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.
The show opened with a long discussion of various philosophical issues relating to careers in Academia, followed by a brief diversion into gutter cleaning drones, comiXology, and the new TV show Silicon Valley.
Ben shared he has been listening to Gord Downie, The Sadies, And The Conquering Sun. Downie will be familiar to FST podcast listeners as the Canadian rock musician, writer, occasional actor who is the lead singer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. Don noted that he had backed the new Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry Album kickstarter project.
In the follow up segment the guys noted that a new show noter was still needed, before moving on to a listener question from Jon Kimble about the protective effect of wine in foodborne disease outbreaks. Ben also talked about his experiences at a raw milk conference he attended in Canada. Fortunately for Ben, Dave Semenko was not needed.
The Outbreak flashback segment of the show flash all the way back to the 1981 listeriosis outbreak linked to coleslaw made from cabbage fertilized with sheep manure. Ben noted that sheep were also one among many possible Listeria sources in Jensen farms outbreak, as also indicated by fashion plate and Apple guy, Dr. Lawrence Goodridgequoted in the story.
Ben wanted to talk about Hep A and Tevana, when the show finally started, because he is a mall rat. This led to a discussion aboutHepatitis A vaccinations for Foodservice workers. While it might not be “cost effective”, it still might be the right thing to do.
The discussion then turned to sous vide cooking, and a new product on the market, and Don’s interactions with the reviewed.com reviewers as well as the product manufacturers in the comments. Don was less successful in leaving comments on a recent sous vide NPR blog post, but thanks to Doug, Don was able to weigh in on barfblog.
Don then quizzed Ben (who is from Canada), regarding whether he now lives in the South.
The show ended with a mention of the passing of noted self experimenter Seth Roberts, including the predictable reaction from hacker news. More on his cause of death has been provided on his blog, posted after FST recorded.