In 1993, Darin Detwiler was a Navy nuclear engineer on a submarine, in his mid-twenties, fairly sure he had the world figured out. That year, the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak made over 700 people ill across several states. Four children died. The fourth and last was his 16-month-old son. Thirty years later he's a professor at Northeastern University, a doctorate in law and policy, an advisor to the USDA and FDA, and one of the subjects of the Emmy-winning Netflix documentary Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food. He is, by his own description, the rare voice in food safety who has never worked inside the food industry. In this episode of the Command Your Brand Show, Jeremy Ryan Slate talks with Dr. Detwiler about why outbreaks keep happening, what companies actually do between knowing and acting, and why the most convenient food carries the most risk. In this conversation: • What it does to a nuclear engineer to lose a child to a hamburger • Why there are good people and good companies — and what stops them anyway • The VP who knew what needed fixing, and the finance director who blocked it • Why food safety needs allies in HR, legal and finance to survive a budget meeting • How the pandemic quietly rewired where your food comes from • Pre-washed, pre-cut, pre-shredded: why convenience adds risk at every step • "With greater convenience comes greater potential risk" — and who actually bears it • Boar's Head, Family Dollar, and what happens when inspection reports get filed and ignored • The certainty gap: the distance between knowing you need to act and acting • The submarine rule — you see flooding, you don't wait for more data • What separates companies that mean it from companies with a press statement • Taco Bell's response versus "out of an abundance of caution" • Why Maple Leaf Foods holds a ceremony every year on the anniversary of its own outbreak • "I vote with my food money" MORE FROM DR. DARIN DETWILER: Faculty page, Northeastern University: https://cps.northeastern.edu/faculty/darin-detwiler/ Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food (Netflix, 2023) — Emmy winner, Current Affairs Documentary Podcast: Confessions of a Food Safety A-hole — on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Podbean 👇 COMMENT BELOW: What's one food you stopped buying once you learned how it was actually made? CHAPTERS: 00:00 Intro 00:50 A nuclear engineer on a submarine, 1993 01:51 "The fourth and final child to die was my son" 04:08 What he learned about the institutions we trust 04:54 The finance director who blocked a food safety fix 07:35 Why outbreaks keep happening — and how the pandemic changed the chain 10:20 Pre-cut, pre-washed, pre-shredded: convenience and risk 15:26 Who actually gets hurt when food safety fails 17:38 Boar's Head, Family Dollar, and the reports nobody acted on 19:00 The certainty gap 20:29 The submarine rule: when you see flooding, you act 21:52 What separates real food safety from lip service 26:26 Taco Bell versus "out of an abundance of caution" 30:51 Where to find Darin
