Episode 7: Quality Assurance, Quality Control, and Why It Matters

[Music] Welcome to Food Products FAQ. A podcast we're going to discuss how we make food products and the steps it takes to make yours. I'm Adam Yee. And I'm Brian Chao. And we're both independent food consultants who've been through the food industry for over a decade and we're here to share with you how we make great food products and have been sold in thousands of stores. Welcome to episode 7. QA QA QA? Today we're going to be yeah QC and QA or as we call it for people who don't know those acronyms because we just hear it so much quality assurance and quality control. There are two different things and we'll explain that in this episode actually we'll probably use this might now. Brian do you have a definition of quality assurance and quality control and how are they different? Yeah, quality control is when you are dealing with the problem at the point in which it occurs. So you're controlling the problem in of itself. Quality assurance I think of it as like a little bit more of an insurance you are preparing and you're doing preventative measures in things of that nature. Two different mindsets. One is more laying out the foundation of risk mitigation and the other is like oh something happened all right what do we do now? Yeah and they are interlinked right? Like the documents for quality assurance affect quality control. Yes yes if you don't have one proper setup or good foundation it makes it very hard for actually solving the problem because you don't know from a transparency lens or documentation where the chain of custody started or ended and how you can actually address those issues. You know this is a very very document heavy portion of food and we have these documents for a reason just over the past I would say century this has been kind of building up and you know I always give the example I think every food science class is the example. If first guy recognized the like food stages an issue from the book The Jungle and when was the jungle made? Take 1912. Oh not you? 1920s or something like that right? Originally part of 1905 actually so the jungle is a it was a book that exposed the businesses specifically at the meat packing industry where just meat was was the wild last I mean people were losing hands in meat mixes they were shipping meat in unrefigerated carts at the time like basically this whole thing was just a super unsanitary and how we think about meat today where when you walk in the grocery stores nearly packaged it's it's in these frozen or refrigerated rows so we have come a long way from there but there's a reason why we do these documentation purposes to make sure your food is safe. Yes definitely it's it's come a long way for sure I mean part of its regulation part of its documentation but a lot of it's really the internal team members that are working at these manufacturing plants or working with you to really make sure that you have good quality and quality means a lot of things to a lot of different people but from our perspective quality is food safe consistent and measurable. Mm-hmm that's very true so one example is I don't know let's let's go to the orange juice right some orange juices are different colors in general you when you have the same brand it is always the same consistent color it always has the same consistent sugar because there are measures in place that make it consistent. Yes so measures for orange juice specifically are on the citidate so taking a look at treatatable acidity not just only pH and what treatatable acidity means is you're measuring the type of acid that's found in this particular orange juice in this case citric acid because that actually influences the flavor whereas the pH only tells you how acidic something is if it's a sharp acid or not but not the flavor profile because there's there's a sedic acid there's malic acid things of that nature and in orange you might find nuances in a bit of tartaric acid and it may be a little bit of malic acid but predominantly it's citric acid and then another thing is the bricks which is how sweet the orange juice can be there are sweet oranges and there's different varieties that are more sweet bread to be sweet whereas others are bred to be more sour but they just happen to be able to grow in larger yields. Yes so documentation like these are all documented down they're all tested they're all validated I don't think we'll go into a super big detail about the steps it takes to do that but I do think it's important to have you as the brand owner to understand why we do this is to make sure you have a consistent and safe product that will taste the same from winter to summer. Yeah and I think a good example is if you take a look at McDonald's in the in its heyday people go to McDonald's around the world or even across the United States because not only is it was it at that time you know cost effective but it was consistent quality of a burger wherever you went and so you didn't have many mom and pop shops or other chains that had that consistency. It's a different story nowadays because they started to lose their control over QA and QC especially with the recalls that are happening and it's all about making sure that the supply chain and the specifications are met to those standards and that part of that's QA and QC work. Do you know like someone who travels a lot and just goes McDonald's I met a few people like that I found it really funny that they don't want to try new foods not just one of them. It's really McDonald's only but they try a lot of fast foods and some of them would especially if you're looking at say the Midwest where I am currently colvers people are die hard, pulver fans because it's only a Midwest fast food chain but then for people who travel a lot that even for me sometimes I would prefer to go get an in and out with him back in California just because you don't get that in all the places but it's pretty consistent in terms of the flavor that I'm looking for and things like that. Definitely I will say just just a short anecdote story when I went to McDonald's in Singapore they have one of the best fried chickens in the world I don't know why but I really enjoyed. I still think about that fried chicken from McDonald's in Singapore often. Yeah overseas McDonald's has its own different set of standards in terms of food safety, innovation and quality assurance. Yes, oh that's a good point. I'm glad we were able to link those stories of something unrelated to something related. Every single country has their own different way of documenting their food safety and quality assurance and quality control procedures. So you know keep that in mind some are more strings than others. For example, European countries generally have a different way of talking about their ingredients and also they they ban certain ingredients from being used compared to other countries. So it's always important for you to understand in terms of whether you choose to manufacture internationally or not but you know it's something that pops up quite often. Yeah it's even if you're looking at the neighbors of the United States. Canada has a different set of regulations and how they look into say the whole functional food side of things they're actually more strict rather than the United States. You know here in the United States it's pretty new of a category to look at functional foods. So the quality assurance and quality control is more on the food side of things whereas in Canada if you're looking at specific claims and you want some fiber content and things of that nature often it's more in the supplement side of things and it's a little bit more strict closer to the drug and pharmaceutical almost as if you're going to get a clinical trial even if it's not necessary. And then if you're looking down to Mexico if you have added sugars and it's a considerable amount of added sugars in say beverages there are a lot of those black signs to say a lot of added sugars or added sugars in general. And that's actually across Central and South America and the United States you know if you are trying to import that into the United States you don't have as much strictness it's just the difference is you just call out the added sugars. Canada doesn't have the call out of added sugars in Mexico and Central and South American general it's not the call out of added sugars on the back of the label it's more of in the front of the package this black octagon if you will a black stop sign. Yep I recognize that when I was in Chihuahua Mexico some of the products there were really adamant about added sugars compared to let's say the US which kind of makes it as a subsection of sugars. I do know that so to keep in my America is actually a pretty easy place to launch a food product compared to other countries. It is not me you shouldn't take it seriously but I will say that it has it is there's a reason why people flock to America and it's other food product one it is easier to people want to spend more on cool food. Yes and only that if you're looking at consistency of results and working with the right contract manufacturer essentially a lot of these contract manufacturers have to follow a protocol in the protocol to be GMP. I think is ISO 22,000 or FSSC 22,000 if you're trying to export out of the United States, but then even more strict standards like SQF or BRC. There's a high level of food safety standards that a lot of other developing countries are looking at the United States as a golden standard. So if you're going from overseas as an immigrant and trying to lay the foundation of a food brand in the United States, there is going to be more strictness in food safety regulations and policies and actual QAQC that goes around it. And it's there for a necessity because that's what makes making food in the United States easier. Because we know it's going to be more or less food safe. Can it slide? Can the operation slide? Yes. So that's where you have to maintain that due diligence and the QAQC communications. Yeah. Let's kind of talk in a scale perspective about these types of regulations because I do think that sometimes new food businesses can get pretty overwhelmed about what to actually have in your company at that specific stage. And food safety is all about scale at the end of the day. Like, like, all the fun. Actually, everything is about safety. So number of things. It's a numbers game. Specifically, the regulators, like the FDA, really care about the number of people you're going to impact through the food that you make. So if you are a small company or you're selling cookies at a bake sale, there are starting to regulations revolving that, but they're not very difficult. And I will also say they're most likely a state level situation. So for example, when I lived in Phoenix, Arizona, there was something called the Cod is industry law, where you can make cookies in your house and sell them. Like, yeah, some states are different. Some states are not. There's generally a Cod is industry law somewhere. I'm just starting the very basic for food businesses that there are and Cod is industry law is there are certain products that are good and there's certain products that can't be good. Like, for example, you can't slaughter animals, sell it in your kitchen. But you can bake cookies because just time time again, cookies that are baked and sold cooked are much safer than let's say meat that is cooked or sold raw. So after that stage, you will eventually have to graduate to a bigger facility like commercial kitchen. And I believe this is still state focused, right, Brian? Yeah, I'll sit in state. Yeah, I'm going to base it off of California for at least the because I started two companies of California. We generally have to register with the state of California in Sacramento and do something called a process food. We mentioned it before. I was giving it process food requirement. What is it? Requirement. Yeah, for our process. Yeah. So we use a PFR process food registration from the state of Sacramento. And that is a, I don't want to say a cumbersome process, but it does take a long time if you don't know the right way to do it. It basically means that if you bug them over and over again, they'll eventually prove you. They have certain documentation that you need, specifically a food safety plan, which will go over in a little bit of detail. And then they generally will require a tour to your facility, though sometimes that may not happen because they're just so busy. I think there's some nuanced ones as well. Like, registering with the FDA, there is some seller things that you have to do. Depending on who you're selling your initial products to, it is quite different depending on the stage you're in and the state you're in. Yes. I mean, in the state of Louisiana, when I help out the people out of Perpeller, Nola, the incubators, and accelerate program there, they actually rely more on the state department of agriculture. Whereas on California, it's going to be the department of public health. If you're in the smaller level and then it moves into agriculture if it's more commodity-based, but it's more public health. And then once you move out of that, then essentially, it's more federal guidelines. So if you're operating different states, they also take a look at the different type of products that are acceptable within the domain of cottage food law. So for example, Minnesota, because there's a lot of culture around sourcrow, that is a reliable product to be considered able to sell from a small business owner under the cottage food law out of your own house. Yeah. So every state is quite different. It is crazy just how date-focused it is at a certain extent until you hit literally national sales. I'll give you an example of something that I'm one of my longtime clients is a rice dental factory in the Bay Area. They recently hit a threshold where they were making such a million dollars of revenue. And they were put on the FDA's radar. And the FDA slapped on this kind of ordinance or the call consent decree. They slapped on this thing saying, you can't sell this anymore because it doesn't have this, this, and this. And that became a whole ordeal for them specifically because they had this business where they really just didn't do anything. They're a mom and pop Chinese owned, you know, other employees spoke Chinese and they kind of just built this business from the ground up for 30 years. They really had nothing in place. They didn't have a food safety plan. They didn't have just any regulations whatsoever. No documentation for ingredients. It took a lot of time and a lot of money to build up that system. But I will say that that specific product is a, it's a, it's a fresh rice noodle that you have to sell literally in like two days. And they do sell it. Actually, surprisingly, they, they literally make a fresh. They have their own logistics company where they send this, these rice noodles all over the Bay Area and they do make a profit off of it. And they sell for a really cheap too. But I think the big one is like because California did not understand the product, like they had to make regulations in the ground up for this specific product when it got pretty popular. And that's just to keep in mind like the states don't know every single product in the world. And they, if they are skeptical about it, which, you know, they should be for a fresh rice noodle that's being sold in a supermarket. They, they might have some special exceptions, good or bad on your specific product. Yeah, the same applies with new innovations, the same applies to new ingredients that are entering into the market. Really, from the state's eyes, they're just trying to figure out, you know, is this a food safe product for the general population? And they just want the data to just back it up. It's not to say that, oh, we're, we as the FDA or we as the department department of public health or agriculture don't want you to sell the product. It's more about let's be a bit careful about this because the worst case scenario is for you as the brand owner, you're going to have to go through a recall because of some food safety issue or, or some sort of issue that could have been mitigated from the QAQC side of things. Yeah. And I think what's good about food in general is that we as scientists, like every single food scientist is taught really, really on what makes food rot. And what makes food, what what what organisms are grown in food that make you sick, we understand that quite extensively. And it's a very common language between food scientists to know that's right. So, you know, simply pH is really important for food. Water activity is really important for food. Some of us that would argue if you guys don't know what that is, it's pretty much acidity and moisture. A little bit different, but you don't really need to know that. And I guess the way it's packaged is also really important too for mitigation purposes. So, there's like a few key things that all food scientists look out for when it comes to making a food product. Yeah. And I will say that there's a way of communicating all of these different QAQC protocols or food safety protocols that we as food scientists should try to do better. You know, I've interacted with some food science consultants where they're like, oh, if you don't do this, it's going to kill people. It's like, well, okay, we don't have to go through that extreme. In some cases, sure, I mean, if we're looking at canned foods that goes through a retort process that has like meat or beans inside and you're not doing your due diligence, and yes, you can get botulism. But if you're creating something like a cookie, you know, if it's undercooked and things like that, yes, people can get sick from say salmonella from eggs and things of that nature. But if it's cooked, but not to the degree in which you have low enough water activity for one year shelf life or more, then there becomes issue in terms of spoilage. So it's sometimes it could be as severe as a food safety risk where somebody goes to the hospital or passes away, unfortunately. And then there's also a degree in which your food spoils because you may not have the quality standards for that long term shelf life. And I think that's something that we should be talking about is that not all the food products from a food science standpoint. should achieve food safety, I've said that food safety, shelf stability from a shelf stable standpoint. It could be okay to just position your product in the refrigerated aisle or the frozen aisle. It's more about that brand positioning. And then from that point, it's also talking to those type of clients and customers with regards to about food spoilage. 'Cause there are going back to that cookies. If you have a water activity between 0.7 and 0.8, these are just metrics, these are measurements in terms of numbers. It is a food safe cookie, if you do it properly, the issue is it has a higher chance of yeast and mold growth if you leave it out in room temperature. And it just stays there for months at end. Right, those are your fresh baked cookies that your grandmother, you know, bakes and then you want to sell that to the population. That's something you want to keep in mind. Because what we want to do as food scientists is if you want to go to a shelf stable cookie, and not like a cookie dough, then essentially we want to bring that water activity down. Basically that means either dry it out so that it is able to maintain a roughly 0.65 water activity up below so that you can actually sell this type of cookie without concerns of yeast or mold growth. If it is higher, let's say 0.8 is 0.9, then you have a higher chance of, if I can recall, I might be flipping the two lactic acid bacteria in which you have fermentation in a sour sense, and that's not necessarily good from a quality perspective either. Not necessarily going to kill people, but people won't like it. It's just going to make people feel nauseous. Like it doesn't taste good. And in some degrees, it can lead to food spoilage where it does lead to gastrointestinal distress. From a level of 0.9 to one, that's where you have food pathogens that we need to be able to mitigate. So those are just some ideas of QAQC could be from a food safety perspective, but we also just want to take a look at the data. It's like, oh, maybe it's not necessarily a food safety as in a pathogen concern, but it maybe it's more of a concern of visually after opening a package. Oh, there's mold growth here. I'm going to throw this away. And then essentially, you're going to have a return in a lot of customer complaints. Yes, yes, that's a good point. And I think, you know, this has a lot of science behind it, and there are a lot of gunnepushbacks that you can get with dealing with quality control. So it's only a water activity, which I think a lot of just lay people just don't understand, which makes sense as a very scientific term. People don't want to eat moldy cookies, or they don't want to eat molds, right? Like, we've been kind of biologically trained to not want to eat mold, and there is a reason why some things don't mold is because we as food scientists do understand how mold grows, and we either use certain processes or certain ingredients to prevent mold growth. Okay, it's up to you on how you want to make your product at the end of the day, but this is what we focus on. We focus on eliminating those factor, or we focus on making your product last as long as possible by controlling these factors of essentially unwanted guests, like bacteria and mold, to grow on your food. But it is, it is, there is definitely a movement to not use those type of techniques. We, as food scientists believe that there are, there is a middle ground, or there are ways to satisfy both customers. And we do understand kind of the impacts of some of these changes as well. Yeah, it's really dependent on the category and how you want to sell this particular product as well. You know, Adam is working with a rice noodle type of company, and they sell it as a pretty fresh product that you want to be able to consume within two days. That's a very different mindset than that of somebody selling a cookie. If you want to sell a moist cookie, then sell in the refrigerator dial. And then just, you know, do your business model or structure your business model so that it's a high velocity and your own point of distribution highly localized at first. If you're trying to go into the shelf stable space, that's a different mindset. And so we can help structure the food safety protocols, as well as QAQC protocols, so that it actually is being mindful and that you're actually making the right decision making in the strategy. Because what we don't want you to do is agree to something, or we agree to something in which it's not aligned from the brand side of things, because if you're not making the sense in dollars, then really makes no sense for us to necessarily move forward together. And what we also don't want to do is be able to rush into things where you have to go through a recall. And that could be from a packaging standpoint or it could be something that could have been easily mitigated. Because a recall is more costly than actually doing the actual due diligence. - Yeah, and so it can be company ending and it can literally kill your company. - It's bad PR. You're not getting cash flow because all your product now has to go back or gets destroyed. You have to figure out where is it a supplier issue or is it a manufacturer issue, so now it's like managing stakeholders or is it a logistics issue that you have to manage. And these are outside factors in which you have to really speak to the people and be on the grounds and figure out where is this coming from so that I don't have to deal with this again. It's a huge headache. That PR is probably kills brands a lot more than anything. - Definitely, it really slows you down to a halt. So in general, this stuff is hard to do. There's a reason why it's hard to do, but it is very important to make sure that our food is safe. Let's kind of get it in an integrated speaking of hard to do about this. By discussing the documents we usually see in quality as a quality control. I think one in particular is what, God, they changed every two years, which I hate. And they changed it to so many different documents or whatever. I used to be called a HASSA plan, but now it's specifically called a food safety plan, which includes a HASSA plan, which is hazard analysis critical control point. So right now, from the current lexicon, it is called a food safety plan that usually every company should have to describe their plan to make sure that their food product is safe. - Yes. And just to let you know, HASSA is shorthand for hazard analysis critical control points. And basically what that means is you're identifying the risks that you need to be able to prevent. So the risk would be something called a critical control point at CCP. And that could be, you need a roast or bring up to temperature at a certain level in your process, and you need a cook for some duration so that you could eliminate, equalize, almond oil or whatever bacteria, et cetera. That is a CCP. Another could be, let's say there's a high chance of some sort of heavy metals in the ingredient itself. And in which case, you want to be able to mitigate that by sending it through a metal detector. And that's just from raw agricultural products, right? There could be heavy metals just naturally in the environment. And it's very hard for you to just remove that. So essentially what you want to do is figure out in post-harvest and processing. If it's such a high level, that the metal detectors can essentially push out that particular product, so you don't have to deal with it by hand and figure out, okay, which of this ingredient has a lot of heavy metals. - Yeah, another one that the RISEL company really was hammered on was their pH process. So that was a critical choice for us. The pH had to be low and it had to be validated to be low. These are generally good measures to have in a process standpoint as well. It allows you to narrow down your formula. It allows you to put kind of this benchmark to understand kind of where your recipe is going. - Yeah. And let's look into the categories that are not necessarily intensive in terms of heating or anything of that nature and into like say, beverages like soda, things of that nature, where water essentially provides growth as a medium for all living organisms, right? And so water often is seen as something that we have to treat as a critical control point. How do you treat this particular water? And if you're not looking at heating it properly, how can you figure out how to treat this particular water? So there's a lot of different processes or at least ways of getting water that we have to take a look into. So one of which is a taking a look at the COA and the COA will tell you, maybe this is a reverse osmosis water in which essentially it goes through a process where you're able to have a pretty pure clean water, free of microbes and things of that nature. It's not necessarily just bringing it up from a river that may have animals that have crossed through it or people. Well, that might have spread water in there. - Raw, spring thing water from the mountain. - Exactly. - It needs to be a thing, right, like four years ago. - Yeah, I mean, there was a time back in the day where people were crossing through the Oregon Trail where they got dysentery because they didn't treat their water. And so we don't want to go through that whole process. We're living in a new modern age, in which we can have filtration systems. We're able to clear out a lot of the microorganisms. You could also heat treat, there's also HVP processes. We don't have to go into those complex motions. There are ways to just get pure clean water to get into your beverages. So you don't have to heat up for soda production. - Yeah, every category is different, which we can't go through all of them in this podcast episode. And, but there's generally the same framework when it comes to food safety plan. Luckily, I do think FDA does have a decent program that allows you to sort out your food safety plan. If not, there are always experts to deal with it. But it is essentially a personal audit of your own ingredients, how you work with your own ingredients. Well, you have to check forward your own ingredients and it kind of a work through of your process. And it has this really neat thing called a process flow, which is basically a bunch of squares connected with arrows that say, just a small amount of words, like saying cook this to 350 or cook rice slurry to 350 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that. I generally like it. It's one, it's very cumbersome to do. It takes a lot of work, but it is a good document to solidify what you're actually doing in the plant. And going through some third party audits, like these people, whether it be a third party person or the FDA in general, they will look at your food safety plan first and will base pretty much everything off of that. Because they don't know every single product in the world. They just aren't experts in that capacity. But they do understand a good food safety plan and we'll follow that to a tee to make sure you are doing everything correctly. At least that was kind of our hurdle with the rice dental factory is them comparing literally the whole process in your food safety plan to what you're doing there. And we recognize things change in the factory line, almost all the time. And that's something to also recognize. Food safety plans can change. There can be revisions, but in general, they're pretty important documents. Most legitimate factories, if not all legitimate factories, have a really good food safety plan in place. - Yes. And a team of QAQC food safety professionals that are able to read through this and be able to make sure that operations is in check. And at the end of the day, there are people who have food science backgrounds and there are people who work in the industry that don't necessarily have the food science backgrounds, but get the mentality or methodology. So essentially this is a pretty easy way for people who are thinking about how to get into the food industry and just trying to think about how do you understand mitigating risks? 'Cause there are financial and there are brand implications, but we really want to go to the core. And so there are certifications that people should already be aware of if not certify themselves or looking for somebody who is certified with these certifications, which out of my believe you have PCQI as well. - I do. Yep, yep. The rice company people paid for it, which is really nice enough. - Which is necessary. I think the thing here is all these certifications is education. All of this in terms of food safety, quality assurance, quality control, you can learn about this. It costs money, but essentially this is empowering you or the individual that is supposed to help you. Hasa plans, that doesn't come out of thin air. A lot of that strides your thinking can be taught. And so there are classes about how do you write out a hasa plan? And then there's even further in terms of how do you become a fluent when you are going through a recall, whether it's a mock recall to prepare for yourselves in the inevitable if that, you know, if it's a highly risky type of product. And then there's also PCQI, which is the individual that looks at these control measurements and quality assurance measurements and things of that nature. If you're looking at importing and exporting of raw material or finished goods, that's what's known as FSVP, so foreign supplier verification program. If you are looking into retort processes or aseptic processes, which are more complex water-based shelf stable products, think about your baby food and things of that nature that usually require somebody to go through a better process control school type of environments that they learn, what are the metrics or things to look out for when you're going looking into these equipment, making sure that it's food safe and a lot of its time and a lot of its temperature, time and temperature. How much time and temperature has been sitting in of these liquids? And are you treating these liquids properly, whether it's heat or pressure or other means to make sure it's a food safe product? And at the end, you create a process authority letter. Now, a process authority letter is specifically designed for things that are very much liquid-based because those are a highly risky type of products. Not everybody can create a shelf stable liquid type of product or a sauce type of product. So a process authority letter writes down that, oh, this process, hot-fillacidified or retort or aseptic measurements or HPP gives you some confidence. This is a letter that essentially is written by an authority to figure that has spent years of experience in this type of field. It could be 20, 30 plus years or 5, 10 years in an established type of company or whether it's governments or other. So that's something to think about, depending on the category. And then there are also something that's called process authority opinion letter where it's not necessarily needed, but it's a guided recommendation to take a look at your COAs and the conditions to make sure that this particular product may start liquid, but you've driven down the water activity low enough where it's a lot of sugar. Now, we're thinking along the lines of a Nutella, if you will, or nut butters. Those are low water-activity type of products, but the opinion is to make sure that where you're getting your raw materials are heat treated and it's not raw and you're able to produce the final product accordingly. And that applies to oil-based type of solutions. - So, you know, everyone to keep this in mind, this is extremely complicated for lack of a term. And like literally every single product has its own way of and nuanced step involved in it. And I think that that is something to keep in mind is that we are throwing a lot of things at you. They are all backed by really complex science. I mean, this is PhD level stuff that set these systems up. There's a lot of smart people who do this. And you know, this can be overwhelming for most people. One, like just if you can't, and also I'll say, all of these things cost money. Either money or a lot of time. And one, like mitigate your risk. This is a risk-based situation. So if your product impacts more people, these get more important. And two, you can find a lot of internet, though, again, if you think you're confused with this podcast the internet is even worse in terms of finding out this information. - Yeah, I would say at the end of the day, we're not here to try to scare you. We're here to try to empower you in making the right decision. And so in these supposituations around food safety, you can take a look at university programs around food safety and see what kind of free knowledge that is validated that you can refer from or speak with a professor to kind of point you in the right direction. If you have the time and money for it, you could also speak with third-party microbiology and chemistry labs. There's a numerous amount for this exact purpose to make sure your product is food safe. And then you can also speak with consultants independent consultants that can help guide you through the process. So it's really dependent. And unfortunately, this is the consulting answer for everything. It's like, the past, you know? - It didn't go. - There is no exact answer that is overreaching everything. Food is so complex. - We were talking to this expert food safety guy from Rutgers, he's a very popular person in the food safety realm. And you know, we thought, yeah, we're really paying some money that like, and this was like a big food tech company. And pretty much most of his answers were it depends which I found actually very inferiority. - It can be inferiority because you were paying self to tell you an answer, but they have to actually go to the nidigritty because there's so many different ways that a food product can go wrong. You know, and we're not gonna talk about the sensory component of it. That's gonna be in the next episode. But a lot of it could also just be taking a look at, you know, what is the flavor profile or the texture of the final product? Doesn't meet the consistency that you're looking for. And that, you know, essentially is part of processing or raw material sourcing or a combination of both or it could just be a bad day because of some environmental factor or distribution. Something could have happened when you're freight forwarding your raw materials from one state to another state that's two time zones away. There's so many different things that could go wrong. We want to be able to say, "Okay, let's just look at the broad strokes and figure out where's the most important or where you put your priority in, address those so that when or if the worst case happens, you can sleep easier and have a team to manage that type of issue." So worst cases do happen, right? That is essentially called a recall and big companies suffer through it, right? Chipotle is well known to have suffered through a food safety crisis where it did hurt them tremendously. They have actually made a phenomenal comeback, but it took them years to do that. It took them on a new CEO. It took them a new, just these new processes in place. I think another example is McDonald's recently had an outbreak and these guys are professionals with McDonald's. They knew how to acknowledge the problem. They knew how to source it. I don't think anyone cared, honestly, that McDonald's had a recall. At least in the magnitude that Chipotle has. Food services are probably the most common or not publicized. I think that's the right word. Food service specifically like McDonald's or QSR. They generally are the most publicized in terms of a food safety outbreak. I think it's a good understanding of what happens, what a good one is versus a bad one. Chipotle had an unfortunate unique situation that caused them to have their brand get kind of tarnished. McDonald's, I think, just knew how to execute this very well. They just designed and they're probably paying a lot to do this. I would say that these are recall plans. These are great examples of what happens or what you should do when you suffer through a recall. I just got to do broad strokes here. It's basically overcorrect and publicized as is pretty much the key word here. Put out a notice and then over corrected extremely internally. But let's go to the nitty-gritty of this. Yeah. I think if you're looking at where you want to start for those who are very early stage, you want to make sure that your product, if it's moist, if it's higher in water content, you want to be more careful. You want to actually be even more overly prepared than those who are doing crackers or dry foods in general. Because the more water is available, the more or higher chance there is of risk for some sort of microbial growth. So that's just something to kind of keep in mind. But if there's water just introduced in general, that's a dry product, you want to have to think about equality's standard of oxidation. What does the off-lavors create through this process? Yeah. Generally, I'll be honest, most of these will not go to an outbreak. It's probably most likely going to be a consumer feedback situation where they say, "Why is there mold in my cookie?" Or, "This cracker tastes weird." They're going to describe it in very big, but obvious detail. That is a sign that something is off about your product that you probably should fix. Yes. Because if this gets out of hand in the age of, say, Amazon using Amazon Vine or just looking at Amazon reviews if you're doing a DDC or even your own reviews on Shopify, that tells you out of five stars. If you're getting more of these one, two, or three stars because of these issues, that's something where you really need to take a look into and say, "What do I need to do to correct the action?" Did you pay to any of the lunch leaf launch? Oh, yeah, where they had mold. Yeah, father's a lot of trouble. Knock off. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, those are made by three celebrities, Jake, or Logan. I forgot which, which Paul was. Anyways, Mr. Beast and then some dude, I think in his case, they made a celebrity back. The luncheon was knock off. They decided to use a real cheese. It's hard to understand what went wrong in that. I don't think one day didn't do the blank game very well. They did a horrible job of explaining why this was an issue. They did not admit that it was essentially their fault. Therefore, it is discontinued now. But, luncheon had mold in their cheese. It was visibly disgusting. Specifically, because they are influencers, they didn't have any viral. They didn't have any viral. They're tick talks about moldy cheese. They're mean, it was about moldy cheese. This was a death blow to that product in general. Yeah. That's, that in of itself is not necessarily a food safety where somebody ingested type of issue. That is going back to the quality issue of visually you can see an issue. As an individual consumer and a bunch of consumers take a look at this, it's a no-brainer that you don't want to eat something like that. You don't even want to buy something like that either. If you don't do your proper due diligence, that goes back to COAs that we were talking about in the regulatory and sourcing episodes. If you don't have the proper has a plan in place or food safety plan in place, then essentially you're all this sourcing, all this R&D, all this commercialization kind of goes to waste. You know, you have to do it all over again, but now you're paying two to three times more money. That's not really constructive of any type of lean startup. So, you want to have that mentality set. Like, let's just be careful so that we don't have to do it over again with more pressure and a lot of PR pressure, investor pressure if you decide to get investors because they want to return investment. They don't want you to go through this extra heading. They don't need the numbers every month. They get anxious about the numbers every month. I would know. So, I think, I think also to keep in mind with like, with recalls and all that. Like, if it's spoilers first, like, if you see mold or just smells wrong, like humans are evolution designed to not eat things that don't look good. It's like, it's just we just know KILF's right? Like, bitter technically is a way of understanding how we think about poison. So, you know, we are designed to know it's something looks off. We probably don't have to talk about or smells off or tastes off. There's a sign of spoilage. Therefore, it's probably not why I see it. I will say that when it comes to food safety issues, these are kind of the, these are spoilage amplified. Like, it's just so bad it'll kill you. Yeah. And we haven't talked about allergens. So, I'm going to touch on this real quick. When you're doing this on your own, you really want to be careful and make sure you're cleaning through everything. And if you're working with a contract manufacturer, there are allergen tests that detect the type of allergen that may be present. And so, you want to be able to ask these type of questions and take a look at like what exactly they're using as a tool to see if there's allergen presence, as well as tools such as an ATP test to see if there's any microbes presence. And so, these are common questions when you're doing due diligence in a commercialization contract manufacturing search that you may not be aware of that Adam and I can be on site with you and ask for these type of questions. You can visually see all of this. After the fact, you can also take a look at what are their templates for HASA plans and integrate all of this. So, you have some ease of mind finding the right contract manufacturer or figuring out if your own manufacturing process is able to deliver on the final product that you're happy to sell. Yeah, a fun fact about ATP tests. It is literally scanning for mitochondrial activity, which mitochondria is making ATP. So, ATP doesn't have a weird acronym in it. It is literally the stuff that you find in the mitochondria. That's what cells make. And I thought that was a really interesting tidbit when I dug into it. There's other tests as well. There are specific tests where you can swab like any or all the factory and send those swabs to a lab so they can do like these incubation tests to see if there's any, let's say, I'm going to just say some scary bacteria words, Listeria monosatogenies on it. So, there's a whole industry about food safety. There's a whole career path for food safety. It is a really robust system for a good reason. It is just designed to make your food safe and affordable. Yeah, but don't be scared. The United States has a better framework for these food safety systems put it in place than a lot of other developing countries and things of that nature. So, when you're entering into working with contract manufacturers, you can ask them, what are your food safety plans? Do you have a GMPs at the bare minimum? Do you have a FSSCC or ISO or some sort of food safety BRC SQL? Just ask them, like, what is your food safety acronym that you use? Type it up as you're going through the phone conversation or write it down so you can look it up later. And then that actually tells you or gives you more confidence. And if you're doing it yourself, you know, what are the equivalents? You know, you look into producing yourself, you should have some sort of food safety manager level type of card which lasts for five years. If you're just hiring an employee, they just need, I think it's like every one or two years for renewal, a food safety handlers card and it's pretty cost effective. It's 15 dollars or so. If you look around the internet, you can find a $15 test, $15, not $50. So it's not hard to find the answers. It's not hard to ask the right questions and that's where you want to start. And then from there, the complexity is how much risk mitigation are you willing to take on? That's pretty important in of itself. That takes time, that takes money. But think of it more as an investment because you're planning a lot of things already operations, supply chain, etc. You want to have that ease of mind, at least from a food safety sense. Yeah. And you know, again, there's a lot of information as we've said before that the most or the word that most food safety professionals will always say is that it depends. The best way I've always learned is to talk to other people and kind of the same boat as you, like the same commercial kitchen, the manager of that commercial kitchen, if you're in that scale and if you're in the factory level industry is generally very friendly in terms of, in terms of sharing with you this specific information. Like this is like a very standard type of thing that can bring headaches a lot of people and I would say your competitors are willing to share that information to you. So I would say that like, you know, if you are in a stock situation or just our overall information. Talk to someone who's been there before. It can be another brand. It can be another person. So that's how I've used my resources within terms of the food safety plan is that honestly, they'll just if it's a small brand, I'll probably just send you yours for you to template out. Yeah. There are also incubator and seller programs. There's a lot of government agencies out there that may have free tools. You may have to do a bit of digging because they may be very old. But it's public knowledge because especially if anything that's government forward in its policy, they are being as transparent as possible so that it makes it easier for people to follow along because the last thing. Truly realistically, the last thing that FDA or the public departments of public health or department of agriculture wants to go through is have a stack of more papers that they don't need to go through. So they're going to invest in all these public resources so that it makes it a bit easier for you as the listener to think about food safety and quality assurance quality control. Definitely. Is there anything else you want to add about food safety and QA and QC? No, there's a lot to cover. Yes. This is well, we'll keep it here. Well, hopefully if people have more questions, of course, they can feel free to reach out and we can figure out what are the next appropriate steps from there. We'll point you in the right direction or maybe you would be able to help you out in the future as well. I'll say that, yeah, even though we sent you a ton of information, this is, I understand all of it, right? And most food scientists do understand everything we're talking about today and it is a totally different field. It's actually my least favorite part in terms of a food business standpoint, but it's very important. So, you know, we in America, we always trust our food system and despite what people say online, like we buy food in the grocery store every single day, we take it for granted just how safe our food really is. So I think that's it's important to understand the complexities of why we make our food safe. Exactly. It's, it's I think going back to the whole idea of 99% invisible, where 99% of design, if it's done very well, it's pretty much invisible in the 1% that understand the design behind it really appreciate that. Yeah, I think for for us, we appreciate it because it makes our lives easier when you actually have good standards and systems put into place. Yes, and I hope that those who are listening, you have a newfound appreciation for food safety as well. Yeah, you don't have to do the stress work. All right, well, next episode is really fun. I think people really like this, this type of stuff, it's sensory testing. A lot of great methods of how you get your products validated before going mainstream. Definitely, and we'll talk about it through the lens of both from a marketing angle and consumer feedback, etc. But as well as defining your quality standards from a sensory standpoint. Definitely. All right. See you next time. Stay tuned.