Food Safety Talk 37: Inoculating the Plane
b'The guys started with some follow up on The Wire, The Newsroom, what colored food does to your poop, Mike Batz\\u2019 link to Craig Goldwyn\\u2019s Huffington Post article on sprouts, T. gondii in Romanian animals, and F\\u2019ed up. Aaron\\u2019s email then prompted a discussion about Plague Inc., the CDC\\u2019s interest in it and CDC\\u2019s own game Solve the Outbreak. The guys were impressed by how progressive the CDC is in terms of social media and new ways of engaging the public. Don then provided some info about HDScores, a company that plans to make Restaurant Inspection Scores from 3100 jurisdictions from the US, Canada and UK widely available. This prompted a discussion about making restaurant scores available to the public in an interpretable way. Ben shared his experiences from a recent trip to Calgary, where his 4 year old son Jack got sick, possibly with Norovirus. Ben was fascinated by Delta Airlines\\u2019 approach of dealing with the vomit problem, which involved plastic bags to contain the risk and coffee pods to manage the smell. Don was familiar with the approach thanks to Roderick on the Line. Ben didn\\u2019t agree with Delta\\u2019s decision to take them off plane first (thus inoculating the plane). It reminded him of two different articles. Both Don and Ben were glad Delta had a plan, even if they didn\\u2019t quite agree with the whole plan. Don then wanted to ask Ben about a Meatingplace article by Richard Raymond entitled Is our food safer than five years ago? (free registration needed to read). Ben explained why he didn\\u2019t agree with Richard\\u2019s arguments. Don agreed and asked aloud about conspiracy theories, not dissimilar from those surrounding New Coke. Don then wanted get Ben\\u2019s take on the IFT\\u2019s March 2013 media update. In fact both Ben and Don thought that these updates were way over the top and it reminded them of "The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons\\u201d and Doug Powell\\u2019s comment on Barfblog \\u201cI\'m immediately suspicious of people \\u2026 who say trust me.\\u201d Ben especially didn\\u2019t like that organizations say \\u201ctrust us\\u201d and without telling people what the risks are and why they should be trusted. The discussion of food processing reminded Don of Richard Wrangham\\u2019s great book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.\\u201d The last thing on Ben\\u2019s agenda was Doug\\u2019s comparison between the porn industry and the food industry, which had resulted in a fair bit of backlash against the legendary Doug. Ben noted that Doug\\u2019s point was how the two industries differed in how they manage the risks, which people missed. And boy\\u2026 you mention porn and people get excited.'