relevant, funny and informative — sometimes they succeed. You can download the audio recordings right from the website, or subscribe using iTunes.

Show notes for episode 48:

The guys started the show with some general chit chat about The Beer Store and The Nail Shop, the Beach Boys, including “Pet Sounds“, Chuck Berry, Bed Bad Baaaaaaatz, Don’s Etymotic hf5 earphones, Twitter, (including this discussion), and Barbara M. O’Neill‘s great work.

Prompted by a link from Alejandro Amezquita the guys then turned their attention to laundry and in the process gave the phrase “Eat My Shorts!”meaning. In the article, Lisa Ackerley discussed the hygiene of laundering. The guys recalled a couple of research articles by Chuck Gerba related to the topic (here and here). Neither Don nor Ben were particularly worried about this.

This reminded Ben of The Salt article on cooking food in the dishwasher. The guys discussed the potential risk of this approach and the sciences that is needed. Another [The Salt article on washing poultry had also resulted in a large amount of social media engagement, which is something the Don and Ben are always keen to explore. And both enjoyed Alton Brown’s proper method for washing out the inside of a whole poultry.

The guys then moved onto the bug trivia replacement segment called Food Safety History, in honour of a 100 years of the IAFP Journal of Food Protection. In this episode the Don covered the pre 1940 era. It all started with the Journal of Milk Technology and the connection with raw milk reminded Ben of this Toronto Star article.

Don then wanted to talk about this NY Times article, related to Salmonella in spices, and the related Food Microbiology article. Don posed Ben the questions that he was asked for a Q&A based Rutgers media release on this topic and the guys compared their answers.

The guys then got fired up about the Cronut Burger related outbreak article by Jason Tetro. Ben didn’t quite agree with some of Jason’s assumptions, so Ben queried the manufacturers about the parameters of the product, which Le Dolci didn’t know. Ben eventually found the answer from Toronto Public Health, and was able to set the record straight

To finish off, Don mentioned The New Disruptors podcast, which featured Marisa McClellan in Episode 38 “Yes, we can!”talk about food preservation. Don was pleasantly surprised by her knowledge, including of the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

In the after dark the guys continued with canning, including Canvolution, Canning Across America and pink flamingos for their 50th episode.