Food Safety Talk 323: If It's Wet, And It Isn't Yours, Don't Touch It (Live From CFP 2025)

In this very special episode, Ben and Don take the stage to moderate a powerhouse panel on the evolution of retail food safety, featuring Jill Hollingsworth (Ecolab), Cory Hedman (Meijer), Laurie Farmer (FDA), and Carrie Pohjola (Wisconsin DATCP). The discussion opens with how the role of inspectors has changed, particularly around cultural competency, language barriers, and the shift toward risk-based inspections. Panelists share how both regulators and industry are using technology to improve inspections and modernize approaches without losing what still works in analog. They tackle big questions about industry-regulator partnerships and touch on a unified federal food safety agency. From there, the conversation turns personal: panelists reflect on crisis moments in their careers what they learned, and what they'd do differently now. In a rapid fire round of questions they also reveal the outbreak that shaped their careers, their first and last concerts, their favorite part of the Food Code and aspirational food safety tattoos.