Smarter Food Safety Podcast

In the tenth episode of Smarter Food Safety — the first of a two-part series — host Frank Yiannas sits down with Brenda Goodman, senior health news writer at CNN, to examine how food safety stories get covered, where the current media landscape falls short, and what food safety professionals can do when a reporter calls.

In the ninth episode of the Smarter Food Safety podcast, host Frank Yiannas sits down with Dr. Phil Bremer, professor at the University of Otago and chief scientist at the New Zealand Food Safety Science and Research Centre, to examine how organizations drift from vigilance into vulnerability, and why the companies with the strongest track records are often the ones most exposed.

Food companies run microbiological tests, receive negative results, and ship product. Some of those products still make people sick anyway.

American nutrition labels have listed calories, fat, and sugar content for more than three decades. Obesity and chronic disease rates rose anyway, and behavioral scientists have spent much of that time trying to figure out why.

Litigation, regulation, and innovation — three forces that define how food safety systems change. The last voice you would expect to rank litigation as the least impactful is the attorney who built a thirty-five-year career wielding it.

AI can surface patterns that traditional food safety systems miss between formal reviews. Acting on those patterns requires usable data and new rules for how companies, regulators, and AI systems share that information with each other

Recent foodborne illness numbers tell a frustrating story. Despite a massive influx of new regulations and oversight, incidence rates for major pathogens look remarkably similar today as they did in 1999.

The U.S. meat and poultry supply is among the safest in the world, yet pathogens like Salmonella and Listeria remain stubbornly persistent. As the regulatory landscape shifts and the industry's workforce evolves, what will it take to finally modernize our approach to meat and poultry safety?

Food colorings have become one of the most fiercely debated issues in food policy today. But how much of the outrage is grounded in science, and how much is driven by headlines and regulatory theater?

Fifteen years after the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law, the debate over what it accomplished (and what still needs to be done) is alive and well.

Frank Yiannas has spent his career translating the complexities of the global food system. And as an industry leader, author, and speaker, he's logged over 35 years of experience at the highest levels of global retail and federal regulation, building a reputation as one of the industry's most trusted voices along the way.