143 | How to Influence - Lessons for Quality Managers | Allergen Mistake Fallout |

Plus, microplastics in seafood and diet advice from the 1950s

• Microplastics in seafood - where do they come from, what do they look like?;

• Fallout from an allergen mistake;

• Quality Managers and the Art of Influence;

• Food Safety News and Resources;

• Dietary advice from the 1950s (just for fun);

• Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents

🎧 Listen Now 🎧

Hello and welcome to Issue 143 where I nerd out on the details of a canned seafood microplastics study - it’s more fascinating than it sounds, I promise! And learn about the art of influence with a guest post from Lesley Worthington, advisor and coach to quality professionals.

Also this week, we hear about the fallout from an allergen death in the USA - scary news for food professionals - and discover why food fraud isn’t caused only by ‘bad apples’ but also arises because of ‘bad barrels’ and ‘bad orchards’.

Enjoy,

Karen

P.S. If you love this newsletter, please tell your friends and colleagues about it and help grow our community of global food safety champions.

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Microplastics in Canned Seafood

(They’re big and there’s a lot of them!)

New research which examined the presence of microplastics in canned seafood has been published. The results are fascinating (at least for a food safety nerd like me).  I unpacked them into easy-to-read chunks for you and even made a grid-based image to compare the sizes of the microplastics to a human hair.

Here’s what I found.

Types of seafood in the survey: sardines, octopus, mussels, tuna and mackerel canned in sauce or oil, six products in total.

Source of samples:  Most of the products in the survey were manufactured in Portugal and all were purchased in Portugal. 

How many cans contained microplastics?

Just under half the cans (45% of 60 samples) contained at least one particle of microplastic. All six products contained microplastics (size 50 µm to 3,000 µm), with 40 particles recovered in total from 60 cans (10 cans of each of the six products). 

Where (exactly) were the microplastic particles? 

The particles were found in both seafood tissues and immersion liquids, with 65% in seafood tissues and 35% in the liquids.  When it came to tissues versus liquids, it was different from product to product and there was no clear pattern across the product types. 

For example, in one product (chub mackerel in sunflower oil), none of the 10 cans had any microplastic particles in the sunflower oil, with all the microplastics found in the mackerel, while the sunflower oil in another product (sardines in sunflower oil ) contained all the microplastics in the cans, with none found in the fish tissue.

Which products were the ‘worst’? 

Octopus in tomato sauce had the most microplastics in the animal tissue, and sardines in tomato sauce had the most microplastics in the immersion liquid.  Note: there were no statistically significant differences between the product types.

What size, colour and shape were the microplastics?

The microplastics were between 50 µm and 3,000 µm in size, with 45% smaller than 500 µm and 18% larger than 1,000 µm.  The particles were shaped as fragments (label A, 18%), fibres (label B, 75%) and films (label C, 8%).  They were of eight different colours, with blue, transparent and black the most common.

Microplastics recovered from canned seafood samples.  A – Purple fragment and transparent fiber recovered from the tissue of a mussels in escabeche sauce sample; B – Red fiber recovered from the tissue of a chub mackerel in sunflower oil sample; C – Blue film recovered from the immersion liquid of a sardine in sunflower oil sample.  Image:  Silva et. al. (2024)

Where did the microplastics come from? 

The original source of the microplastics was not discussed by the researchers.  However, the most common materials were polyester, polypropylene, polyethene, rayon, nylon and polyvinyl.  The most common type was a fibre and the most common fibres were polyester (40%). Most of the fibres were blue or transparent (40% and 37% respectively) - fishing nets perhaps? 

Other fibres found were rayon (27%), nylon (20%) and polyethene (13%), which could originate from clothes or disposable personal protective clothing (PPE) worn by workers in the fish processing factories.  Disposable personal protective clothing (PPE) is usually made from polyethene.

Other studies have attributed fibre-shaped microplastics to the release of fibres from clothing during washing – clothing fibres include rayon or nylon, and the fragmentation of fishing ropes, lines and nets.

How did the microplastics get into the cans of seafood?

Pathways for microplastics to get into canned seafood include from the food animals themselves, if they have ingested the particles directly or from ingesting prey such as plankton or other fish that contain microplastics, or by ‘inhaling’ microplastics through their gills.  Secondary pathways are contamination during harvesting processes, and seafood preparation, such as fish-filleting, and can-filling processes, which are often done by hand, or from other ingredients added to the cans.

How big (exactly) were these pieces?

The particles described by the researchers were of a size that is generally visible to the naked eye, which can see objects in the range of 50 to 60 μm (μm = microns or micrometres). 

For example, a human hair is 17 to 181 μm wide and a sheet of paper is 70 to 180 μm thick.  The most commonly identified particles in this study were between 50 μm and 500 μm in size.

Most of the microplastic particles found in canned seafood in this study were 50 to 500 μm in size, shown here to scale with a human hair (100 μm wide)

How many microplastics would you eat in a year, based on these results? 

Using the USA estimate for canned seafood consumption, the researchers estimate that, based on the prevalence in their samples, the average person might consume 226 pieces of microplastics from canned seafood per year.

Are microplastics a hazard in food?

There is little evidence that microplastics cause measurable negative health outcomes in people.  Nanoplastics, however, appear much more likely to be harmful.  Find sources for these statements, plus broader discussions of the safety of microplastics and nanoplastics in food in Issue 62 and Issue 122 of The Rotten Apple.

Takeaways for food professionals

Whether or not microplastics pose direct risks to consumers is poorly understood, however, it seems prudent to try to keep them out of any food your company manufactures. 

However, because they are considered almost ubiquitous in the environment, and because there are so many sources of environmental microplastics and so many pathways for microplastics to enter foods, developing effective controls will prove challenging.  For highly manual tasks such as fish filleting and can-filling, a risk assessment that considers fibre-shedding from workers’ PPE could be a starting point.

In short:  A significant number of microplastic particles were found by researchers who examined canned seafood 🍏 Many of the particles were of a size that is visible to the naked eye 🍏 Particles were found in both seafood meat and in the sauces or oils in the cans 🍏 Fibres were the most commonly found shape, polyester was the most commonly found material and blue was the most common colour for the microplastics found in the cans 🍏 Clothing fibres, PPE fibres and fishing equipment could be sources of microplastics in canned seafood 🍏

Main source:

Silva, D.M., Almeida, C.M.R., Guardiola, F.A., Pereira, R., Rodrigues, S.M. and Ramos, S. (2024). Uncovering microplastics contamination in canned seafood. Food Chemistry, [online] 448, p.139049. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.139049 .

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The Art of Influence: Lessons for Quality Managers

In this guest post by Lesley Worthington, we’ll be thinking about our communication skills; specifically our ability to influence others, which will help you see that you have more power to impact others than you realize.

Lesley is a Communication and Leadership Skills Coach for Quality Assurance professionals. She provides one-on-one and group coaching, corporate consulting and training, and appears often as a guest on webinars and podcasts in her niche. But her passion is the membership community she runs for Quality Assurance people looking to level up their communication and leadership skills: The Quality Network.

The Art of Influence

We have more power than we realize.

There’s a good chance you’ve been in a position where you’ve got to influence someone you don’t control. This sometimes feels impossible.

We feel like we’ve got to somehow sell our idea or request. We’ve got to convince and persuade. We’ve got to push. We’ve got to prove how worthy and smart and sensible our demand, instructions, idea, or need is. But what if we’re approaching this the wrong way?

What if it’s more about give and take, rather than about trying to convince the other person that what we want them to do is what they should want to do?

Influence is really about the art of negotiation and relationship management.

You’ve got to understand the idea that since the beginning of time, humans have operated under the principles of the law of reciprocity: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours; you work for me, I’ll pay you; you find the berries, I’ll find the meat; you help me on my project, I’ll help you on yours; you do me a favour, I owe you one.

Influence comes with negotiation and relationship management. Image by Freepik

So, how do we do this?

There are a few things that need to happen if you’re going to succeed in influencing someone that you don’t have authority over:

●     you’ve got to be clear on what you need (which might be different from what you want);

●     you’ve got to have a decent relationship and trust;

●     you’ve got to be clear on what would work as a currency (that you can use in exchange for what you want).

Being Clear on What You Need

It makes sense to spend a moment getting really clear on what you REALLY need. If you’re clear on your bottom-line “must-haves” you might discover that you’ve actually got a little more wiggle room, flexibility, and room to negotiate than you originally thought.

Maybe you can “settle” for less than the ideal and come to a win-win agreement. Clarity about your essential objectives can lead to greater success in getting things done. And, even more critically, it can lead to success in building a trusting and enduring relationship that will make future exchanges more likely to turn out well.

Working on the Relationship

It’ll be hard to influence someone if you don’t have trust or credibility. And these are both long games. It makes sense to always be doing what you can to make sure you’ve got good relationships. Building trust and credibility involves being consistent, reliable, honest, and transparent. It means knowing your stuff, being approachable, walking the talk, showing up, and doing what you say you’ll do. If you don’t have trust, your attempts at influence can come across as insincere, manipulative, or self-serving.

Viewing those you are hoping to influence as “on your side” is also important. Starting with a mindset of “we” allows you to create a collaborative approach to your conversations.

Think about it: If you approach each conversation with the underlying belief that this person who is resisting so mightly is actually an ally, you’ll have more flexibility because the unspoken understanding is that you’re going for a win-win outcome. If you start off with the mindset that you are adversaries, where there’s a winner and a loser, it’ll be very difficult to get past that attitude and have a productive conversation. It’s hard to negotiate when you think there’ll be a winner and a loser. And where you are determined not to be the loser.

We need to come into the conversation with an assumption and attitude of “we”; an assumption that you’re on the same team heading toward the same shared vision. If you work in the same company, that's true, right?

Understanding Needs and Motivations

One of the keys to effective influence is to understand the other person. How can you reciprocate if you don’t know what they want? We need to understand what motivates them, what they think, how they think, how they prefer to communicate, what they want, what they care about, what keeps them up at night, what they think about us, what they think about the thing we’re proposing or asking of them, what their goals are, what pressures they’re under, what their professional aspirations are, and one and on and on. We really have to know them. That comes in due course when you invest in building a relationship with them.

The reason we have to know them is because that gives us insights into what we can use as currency in our give-and-take efforts to influence them.

The Give and Take of Influence

Successful influence usually involves an exchange where both of you feel you’ve gotten something of value. We have lots of currencies at our disposal; lots of things that we can give in exchange for what we want. Even when we don’t have money or titles or time or extra bodies that we’re in charge of doling out, there are still a lot of things we can use in this exchange.

Here are some examples:

Information: Sharing knowledge or providing insights that others might not have access to can be a powerful tool for influence. Info can help people make better decisions or give them a competitive edge. This is valuable.

Resources: Maybe you’re in a position to offer access to resources money, materials, people, or time (by removing something else from their calendar). These things can serve as leverage. If you’re able to give something that can help the other person achieve their goals, they’ll be more likely help you in return.

Introductions: Sometimes the best thing you can offer is a key introduction. This can help someone expand their network and achieve their goals.

Prestige: If you can associate someone with a high-profile project or give them a platform to showcase their skills you can boost their prestige and professional standing. There’s huge value in opportunities like this to enhance reputation and visibility.

Support and endorsement: Simply supporting someone else’s idea or project can also be a powerful form of currency. Your endorsement may lend them the credibility and momentum they need to get an important project off the ground.

Acknowledgement and recognition: Don’t underestimate the value of something as simple as this. People often value being recognized for their efforts and contributions. A little public acknowledgement in meetings, company communications, or industry events can make people feel important and appreciated. Imagine using this form of currency to boost morale and increase motivation which ends up resulting in more cooperative and positive interactions down the road.

Opportunities for professional development: Offering someone an opportunity for training or attending a conference can be a powerful currency. It can help them personally and professionally and also increase their commitment to collaborative projects.

Autonomy and responsibility: You could give someone more control over how they manage aspects of their work. This can be really appealing and empowering and is a strong form of currency that shows trust and confidence in their abilities.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you can give in exchange. Even when you don’t feel you’ve got a lot to offer in exchange, there’s usually something if you think hard enough and know the other person well enough. You have a lot more that you can give than you might initially realize.

Working on Ourselves

To become good influencers we need to make sure we’ve got our house in order in terms of our own skills. To be able to build good relationships and understand the person we’re trying to influence we need to have empathy. We need to be able to see and appreciate the perspectives and feelings of others. This doesn’t just give us insights into what drives them and what we can effectively use as currency but it also builds stronger relationships which on their own improve your ability to influence moving forward.

We also need to have a deep understanding of our field of work. It’ll be hard to be seen as credible and trustworthy if it turns out that we don’t know what we’re talking about. So, building our knowledge in our area of expertise is an important and ongoing “project” when it comes to improving our ability to influence people.

We also need to have good communication skills. Successful influence often comes from clear articulation about why things need to happen, rather than just a command that they should. So this involves having the skills to simplify complex concepts and information into something that the other person can easily grasp and connect with.

And finally, we’ve got to work on our adaptability and flexibility. We’re ultimately dealing with people. Effective influencers are good at adapting their approach. They understand that different situations and different people call for different strategies and are able to adjust as needed.

Whether we’re dealing with senior management, a colleague, a direct report, or someone outside of your organization - a supplier, a regulator, a customer - the ability to influence authentically and effectively is a critical skill to have. It ultimately requires clarity, trust, and good communication skills.

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Thanks Lesley! For more from Lesley, follow her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her newsletter here.

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Fallout from an allergen mistake

Recalls due to undeclared allergens in foods are increasing. Many of these are the result of labelling mistakes. In this post, I explore what happens when a labelling mistake isn’t discovered in time for the allergen-containing food to be removed from the market.

Recalls due to undeclared allergens are at an all-time high in the United States and Australia, with the United Kingdom also reporting a major problem with allergen-related recalls.  In Australia, the most common trigger for an allergen recall is a customer complaint.

Customer complaints, oh dear!  A customer complaint most likely means an allergic consumer had a reaction to a food containing undeclared allergens.  And such reactions – as we know - can be deadly. 

Unfortunately, one consumer in the USA, Órla Baxendale, did not survive a packaging mistake.  She ate cookies that contained undeclared peanuts in January in the USA.  She had an anaphylactic reaction to the peanuts.  Despite using an EpiPen, according to her estate’s attorneys, she died.

In the wake of her death, the cookie manufacturer claimed they had told the retailer, who was purchasing in bulk and packing the cookies into smaller packs, that the product had changed.  The retailer, they inferred, had not acted to update the ingredient list and warning statements on the packs.

A recall ensued because the cookies contained undeclared peanuts and eggs.

Now a lawsuit has been filed against the food outlet and several of its employees, as well as its supplier, over the death.  The lawsuit alleges that the retailer failed to update the labels it used when repackaging cookies, even though it was notified by the manufacturer on multiple occasions about changes to the cookies, which occurred months before Ms Baxendale’s death.

The complaint also alleges that the retailer’s label control systems were “broken, unreliable, inherently dangerous, undependable, untrustworthy, erratic and deplorable.”

“… Broken, unreliable, inherently dangerous, undependable, untrustworthy, erratic and deplorable.” Allegations about the retailer’s labelling control systems, made in a wrongful death lawsuit

For its part, the retailer says they were unaware of the recipe change, with Stew Leonard Jr, CEO, saying “We bought it [the cookies] from an outside supplier and unfortunately, the supplier changed the recipe and started going from soy nuts to peanuts and our chief safety officer here at Stew Leonard's was never notified."

Takeaways for food professionals

In this case, the wrongful death lawsuit is being made against employees of the company that sold the cookies, as well as the company itself.  These employees could face a difficult time if the matter goes to court; they will have to defend their actions or collect evidence to show the court they were unaware of the formulation change.  The court could find them personally liable for some of the costs being sought by the plaintiff(s). 

Scary stuff.  I often hear of food quality and safety professionals who are worried that the operational systems they work in are “broken”, and lament that they don’t have the power to fix these systems on their own.  In this case, an allegedly “broken” system has led to food professionals facing litigation.   Worse still, a person lost their life. 

The big takeaway: If you work at a place where you fear major negative food safety outcomes from a “broken” system, and where your concerns are not listened to, carefully consider whether you would want to face consequences like this if something was to go seriously wrong.

In short:  A peanut-allergic woman died after eating cookies that contained undeclared peanuts 🍏 The manufacturer says they told the retailer (who was packing the cookies) about a formulation change months before the death 🍏 The retailer claims they were unaware 🍏 Employees of the retailer, as well as the company have been named in a wrongful death lawsuit and may have to defend their actions before a civil court 🍏

Main source:  Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed Against Stew Leonard's and Cookies United - Quality Assurance & Food Safety (qualityassurancemag.com)

More like this: Case Study: Tiramisu Allergen Death (Issue 123)

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Food Safety News and Resources

Our news and resources section has not-boring food safety news plus links to free webinars and guidance documents: no ads, no sponsored content, only resources that I believe will be genuinely helpful for you.

This week’s highlight: food source for mystery UK illnesses found

Click the preview below to access it.

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Dietary Guidelines from the 1950s (Just for Fun)

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Although some countries review and update their dietary guidelines very frequently (I’m looking at you, United States), the advice really hasn’t changed much for more than 50 years. The general idea is always the same: eat more fruit and vegetables, don’t consume too many calories and eat less saturated fat, sugar and salt.

Ancel and Margaret Keys’ 1959 dietary guidelines for prevention of coronary heart disease.*

1. Do not get fat, if you are fat, reduce.

2. Restrict saturated fats, the fats in beef, pork, lamb, sausages, margarine, solid shortenings, fats in dairy products.

3. Prefer vegetable oils to solid fats, but keep total fats under 30% of your diet calories.

4. Favor fresh vegetables, fruits, and non-fat milk products.

5. Avoid heavy use of salt and refined sugar.

6. Good diets do not depend on drugs and fancy preparations.

7. Get plenty of exercise and outdoor recreation.

8. Be sensible about cigarettes, alcohol, excitement, business strain.

9. See your doctor regularly, and do not worry.

*Keys A, Keys M.  Eat Well and Stay Well.  New York: Doubleday & Co, 1959.

[Thank you to Marion Nestle’s Food Politics for the details in this post]

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Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news and incident reports

📌 Food Fraud News 📌

In this week’s food fraud news:

📌 Calling all honey experts!

📌 Want to find out if your pears were genuinely grown in Britain? There’s a database for that! Discover how to find authenticity testing databases.
📌 How to find a food fraud hazard/risk database;
📌 Bad apples, bad barrels and bad orchards - switching the perspectives on food fraud perpetrators;
📌 Country of origin fraud in fruit and vegetables, counterfeit canned tuna + more.