Ep. 009 - Feeding the Digital Age: Part 2 - Embracing Solutions with Dr. Darin Detwiler
Dr. Darin Detwiler
“Food Safety Icon”
Show Notes:
In Part 2 of our Bites & Bytes Podcast series, we continue our enriching discussion with Dr. Darin Detwiler, highlighting the essential themes of courage, overcoming shame, and maintaining integrity within the food industry regardless of your role. This episode not only focuses on technological innovations and strategies for food safety but also delves into the personal and ethical dimensions that drive industry leaders to champion security measures in the face of emerging digital threats. Join us for this impactful conversation that goes beyond the technical aspects, touching on the human elements critical to advancing food safety and security in today's digital world.
Dr. Darin’s socials:
https://www.herculeaneffort.net/
https://cps.northeastern.edu/faculty/darin-detwiler/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/darin-detwiler/
Netflix Documentary, "Poisoned"
https://www.netflix.com/title/81460481?trackId=259776131&trkId=259776131&src=tudum
Listen to full episode :
Episode Guide:
(00:27) - Food Safety and Cybersecurity Solutions
(11:19) - Food Safety and Cybersecurity Challenges
(19:12) - Food Safety and Data Vulnerabilities
(23:47) - Cybersecurity Responsibility and Ethics
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00:27 - Kristin (Host)
Welcome back to our special episode on the Bites and Bytes podcast, where we've been exploring the nexus of food safety and cybersecurity with our esteemed guest, Dr. Darin Detwiler. If you haven't yet, make sure you listen to part one of our conversation to hear all of Dr Darin's wisdom In part two. We're set to explore solutions not just in the technical advancements shaping our food industry, but also ethics, courage and integrity, by learning from past incidents. Join us as we unravel the complexities of the digital transformation and food safety and what it means for consumers and companies alike. This is why and I know you and I have spoken about this prior the cybersecurity is such a vital portion of food safety culture.
01:06 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Now it has to be included in conversation Well, not only in conversation, but so I kind of rope or pull back the curtain. So in the food industry we have what's referred to as hazard analysis and you know we look at the idea that every opportunity for there to be a failure in food safety has to be evaluated. Some are more critical than others, right, and if you can identify them and rate them based on likelihood and severity, you can say, okay, well, this right here is much more of a critical point, because this is the point where it goes into the freezing, this is the point where it goes into this or that kind of thing. And honestly, I think that we have to think about technology in the same way. We have to look at the collection of data security in the same way, looking at the likelihood, severity of certain things. Now, you were talking about Campbell's right and the idea of the brand, the taste and the consistency of the taste. But what some people I might not think about is that let's talk about it in just any one ingredient, like let's look at the I don't know why, I just thought about this, but you know the Asian Barley.
02:06
So that barley comes in as a C and those Cs A, they have to be inspected, they have to, you know, run through medallion, they have to be treated, they go through various tests, but they also go through a bit of a washing, and in many cases it's not just a wash. What they'll do is put it into a container that keeps it in water. I don't know, I'm making up time here, let's say somewhere between 15 and 45 minutes, so that it starts to kind of soak out of its seed. That water is tested and treated and it's very much this specific ratio of essentially bleach and vinegar added to the water for that process, to make sure that it is. It is, mind you, we're talking, you know, like a half of all of these to five gallons of water kind of ratio.
02:45 - Kristin (Host)
I mean you're really pulling about the carton. I'm sure people just eat.
02:49 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Right. But imagine if, if that is all regulated by monitors and sensors, in terms of that much of a ratio of bleach to that, what if someone were to go in there and crop it such that it added way too much bleach to it and no one was able to catch that? And now you've got an ingredient that is is no longer actually safe within the soup, right. What if you have other chemicals? There's a lot of chemicals that are part of the process. There's a lot of acts that are part of the processing. You know that same kind of soup at the end will actually go down. After it's put into a can and a labels put on it. It'll actually go through an x-ray machine to make sure that maybe there's not a dent in the can or some structural failure can, or that there's metal debris inside, a kind of thing, and that is monitored. And there's computers, because they go by such a fast rate. They're using technology to. You know, look for the telltale science cap. Again, what if someone to make it such that it didn't for what it's supposed to be looking for?
03:47
There's so many places where you can look at the not the obvious place where technology is being used and where it's a critical control point, where, if that control point is not adequately monitored and action is adequately taken If the it could cause significant harm to consumers. You know we can look at this to even beyond, beyond food manufacturing. You could look at in terms of water, you could look at the idea of someone contaminating water. You could look at it in terms of time and temperature and pressure in some cases, and humidity. Control of food that's distributed.
04:21
Today there's technology that's being used to make sure that if food is put into a refrigerated truck it goes from here to there, that it never gets below a certain temperature or above a certain temperature. And you know that's all checked with technology and sensors and it's collected and in most cases you know it's it's it's like artificial intelligence that is in play, that is sending certain alarms and sensors that go into all that and all this kind of comes together in terms of the bigger picture of. You know, if we want to have products that go farther into, you know, other states and things like that, then we need to be able to control them and we need to be able to understand that. You know protecting food has to be taken, those steps have to be taken the entire journey, and today you know we are looking at how can technology basically allow us to do that faster, cheaper and more effective? And when it doesn't do that, we're essentially playing on the assumptions and beliefs.
05:14 - Kristin (Host)
I think, in some ways, the thing that scares me about this the most. I mean, there's plenty of things that scare me with us. Attack factors are attack factors, but it's the fact that we're not training our staff. Up around it, where it's being shoved in, people are just expected to sort of deal with it.
05:29
You have people that have tribal knowledge, that have been in a company for 30 years, that have stood in the same line forever and they're not being trained properly on the tech that's being surrounded or surrounding them, or they don't understand the importance or what could go wrong with it, because it's just supposed to be the silver bullet and the thing that's going to make everything go great and work wonderfully.
05:47
And production is going to fly out of here faster than it ever has before and it's amazing, and the food's going to stretch further across the world and all these beautiful things that we hope it does and should do. But there's so many steps in between, as you've said, Darin, that just false. We could just bomb out at one end or the other and not even know. And then you've got a whole other problem where your sandwich that was pre made the day before wasn't refrigerated properly, as I believe you ran into it in an airport recently. So why would you want to buy that sandwich? Because, yes, sure it was made perfectly, and then it's not being stored perfectly at the end.
06:20 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the maker or even the distributor, has to do with the inability. I mean, literally the analog thermometer was in the red and the digital temperature that was in the dangers of. But it's ironic is that late last night I actually got an email back from a company saying please, our system is so you have to submit a receipt. For us to take a picture of your receipt. Well, I didn't buy the product because I knew better, you know kind of a thing. But it's like you realize how many weeks ago that was Meanwhile since you and I met up last in person I went and visited with a company in Northern California. I'm not gonna name the company or even the product. So I'm meeting with this company and they have totally revised how they make the product and it's as if they went from, let's say, 26 hasps steps down to five. Wow, incredible. And it's like it's such a simple thing. But here's what I got to take away from this.
07:13
The owner of the company was working with the federal government post 9-11 looking at food security. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, see, I made the mess there. The owner of the company, back 20 years ago or so, was working with the federal government in terms of food defense looking at. So the World Health Organization came out right after 9-11 and said look, yes, nuclear, biological, chemical warfare is out there, but attacking a developing nation through is far more easily, cheaper and effective way of causing political and economic disruption. They can paralyze a small nation. And so the US government was looking at this in terms of our food distribution and you start looking at these patterns. They went in and they were collecting data, literally from farm to fork, in terms of where and how long, how long would it take? Some of the they looked at like 25 signature, different types of foods, like some were manufactured and some were raw. And they looked at multi-state nationwide distribution. They looked at how long it would take to get from, like let's say, from the farm to the store to the consumer. How long would it take for a consumer, if they got sick, to be hospitalized and how long would it take for tests to come back. And then, if enough tests were taken and if they were reported, then you have central nationwide database collecting information. How long would it take for the CDC to say there's a pattern here, there's product source, kind of thing? And it was using their words.
08:36
It was kind of an eye-opener and a very scary way in terms of how, how vulnerable name of commerce and advancement and you know, being able to, you know, increase the markets, all that kind of stuff. It's like I know we can buy. I'm making this up but I know we can buy tomatoes from our own state here. But if we buy tomatoes that are shipped out at this state over here by this company we can save seven cents, you know kind of a thing. Right, okay, but yeah sure, you can save seven cents because of the centralized nature and the packaging, distribution, all that kind of stuff. But at what cost? At how much additional vulnerability, you know, when you look at convenience and slightly lesser cost to the consumer. But you gotta balance that in terms of vulnerability, level of vulnerability. It's early for me that's gotta be taken into consideration.
09:26
And some foods we have seen more and more frequently as being frequent culprit foods of certain events and we're not dealing with some. I mean everything from raw slash, unpasteurized milk to leafy greens. But there's also we've seen a rash of foods with new ingredients that aren't even like tested and approved. There was that whole thing with taro flour in the daily harvest that sent people to the hospital. Sisions are being made on available information and if that information is delayed or skewed or sabotaged, it's not like and this kind of goes back to what you said earlier this image of the little farmer and his family with their farm down the street and out in the county kind of thing. No, that image is it possible? Yes, there are some examples of that. If you're buying anything in a grocery store, it's rarely looking. There are some cases where they make a big deal about it being local, sometimes cheese, some sort of things like that, most things. If it's on the shelf at that grocery store, it's come a far distance, it's got through so many hands and just as much as that distance increases the food safety vulnerability.
10:37
That food journey, the more complicated and distance it is, impacts data security, cybersecurity of that information and data integrity.
10:47
And then you take it. Yeah, because you look at the idea of are you sure that all the data was collected properly, that it was the right data collected, that it was collected and there's no errors, right? You know, have things like some things are in one unit, some things are in another unit, or some things were rounded up, some things weren't whatever right. Then you have data storage, you have data security, data access, all these different things that play a role where there's these critical hazard points of someone being able to affect its integrity. And again, sometimes it could be unintentional, like I said, you know, but it's these intentional acts. That goes back to what the person was saying in terms of there could be an intentional adulteration, an intentional cyber hack, that it takes place and it takes a very long time for enough information coming out for someone to go oh, we have an issue, let's start investigating it, and the investigation finds out what it is, and now they've got to resolve this issue and in many cases, consumers never even hear it.
11:42 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, because, like you said, you know leak will get, so involved in brand reputation. Things are kept really quiet and I think the general public probably thinks that they're getting inundated by recalls, maybe because it all kind of came down at the same time. But, like you said, this has been years almost in the making of some of these, I mean baby formula. We're still dealing with that fallout, right. Yeah, yeah, and they just released some new rulings about that recently, which is good on FDA and USDA for getting that done, which is great, but resources are limited there.
12:11
The other thing I would say to Darin in that whole supply chain aspect is it's not just one company that's dealing with this. You have so many third parties, so much risk and I'm not saying that all third parties are a risk in terms of, like, their risky behaviors. We just don't know what. We don't know right. You could make cookies in your house and then bring them over to your neighbors and they could mash them up and make brownies out of them. I don't know right. Like it's just a kind of a weird symbol of you don't know what's gonna happen once your cookies leave your house.
12:38 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
They just don't know Right, but there's also. Did you ever hear of the Peanut Corporation of America events?
12:43 - Kristin (Host)
I personally did, but I'm sure our listeners would love to hear about it.
12:46 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
So this is a landmark case in two aspects. One is that ultimately, the CEO went to federal prison for 20 years. His brother, who was working with them for 20 years stand, a bunch of plant managers and QA managers one of the reasons for the three, five, six years. The other thing that was kind of landmark about it is this is recorded as one of the most expensive recalls in US history, because over 3,900 different types of products, not 3,900 products, not 3,900 companies, if you have 3,900 different types of products, because most people don't realize that peanut dust and this is what it came down to peanut dust like almost like saw dust, peanut powder, peanut dust is used in cake mixes and things that you don't even see that there's nuts, like you know. If you have like one of those ice creams that has nuts on it, you know, okay, there's nuts, right, but there's a lot of things that don't you know, you don't think of them as having nuts, but there's, technically there's nuts in it, right. And in this case, the reason I bring this up is because the QA manager ended up going to prison for five years for her act. She was called the queen of liquid paper, essentially if they couldn't get test results back good enough to ship off to whoever Duncan Hines or whatever, whatever cake mix or candy bar company or whoever was buying their ingredient, right, she literally would just liquid paper over the dating product and in a way it's like it's pre-technology fabrication. It easily could have been something that it was done with the technology.
14:11
And you look at how information is communicated today and how documentation and certifications and validations are done. There are companies that are dealing with the fact that they will get an emailed certificate of test results or a validation. You know that kind of thing and you know well. They say well, we want to have digitization of things, right, but those digital records people are working now to have like validation, micro-certification, such that there's these versions of these certificates that cannot be altered. If it's altered in any way, it now you know, will have some stamp on kind of thing, right. So validation of these certificates are incredibly important because we know that there are certifications.
14:53
I work with this one person and she does certification Right. She, I kid you not. She gets regular emails from people saying if I just send you this money, would you send me a certificate? And she's like no, because the process is I have to go to your plan. I have to do these tests. These tests have to go off to, you know, an independent analysis company. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. This is the process. You have to go through this. This is why it costs us much and she goes.
15:17
It's one thing to get that. You know once. It's nothing, that she gets it on a very good basis. All these companies that think that they could just buy a certificate and you know, no one's going to, really no one's ever going to look at it, so it doesn't really matter. It's stupid that we have to go through this process. I just need to make sure that I can satisfy the auditor and have these stupid papers around if the FDA comes or if the USDA comes to verify this thing. There are people out there in this world that think that that is all they have to do.
15:46 - Kristin (Host)
That's the way of doing business is they shouldn't be working in the food industry. They should not be in the food industry, you really shouldn't.
15:52 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
You really shouldn't, but that's gross. Unfortunately, you know. It is these, these bad actors, if you will that will undermine the incredible intentions and efforts and successes of so many people out there that go out of their way to do things the right way. And that thing that has to always include security, even for the things that the average consumer will never see.
16:18 - Kristin (Host)
Thank you for staying with us on this insightful journey through the entwining worlds of food safety and cybersecurity. I hope the discussion has sparked your interest and expanded your understanding of these critical issues. Stay tuned as we continue our conversation with Dr Depp Weiler, exploring innovative solutions and the future of food safety in the digital age.
16:41 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Because here's an incident and this incident ultimately made it to the public again. We saw a loss because of a grand reputation hit and loss in sales. It cost us $20 million and it's a cost of doing business. Okay, how about this? How about $1 million investing into this to do it the right way, to do it properly, to you know, completely secure your data and to have the right people, to have the right third party people coming and verifying your systems? How about that's the cost of doing business. That's where a lot of people kind of lose.
17:15
You know this, this mindset. It's like I keep using this analogy of you know, if I was to try to sell you this magic whistle that kept polar bears away, and you can't hear it right. It's like there are finance teams that I can't quantify, that I'm not seeing polar bears, so I can't quantify that right. So we'll wait until we have a cyber security hit right, attack. Okay, so you're going to wait until you have seven polar bears attacking at you and gnawing on your arms or whatever, and you know it's a little too late for that scenario, for that person they're being attacked. At least your finance department will be able to quantify, count and put on a spreadsheet. The number of polar bears were there.
17:52
We can justify the cost of business of dealing with the economic revocations of that. I know that sounds crazy, but it's almost not. That's how people are talking in terms of cyber security, not just within the food industry but in most industries, and it's like we'll deal with it when it happens. Okay, that's not cost of doing business, that's cost of burying your head in the sand and hoping that you will be able to economically recover at the expense of those consumers that you know you were talking. You brought up about the chicks on the conveyor belt in the documentary. I think it was more than just the chicks that I was referring to the fact that there are companies out there that literally conceptualize their consumers as a commodity, that they are going down the conveyor belt. You know when they're gone they'll be another consumer who will buy that product. So why worry about our consumers when they'll be a new batch of consumers? Yeah.
18:40 - Kristin (Host)
And I think that's what's scary and remind me Darin the peanut, and it was actually because of rats, right.
18:47 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
There were holes in the roof, there was contamination from rats and bird droppings. They were literally getting onto these open piles of the product that was just being collected until there was enough of it to fill a truck. The owner of the company was basically ordering his people to sweep the bird poop off of the food and ship it and don't worry about testing it. There's a lot more to the story. Even the fact that here's this is another kind of interesting little element. The Department of Justice was investigating it and they found out that there were multiple plants, and the company stated over and over again we don't ship products from one location to location. Well, they lied. There was another location that the government didn't know about. This is the most ironic. That's right Plainview Texas. There's a city in Plainview, texas and no one knew that the plant was located in Plainview Texas. And when they looked at even deeper, they found that there were over 300 food manufacturing companies in the state of Texas that were not registered with the state of Texas. So not only was the federal government not aware of there being these operations in Texas, even the state of Texas had no operations for taking place and they weren't doing inspections. They were not looking into this at all and these places were just doing their kind of business. And you can look at that and go, wow, that was an important lesson to learn from this whole thing with the peanuts, that's right. Well, when we talk about cottage foods and we talk about differences between states and where some states allow food to be manufactured in one kind of a location or another kind of location, we have ghost kitchens, we have consolidated kitchen work like kitchens where food trucks have a physical building where they can make a lot of their food and then put in their trucks and then they continue to process the kind of thing. How are those recorded and registered and regulated from state to state? As we were talking about cybersecurity issues within the food industry, realize that the differences from state to state in terms of how things are classified, how things are regulated, how things follow a model food coach from the FDA, have a significant impact in terms of what is expected within that. And then you have other issues like how some states are now lowering their minimum age for certain workers in different industries.
20:57
At the same time, that's a government the Department of Labor is suing and finding many companies that are finding that there's 14, 15 year olds that are using hazardous chemicals and equipment in slaughterhouse cleaning after hours. Why is a 14 year old working at one o'clock in the morning using chemicals and equipment in a slaughterhouse kind of a thing? And why is it that these are kids from Guatemala? And all these different issues which start to cloud okay. Well, wait a minute. Who's monitoring this? Who's what data is being collected to make sure this is done? And you know you're collecting information about the cleanser being used, but is anyone collecting information about underage immigrant children or the ones that are being tasked to do this? And if we have a hard enough time getting adults to understand and take actions in terms of food safety, how are we supposed to get a 14 year old one o'clock in the morning? Think about proper data collection, storage, proper cleanliness, cleaning protocols and SOPs.
21:55
It just becomes a very complicated landscape in terms of how vulnerable our systems are and all the reason why you need to make sure that we're not just leaving up to our IT team, we're not just waiting until it's required of us that we're looking at adequately assessing our vulnerabilities, bringing in outside P2, double up on these assessments of our vulnerabilities to look at how we can improve our security around preventing data hacks, preventing failures in terms of data security, even, you know again, data credibility, data integrity, integrity all these issues, right, and we need to consistently and constantly be looking at how we can improve this, because, because if we don't, you know, it's kind of like when you're in the middle of a crisis, it's not the time to be saying we need to stop everything and rethink everything. Right? Because no one in the finance department and no one in the C-suite is going to say, yeah, let's stop manufacturing, let's send everyone home, we're going to figure things out, come back. No, they're going to say we need to continue this. We have this, we have.
23:00
We have a quarterly earning statements. We have to make sure that we're eating promises. Right, we don't want to stop going down the freeway, you know, but at the same time, we can't ask our Uber driver to replace the wheel the treads are too barren without stopping. So there has to be a point where you're saying you know, we have to constantly be looking at this, even if this means we have to kind of reveal some of our vulnerability in the process. But you know, there's another incident I want to bring up. Do you remember the whole Tylenol scare back in the 80s?
23:29 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, it was in there. Just another scare too with like Motrin as well recently.
23:33 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Yeah, the Tylenol sticks out in terms of someone was trying to basically kill someone, make it look like it was a much bigger issue by you know, lacing poisoning Tylenol, large quantities, kind of. And you know, two things came out of that other than like, of course. One was that, yeah, now we have safety seals, plastic wrap around the box. You open the box, you've got plastic wrap around the bottle. You take the plastic wrap off, you open the bottle, there's still another seal you got to take off, kind of thing. And if you realize too, if you remember, back then you used to be able to go to the grocery store and just open nothing of yogurt or cottage cheese, whatever the litter had gone, and even the ice cream liquor. Why is it that some stores you could literally some places have the plastic around the lid. Some places don't you literally just open up the container of ice cream? So the ice cream? It was the fault of that person. It was the fault of that person who was opening the lid and exposed that vulnerability.
24:24
Ultimately, it wasn't the fault of the company that didn't see the need to put a seal around right. Well, when we go back to the Tylenol issue, how do I? Did that company take ownership of it and flew people out to make sure that the things were recalled and things recovered. And they got in front of it. They said, look, we didn't cause this, but we can do better, right, and we can do this. And now we're going to put all these security seals, all that kind of safety seals, all that kind of stuff, and we're going to, you know, do this right their reputation for how they responded to people.
24:52
Don't forget that people never really, if you were aware of the incident, you know, if you were out of the time, you remember it how well, that kind of response. But again you have like the flip side with the ice cream wearer. You just you just pointing blame and saying it's their fault, it's their fault, we don't have any responsibilities. We saw this, which Polish police criticized for passing the blame as far as, again, so many other examples of people. You know they try to place the blame elsewhere instead of taking ownership of. We could have done better. And cyber security is the same way. If you have a vulnerability and you weren't protecting it, you can't point the blame at the people who took advantage of you and say that it wasn't your fault to prevent this in the first place. So you know, that's not like a mentality.
25:31 - Kristin (Host)
I'm not, no, into that area, no, no, not at all. I mean, I think that you are bringing up is how do we deal with the shame of it? And this is this is right down to the bear of the issue is how do we deal with the shame of? Oh crap, somebody exploited a vulnerability we didn't even know we had because we didn't do the best that we could, or we did do the best that we could but couldn't, yeah. So I think that that you know, and I think you beautifully wrapped it up, Darin, because sometimes we forget there were humans serving humans, right, and I think that is what's really scary.
26:12
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27:05
As we're coming to a close here, how do you look at the future Because we've we're just expanding the attack vectors and vulnerabilities. We've got people that are doing nefariously horrible things, sometimes very intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. And then I wrote down when we were talking about the the peanut issue with the rats and the birds what about the people who bought that product from that company? What's their responsibility in this? So, as we're going forward, especially with cybersecurity and all the great tech this out there, and, like I said before, we look and see things on a very God like access level, how do we actually start combining our powers to get to the, a place that we feel a little bit safer, so we can move through shame, protect and safeguard lives and get to the, get to the remembrance of where people serving people Well?
27:49 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
we can't wait until the government mandates, and we can't wait until it's too late and there's already been an incident, and we can't wait until there's enough consumer demand that we do something different and we can't wait until we're being sued, right? So when you look at the idea of do you wait until there's changes in legislation or litigation, that there's political pressure there's you know where do you wait in terms of this Right? Because the longer we wait, it's going to cost them, there'll be more liabilities, there'll be more people hard and it's going to be harder to find those right options. So I think the easier question is stop focusing on the how, and focusing on sooner than later is the way. As soon as a company starts talking about this, insulting with this, partnering with this, engaging in conversation even with their competitors within the, you know, the bigger sector of commodities or whatever. You know this is why we have, you know, all the people in the peanut or all the people in the leafy green or all the people on fast food or all the people in convenient stores or whatever, need to continue to gather and talk about these things until we are talking about this as a normal part of our, our business. It's not just about profits, it's not just about cleanliness, it's not just about safety, it's not just about this, it's also about cybersecurity issues, and until we start talking about it, it's it's already too late, in a way. Right, it's no longer like technology of the future, space age technology, cutting edge, the next big thing. It's already here and if you're not dealing with it and it happens, here's what can happen to you.
29:21
You could be an executive who sits there in a court of law and you're basically being questioned by the prosecution team in terms of you knew this was a potential threat and you knew there were some solutions, but you chose not to address this issue. You chose not to use what were known solutions or known avenues of a solution to even address this. Therefore, you chose to be vulnerable and thus to make your consumers vulnerable. It's like you're a parent who chose not to put your kids in car seats or seat belts or whatever. It's the same kind of thing. There was a solution. You can't blame the incident that happened outside if you weren't willing to take responsibility for minimizing those vulnerabilities and providing as much possible training, resources, thought leadership, whatever it is in terms of protecting some of those, protecting your company from those vulnerabilities.
30:13
That's the whole intent of the corporate, the responsible corporate officer doctrine. The responsible corporate officer doctrine does not ding you and punish you because something happened. It dings you and punishes you because you decided not to take action and stop doing this or start doing that when you knew that action had to be taken. So it's a reality check. Yeah, it is, it is. You know, when you look at the idea of economic responsibilities and legal responsibility, there's also the ethical responsibilities as well, and those kind of go hand in hand. You can't just be look at company executives, look at CEOs that are measured by. You know they get a $15 million Christmas bonus because they increase their profitability by such and such stuff. Okay, that's great, but did they address food safety? Did they address cybersecurity issues?
30:56 - Kristin (Host)
Because if they did they even know? Did they even know? Is the scary thing, right, yeah, yeah.
31:01 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
You know it's like I got from point A to B Okay, but you did it while speeding and not wearing a seatbelt and you were drunk at the time. So I'm glad you got from point A to point B, but you're you know the way you did it was wrong. You know it's like sportsmanship you can win the game. You can lose the game in terms of your bad sportsmanship. You can also lose the game but be great in terms of your sportsmanship, and that's what you know. That's what we looked at. That's why we liked the Ted Lasso show. It taught us that there was a lot more to the game than the actual game itself. I think cybersecurity is like one of those things. It's much more than just the you know, the quarterly proficiency of stockholder dividends, all that stuff.
31:37 - Kristin (Host)
Dara Neuer, speaking to my heart on this. I we've talked about this so many times anyways together, and there's so much more work to do. I really want to thank you for your time of being here. This has been enlightening, as always. You always give me so much more to think about after speaking with you and I really do appreciate that you are such an ally in this I don't want to say fight, but in this journey to keep people safe and when they ingest food Well thank you very much, and I need to go right out in my username and password and put it on my screen so that everyone can see it.
32:10
Your username and password has probably already been in a breach. So I'd really as much as an hour, yeah Well, I think a lot of people don't realize that your date is already gone.
32:18 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Oh well, maybe I need to change my password.
32:20 - Kristin (Host)
Just keep it separate from your work stuff.
32:22 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
You know I can kid about this, but in all actuality, first off, thank you for having me on your episode here and talk with you about this. But I think that ultimately, we're all consumers. Whether we sit in a C suite or we are sitting in a baby's high chair, you know we're all vulnerable. No one wants to live with the chair for everybody at the family table. No one wants to make this coming holiday gathering either be their last or remember for all of us. And it's not all about refrigeration and any cross-contamination and washing hands. It's all about the bigger picture in terms of our vulnerabilities and unfortunately, we're in a world where cybersecurity is another one of those vulnerabilities.
33:01
Until we really understand that not only does our bigger picture of her in the effort around food safety involves a great deal of work and strength, and technology can be definitely a bonus in terms of work and strength it ultimately comes down to the courage, to very real human emotional health.
33:18
We have to have the courage to say that we need to prioritize cybersecurity, we need to invest in cybersecurity, we need to consider this, we need to assess it, we need to make sure that it's, even if it makes us seem a little bit open and people know that there are these threats out there, these actions we're taking, that we have the courage to make sure that are taking these. And I don't know how you hire courage. I don't know of too many job ads where you look at the higher qualifications, minimum qualifications, and says courage on there. I wish they would start doing that, because I think that is not just the know how, at the understanding. There are people who don't know how to understand it. We just don't have the courage to get the excellence and I'm hoping the conversations like we had today will help people recognize and leverage the courage they have to make a difference.
34:01 - Kristin (Host)
You couldn't have closed this out any better, Darin. Thank you very much, and keep fighting the good fight and being courageous as you are, because we need more people like you. So thank you for being that example. Thank you very much. As we wrap up part two of our exploration into cybersecurity's impact on food safety, I'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to you, the listener, for engaging your curiosity, and to Dr Darin for his invaluable insights. Remember, the conversation doesn't need to end here. Subscribe to Bytes and Bytes podcast to stay updated on future episodes that will continue to unravel the critical issues at the intersection of technology and our food supply. I'm your host, Kristin Demoranville. Until next time, stay safe, stay curious and we'll see you on the next episode. Bye for now.
