What I Didn't See At The 2024 Food Safety Summit

A hard-hitting piece about realities and also a bunch of things I made up

On May 7, I had the pleasure of leading a science communication workshop on behalf of Science Friday at the 2024 Food Safety Summit (FSS) produced by Food Safety Magazine in Chicago.

The woman who took photos of me (with an iPhone!) somehow only emailed me photos that looked like this

The workshop went well (or so I was told) but I’m deeply sad that I didn’t get to go to the exhibition floor, where hundreds of food safety groups presented their wares. Through the process of presenting, I learned a little bit about the food safety industry, which extends through retail, manufacturing, regulatory, service, and supply chain branches of how we get our mass-produced food. My fellow panelists were leaders in food safety from big groups like Chipotle, Wendy’s, J&J Snack Foods, and the like. I even met the food safety team from The Cheesecake Factory.

Regardless of how you personally feel about these brands, these corporations have touched the lives of millions (if not billions) of people across the world. They are some of the largest, most international companies, and the room of about 500 people I spoke to was responsible for the strategies that keep every consumer of those products from being poisoned.

I felt starstuck. “Thanks for keeping me alive,” I thought. “I used to love going to the Wendy’s drive-thru with my mom after we saw movies together, and hiding the garbage when we got home. I love Frostys (TM),” I wanted to say. Meeting everyone also made me think about how someone has to make sure the milk in the millions of Frosty’s served isn’t bad, or contaminated in one way or another. Between greeting team members from Ocean Spray and hot sauce startups, I thought about all the ways food rots, and all the microorganisms we can’t see but trust aren’t harming us.

I also thought about the topic I was afraid to bring up—health. Were these teams not part of the corporations responsible for bringing things like pesticides, PFAs, and antibiotics to our foods? There’s a difference between food that is “safe” to eat and food that is good for you—and I really noticed that based on the conversations around industry priorities I overheard. To everyone’s credit, however, it seemed like they were still struggling with the basics: how to get executives to prioritize “safety” at all.

Science communication and education is wielded rather precisely in the context of the food industry. I’ve recently become aware of a great many industry opps. They come in the form of “science” pushed by processed food companies to make the general public less worried about the kind of food we’re encouraged to buy and eat.

For example, this story, published by the “American Council on Science and Health,” claims that there’s nothing wrong with ultra-processed foods. It looks perfectly legitimate on the surface, until you look into this council and find that it’s straight up a consumer front organization.

This is an article titled “The Dangers Of Ultra-Processed Foods” in the “American Council on Science and Health” and it’s basically a takedown of a Harvard seminar on ultra-processed food. “Comments where I cannot remain silent” is sooo dramatic lmao

It fills me with conflict: On one hand, often what someone eats isn’t a matter of individual choice, it’s about access, and frankly, random genetic and epigenetic stuff. Different people have different appetites, metabolisms, and personal histories with food, and how people choose to get their daily calories in shouldn’t be an excuse to judge them morally. (It’s often classist, racist, etc.) However, that just can’t be a belief system that exempts massive companies from criticism. If there is evidence that these products are somehow inherently harmful, or not an adequate replacement for fresh food*, that should be considered in context and perhaps improved upon! In the case of food safety, those scientists only get a seat at the table because they’re a part of a larger goal: encouraging consumers to eat what their companies sell. And it’s a good thing some scientists are behind the wheel to keep people safe! But it’s a selective bit of science they listen to, eh?

*Please remember: it is not inherently wrong to eat processed foods. We should all have access to all the choices, and enjoy a tasty life.

I focused on my task, which was to teach the scientists and researchers in the room how to communicate their technical knowledge about food safety in an engaging, accurate, and clear way. Surely that can’t cause any long term harm, although I choose to remain ignorant about the corporate greed these folks might advance.

Anyway, I didn’t get to go to the exhibition floor, where I bet a bunch of free shit (and maybe free samples???) awaited me. Just from doing one speaking event, my imagination raced with visions of what could possibly be in the massive convention space, and I regret that my flight was early enough that I couldn’t visit.

I was getting emails like this all day after I left for my flight. I bet this was only a sliver of what I could have seen on the exhibition floor

Here’s what I imagine was there.

• Complimentary pimped out nitrile gloves

• Dunkin Donuts cold brew kegstand

• A laser that kills foodborne pathogens but also gives you cancer

• Mr. Peanut

• Fashionable hair nets

• The cranberry juice guys

• A booth where they just explain to you the difference between “Use by,” “Sell by,” and “Best by” dates on food

• The romaine lettuce PR team

• A dunk tank for the people who serve Nuts 4 Nuts in Times Square (punishment by public humiliation)

• A giant “Days Since Last Recall” counter that someone is gloomily changing to 0

• A 4-D Chipotle experience where you get to be an ingredient in a Chipotle bowl

• A microwave that uses military technology to actually “nuke” your food (it also screens your home for communist sentiment)

• Grimace

• Free pesticide samples

• Paper folded not hotdog style, not hamburger style, but a secret third thing

• Food safety themed jibbitz

• Lin Manuel Miranda

Thanks for reading. Let me know in the poll below how you feel about what I did at the 2024 Food Safety Summit.