About
Eagle CEO exposes glove contamination threat, urges clean gloves to prevent recalls and food contamination.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Good afternoon everyone, we’re here at the Podcast Theater for the Food Safety Matters Podcast. I’m Bob Ferguson, one of the co-hosts of the podcast. I’m here with Steve Ardagh, CEO and founder of Eagle Protect, and we’re going to talk about the hidden threat of glove contamination.
Now, this morning, in the opening session Lone Jespersen was talking about the issue with food safety culture. And she used an example of somebody dropping a glove into production and getting out to the product, but that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. There’s another threat you're going to bring up that you and I had a chance to talk about a little bit earlier. And you're going to be talking about that at the Town Hall tomorrow as one of the participants in the Town Hall. Give us a sneak peek at what you're going to talk about tomorrow in the Town Hall.
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Yeah, well, that's a great example that she gave but what we're talking about is contaminated gloves, and other matters to do with gloves. And the fact that they are a zone one food safety item, so they need to be treated as such.
FDA Food Compliance & Delta Zero Development
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the FDA Food Compliance is a test of chemical composition, and migration. There's no requirement for gloves to be clean or intact. So you can have a holey glove that’s covered in feces, for example, that would pass FDA Food Compliance theoretically. So we're relying on the factories in Southeast Asia to send us clean gloves. We decided four or five years ago that wasn’t good enough, so we wanted to develop our own testing system. And as part of the Delta Zero™ testing system that we now have, we tested 2,800 gloves, 26 brands, and we found over 50% of them had human fecal matter indicators on the gloves.
Coli, Salmonella, Staph, Strep, Mold, Fungus & More on New Gloves
We found 260 viable pathogens including E. coli, Salmonella, Staph, Strep, mold, fungus, whatever you like. And so that shocked us. I mean, we didn't realize that was going to be those results. We were just using that as a calibration process. So we're trying to bring to people's attention that gloves aren't necessarily clean. Just because they come out of a box. I mean, you actually have to be thinking about where you source them from, where they've come from, who you're buying them off, and are they a consistent, good quality product.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Brand new gloves right out of the box, you're finding 50%?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Yep, so that's over 2,800 gloves. We use gene sequencing to identify what the bacteria and pathogens were. We do gas chromatography mass spectrometry to look at the raw materials of the gloves. I mean, I could go on about that contamination a lot. But, you can come to our booth and talk to us if you want the detailed information. It's been submitted to the Journal of Food Protection at the moment as a peer reviewed paper. So that'll be coming out in the near future. So we're really excited to get this out and to help improve the risk mitigation, if you like, for the food industry.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Okay. And then that's your Delta Zero glove verification program.
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Yeah.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Talk about that and what you're doing.
Gloves Can Cause Recalls
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
So that's a five layer testing process we have on a range of our gloves now. So our gloves are lot tested. We do composition analysis, which is the GCMS. We do bioburden testing, which has identified these pathogens. We do some other tests around dermal toxicity, because the chemical constituents of the gloves can really cause bad hand inflammation, that sort of thing, if it's not good. And I guess a really good example we have, as a customer of ours now, came to us two years ago maybe, Freya Farm, a cannabis company in Washington State. Their product was found with a carcinogen on it. They suffered a recall and they were fined $10,000 by the authorities, and they traced it eventually back to their glove. So the glove had a carcinogen in the raw materials that was being transferred onto the product and picked up. Now that glove is used widely. I won't name the brand of it, but their glove is used widely in the food industry. But the food industry doesn't test the product for carcinogens after they've handled it. So there's every chance that glove is contaminating people's hands and food product. So, I guess the point is, it's not really just aimed at that particular glove, that there's no checks in place on arrival in the US. There’s 1,400 containers of gloves arriving every month into the US. 328 million gloves are used every day in the US. And so who's checking them? We just think that's a real food safety gap.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
So you said the company you worked with in the cannabis industry detected it because they were testing the gloves?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Yeah.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
That's not common in food?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
No, they were testing, or the authorities were testing the cannabis plant. They found the carcinogen. They tested everything and then they tracked it back to the glove which surprised them. Obviously. That glove wouldn't pass the FDA Food Compliance, but because nobody's checking the gloves on arrival, there's no checks to see if the formulation has changed.
Glove Traceability
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Okay, and that was the origin of the Delta Zero program that makes sure that those are all being tested?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Yes.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
And if they get them from you, if they get them from Eagle, they've been tested? You have that?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Yeah. We have a QR code that people can scan on the side of our boxes that gives all the test results. It gives a full history where the gloves have been, from manufacturer right to landing into the US. It has all the spec sheets, everything on it. So that's another part of the whole process is the traceability of the gloves.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
That's fascinating. So one of the key questions somebody would ask is, what should food companies do to protect themselves from this? You have the Delta Zero program and the chain of custody that goes along with it.
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Yeah, the obvious answer for me would be to come to us and buy your gloves from us. But I mean, the second answer is you just need to be aware that this is a zone one food safety item, and it needs to be treated as that. So that you're looking at the sourcing and making sure you are getting a clean glove and not just relying on what comes in a box.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
So, I think that should be pretty understandable to a food company based upon the kind of environmental monitoring they are doing, anything else that gets into zone one. That they would understand the kind of testing that you're doing.
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Well, the irony is we've been to places where they're testing, they’re swabbing the zone one food safety items with their routine swabs, but they never actually swab the glove that they're using to swab with. And so it's just one of those things. You know, it's not a blame game. It's just one of those things that’s just been so far down the list it hasn't even been noticed. And we're just saying the assumption that gloves are clean is wrong. You need to not assume that. You just need to make sure you're getting clean gloves coming into the plant, especially if it's ready-to-eat, obviously. Because that’s then potentially sending out contaminated products straight into homes.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Yeah, food safety professionals are pretty sensitive to food contact or zone one risks, but this may be something that they've overlooked.
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
I think it's just that assumption that the FDA Food Compliance requires gloves to be clean, and that's not what it was set up for. It was set up for the chemical composition test, which is important as well, obviously.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Okay. What else would you want food safety professionals to know?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Well, it's interesting, going right back to the beginning, when you said about the food safety culture. One of the things that I've often said is the glove that people use, especially in a ready-to-eat is, to me, the canary in the coal mine. If the glove being used in the front of house is a poor quality, or even a vinyl glove, which shouldn't be used anywhere in the food industry anymore, for example, that tells me of the food safety culture going right back. I’ve walked into quick service restaurants, which I won't name for obvious reasons, and I've walked straight out because I see the glove they’re using. So that tells me the food safety going on behind the scenes is probably as average as the front of the house. So it's a food safety culture issue as well. It’s sending that message to the frontline worker that we're going to give you the best available tool to do your job because it is a tool of trade, to do your job, so that you're protecting yourselves, the company and the customers.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Okay, and you're sponsoring the Town Hall tomorrow. You'll be speaking at the Town Hall?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Yeah, I get a three minute introduction. So very briefly, I'll be speaking and introducing Gillian, who's looking after the panel. So I mean, three minutes. We just want to get our story out there. We're not trying to upset the applecart. We're just trying to raise the awareness that this is an issue that a lot of people haven't thought about.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Okay, terrific. And for everybody here at the Summit, your booth is?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
328. We're the big red Eagle and we've got a big crew here this year. So, come and see us and have a chat.[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Okay, good. And for everybody listening, how would they get a hold of you?
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
They can get hold of us at eagleprotect.com. That's got all of our details. It's got a huge amount of information on there now in terms of blog posts, media articles and all sorts of spec sheets. But they can get a hold of the team through there, through the chat or phone numbers, etc.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
All right, excellent. Thanks. Thanks, for being on the Podcast Theater.
[ Steve Ardagh ]:
Cheers. Thanks, Bob.
[ Bob Ferguson ]:
Appreciate it. Thanks.