FOR INDUSTRY ANTAGONIST BILL MARLER, FOOD SAFETY IS PERSONAL CONTINUED...
LEADERSHIP
Marler has been the hammer waiting to strike if restaurant oper- ators don’t adhere to the standard. Similarly, the spotlight turned on the Jack in the Box situation eventu- ally led to routine testing of ground beef for E.coli. More recently, the U.S.D.A. classified the Shigella Sal- monella bacteria as a food adul- terant, a designation that allows the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service to regulate it as a health threat. Marler spent $500,000 of his own money to fund the research that led to the recate- gorization. He was less successful in his quest to have salmonella bacte- ria reclassified as an adulterant, a move that would have allowed the U.S.D.A. to test for the pathogen in chicken. CHAIN REACTIONS Marler acknowledges that he’s forced restaurant chains to be more vigilant, but laments that the brands haven’t similarly used annoyance, antagonism and their purchasing power to push for a safer food sup- ply. “One of the things they fail at is using their market power to get the supply chain to really step up,” he explains. “It’s very rare that a restaurant or grocery store had an active role in a contamination. It’s usually a problem with something that’s come in from the outside.” He puts the blame on fellow lawyers. “They do all of the pur- chasing agreements, and all they’re concerned about is price and being able to tell suppliers, ‘The way this is written, it’s all your fault if some- thing goes bad, and you’ll have to pay for it.’” Their determination to protect the brand doesn’t extend to setting safety requirements the sup- plier has to meet. All in all, “if you’d ask me in June, I’d have given the industry an A-,” Marler says of the restaurant indus-
try’s food-safety efforts. “Today, I’d give them a B+.” He attributes the downgrade to the rash of food contaminations that came to light this summer. Out- breaks led to warnings that restau- rateurs and consumers avoid cu- cumbers, eggs, onions and, on the day Marler granted an interview, 167,000 pounds of ground beef. Marler says he’s worried the food industry is easing its vigilance be- cause of its success beforehand in averting outbreaks. “I wonder if people are taking their eyes off the ball,” he says. REGULATION IN THE TRUMP ERA He’s far more critical of current-day food-safety regulation. The watchdog agencies of the USDA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “some- times do a very good job. They’re very good at responding to crisis,” he says. But “they’re very bad at being preventive. Their failure is they don’t do things proactively. They wait and they wait for something bad to happen. They don’t want to take pre-emptive measures be- cause they’re going to get yelled at by some congressman or sena- tor who’s hearing complaints from companies in their areas that might be affected. “I’d give them a gentleman’s C.” He’s not even that merciful in gauging what a second Trump ad- ministration might bring. “I think the likelihood of any- thing good happening is pretty low,” Marler says. “I’d love to be proven wrong. But they don’t believe in science. They don’t even believe in what I would regard as standard morality.” As a scientist, he continues, you look at the facts. “During the [first] Trump administration, nothing hor- rible about food safety happened,”
says Marler. “But nothing moved forward during the Trump adminis- tration, either. “The most worrisome thing is this is going to be a kleptocracy,” he continues, referring to the political equivalent of a smash-and-grab. “These people who get into these positions, they’re going to model Donald Trump’s behavior. And he’s all about making money.” What’s needed, he stresses, is the constant reminder that food safety isn’t about avoiding lawsuits, avoiding a traffic drop-off or allaying public concerns about the purity of what’s on their plates. It’s about protecting the lives and well-being of someone’s children, parents or grandparents. He recounts how another force in food safety, the late Dave Theno, would carry in his wallet a picture of Lauren Rudolph, the 6-year- old who was the first child to die in the Jack in the Box E.coli outbreak. Theno had been hired by Jack in the Box to shore up the brand’s food-safety efforts and reassure the public that the chain was once again a safe place to eat. Rudolph was in some respects an indictment of the brand, a counterbalance to Theno’s efforts. Yet Theno would look at the girl’s picture when making a decision. As he told many an audience 20-odd years ago, he’d ask himself, “What would Lauren want you to do?” Initially, “he hated me—hated me!” recalls Marler. “I deposed him for six straight days, and I was really tough on him.” But the two came to realize they were working toward the same end and became tight friends. “He taught me how to love Manhattans,” says Marler. Theno was killed in 2017 when he pushed a grandson away from a rogue wave while they were swimming in Hawaii. The boy survived, but 66-year-old Theno drowned. Marler donated
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RESTAURANT BUSINESS JANUARY 2025
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