The Battle Between Food & Worker Safety: Pathogens Vs. PPE

Welcome to the cage match no one talks about—but everyone in food and meat production lives through.  This week, Joe and Jen are tackling the heavyweight showdown between two giants in every facility: Worker Safety vs. Food Safety. Who takes priority when things go sideways? Who gets to call the shots when it’s time to shut it all down? And most importantly—how do we keep from shutting down the whole operation when both teams are “just trying to do their job”?

If you’ve ever sat in a Thursday morning sanitation meeting and realized you now need PPE, a tie-off plan, confined space permits, and a miracle—this episode is for you. Joe and Jen don’t sugarcoat the chaos that can erupt when worker safety and food safety don’t align. Instead, they break it down and offer real-world, practical solutions that facilities can use right now to reduce friction, protect workers, and still keep compliant with every letter of the USDA, FDA, OSHA, and whatever other acronym is looming over your clipboard.

🧠 What You’ll Learn:
🥊 The Source of the Conflict
Why worker safety and food safety frequently butt heads, even though both are trying to “do the right thing”

How different regulatory agencies (OSHA vs USDA/FDA) create a confusing tug-of-war in decision-making

The emotional toll and operational cost of "shut it all down" moments when there's no clear prioritization

🔧 Tactical Takeaways (You Can Use Today)
How to create a shared 5-point conflict matrix between food safety and worker safety—before things go wrong

Identifying “hot zones” in your plant: Anywhere you have elevated work + sanitation + guarding + QA reps = Risk

Flashlight = red flag. What this simple tool tells you about potential violations and future downtime

Why Tuesday-Wednesday is when worker safety needs to be in the loop—not Friday morning at 7AM

How to conduct a 15-minute “risk walk” to spot top hazards without spending your whole shift doing audits

🧠 SEO Keywords (Built for Search Engines AND Humans):
Worker Safety vs Food Safety

Conflicts in Food Processing Facilities

Sanitation and Safety Alignment

Safety Risk Assessments in Manufacturing

Flashlight Confined Space Incidents

Food Safety Chemicals and PPE

Safety Planning for Food Plant Sanitation

Cross-Functional Safety Planning

FSQR and EHS Collaboration

Elevated Work and Fall Protection in Food Plants

Chemical Testing Safety Procedures

Risk Walk Safety Audits

How to Prioritize Safety in a Food Manufacturing Plant

🎁 Resources Mentioned:
✅ AllenSafety.com – For on-site coaching, plant assessments, and in-person training
✅ AllenSafetyCoaching.com – Free email coaching, 100+ exclusive commercial-free training videos, virtual courses, and support

🙏 Support the Podcast:
If you’ve ever dodged a falling flashlight, begged for a last-minute scissor lift, or gotten blindsided by a 7AM Thursday meeting, this podcast was made for you.

👍 Like, subscribe, and share with your safety/QA teams
📨 Submit your questions or conflict scenarios
💸 We don’t make money on this—but your clicks help us push content to the folks who really need it

This video is intended for educational purposes.  Solutions offered are not designed to take the place of an attorney or medical professional, and should not be taken as legal or medical advice.  It is recommended that viewers consult a safety consultant, medical provider or an occupational safety legal team as applicable to help navigate their specific circumstances.  

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the channel.
Today, joe Jen, we're talkingabout conflict.
Let's pick the number oneconflict we see at our locations
.
That seems to be between workersafety, food safety.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, go with that.
I think opposite safety andsafety and engineer I mean
safety is just at odds witheverybody.
It seems like some days, butthat's all right.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
And the reason we're doing this episode is that it is
the two kind of differentagencies and regulatory that
kind of go against each otherand it's hard to.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well, I think, I think the reason why we want to
cover this is because it's hardto figure out, like what most
important in the next fiveminutes is food safety.
The most important thing isworker safety the most important
thing.
Well, who really cares if wedon't put product at the door
and if y'all keep standing onthat equipment over there, well,
we're never going to getrunning again so engineering's
aggravated.
So there's all these things thatstart coming into play.

(00:59):
But it really does seem likewhen you wave the flag of like
hey, we got to shut everythingdown, we got to stop this, we
got problems.
It has to do with safety,whether it be worker, it's
correct.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Those are the two that really and then people show
up, a lot of people show up,and then you start deciding that
moment, of which one who winsout?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
yep, and, and I will also say that I see a lot of
changes happen in the name offood safety that do impact
worker safety absolutely, and ifwe don't manage those
cohesively that can create a lotof a lot of risk.
That's correct.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So you've got the five rules you want to follow
food safety, your location andyou've got five absolutes that
joe the safety manager wants tohave at your location absolutely
, and they're none of me line up.
So what you got to do then isyou got to start breaking down
really that risk, and that'shard to do because it is
literally per location differentways it can look.

(01:54):
You can have different foodsafety.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
It's the same product at two different plants be
completely different and thework of safety can be completely
different yeah, so I think thatthere's like the gm piece,
right, we all know like don'tchew gum on the production floor
.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
We got it right like these nails.
Lock out.
You better lock out from thesafe side on safety.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
We're gonna lock out, we're gonna do all these things
, but there's all this likeweird gray area do I lock out if
I'm cleaning a conveyor, if, ifI can stand back.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
So that started, well , why do I clean it?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
because food safety needs to be cleaner right now
yes, so there's a lot of thingsthat we change and modify
because we need to do it from afood safety standpoint.
So intensified cleaningAbsolutely.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
That can mean that can change PPE for me.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yep, and it can also be like, okay, that's great.
How am I going to tie off there?
Right, I have to now reach thisweird thing.
I have no system in place toaccess that and I have to do it
tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Absolutely, but I got to have guarding on my side.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
So if I've got guarding can't take that
guarding off.
But you got to do elevated.
I don't know where you're goingto tie out.
Then we're like, well, how arewe going to clean it?
Still?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
So yes, it's a challenge.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
So that's what we're trying to get you to do in this
episode is take.
Take those five items each shehas five items.
I find whatever role we are, itdoesn't matter and take those
and get ahead of it, because weknow there's the way we normally
run the business, and then weknow there's the way when things
don't go right, so so we wantyou to address those issues so
that's the first thing is thatwe.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
We have some things that we can kind of anticipate.
I would assume that food safetyat your facility you can check
with them, but have some kind ofplan when things go left right.
We have a recall when we poppositive for different buggies.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, we take a sample that morning and it's bad
.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yep, we've got listeria, We've got some of
these different things.
We need to do some differentsteps, change our methods a
little bit.
We get some kind of somethingin the product and now we have
issues.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Our stuff's tagged and nrs and all the things so
that what time of day that isaffects the safety side
dramatically.
If it happens during pre-opsanitation, just clean it, we're
okay.
Happens at 9 am during aproduct changeover.
Now the same task may be doneby a lawyer of mine that works
at my location.
Did I train them correctly todo that task?

(04:08):
Now that same thing happens inthe afternoon during shift
change.
We're going to shut everythingdown and just clean everything
for everybody.
Now we're into downtime, soyou've got to plan out these
different sectors.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
I think the biggest thing that we need to do is and
I know that this sounds great,right, just take some time, just
you've got nothing.
I know that this, this soundsgreat, right, just take some
time, just you've got nothing,nothing.
I know that no one has any time, I recognize that.
But when you are reviewing someof your food safety plans and
your chemical handling planschemical management plans in
regards to how you're going tohandle some of these
circumstances that inevitably,at sister locations or at that

(04:39):
location, have come up before orare likely to or could come up
if we don't manage things acertain way, that contingency
plans right, let's look at thosecontingency plans as as as a
cohesive unit between foodsafety and worker safety and
figure out how are we going todo this.
If we have to do intensifiedsanitation, where are we
standing?
Where are we tying off?
Happens if we pop positive overhere?

(05:00):
How are we going to handle that?
How are positive over here?
How are we going to handle that?
How are we going to handle thatover here if we're going to get
a new chemical?

Speaker 1 (05:05):
we have a chemical absolutely onboarding process
from the safety side may not beanything the same as what you're
looking at.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, food safety side so if we're bringing on a
new chemical, new acquisition,we've got some different
evaluations that we've got to dofor that and one of them is
testing some plants does it work?

Speaker 1 (05:21):
we have to test it first to see if it works.
But from the worker safety sidewe don't maybe have a testing
protocol for that or PPE.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
We may not have a testing protocol.
We may also not have the rightPPE right.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Right.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
And it also depends let's be very clear on how are
we intending on using this?
So that's when we want to startgetting reps involved, that's
when we want to start talking tothe chemists.
You know PPE or handlinginstructions for how I want to
use this chemical that beingtold I can use in this way,

(05:52):
let's let's talk to the chemistabout what do we need to be
wearing?

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
And and make sure that we have some of that on
site ahead of time.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
We get the training and maybe and maybe we do the
testing on an off shift on adown day, Sunday.
So from my world I've gotalmost nobody there.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
So I'm not having to have PPE for 100 people in a
room, maybe just three.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Correct.
So now I'm going to take thatchemical and I'm going to have
different levels of the plantper plant.
Okay, so now from sanitation wesay 100 to 300 is our range.
Every plant may have a number.
Find out what that number is,so the worker safety people can
start doing their math so that's, that's a great point.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
So we do see different from the sanitation
side, because we've told youright we do a lot with
sanitation and it is incrediblehow we will go from in a company
or to sister locations or toother companies that manufacture
the same items the product butwe all have different numbers
that we're titrating to samegeneral typical, maybe a

(06:56):
slightly different makeup, butthe intent and the use.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
And there's a range for each one.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, and there's this range and it's different.
We'll see totally opposite endsof the spectrum and that does
change my PPE, because acrossthe board, the PPE is usually
standardized.
It doesn't change.
It's the same for all of thoselocations.
But the range is different andespecially if we start having
people get nervous that thingsare not maybe coming out, our

(07:22):
swabs are maybe a little sketchya little iffy.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Let's clean a little more.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Let's add a little bit more, but we don't really
say anything a little more let'sadd a little bit more, but we
don't really say anything.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Add more chemical weird, yeah, it gets weird.
So, so that that's where yougotta look at.
And the last two we have hereyou've got to look at when
you're having these meetings.
Everyone has a weekly meeting,kind of food safety, you got.
You got to get worker safety inthere.
Usually it's at 7 am on athursday on a thursday you gotta
be there, got to be there.
Worker safety you got to bethere.
You're behind if not all thepeople are in the meeting.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yes, something else.
We're aware of the plant levelon Tuesday or Wednesday, if
things aren't going well,correct so we can start getting
plans together.
So before we show up to theThursday or Friday morning
meeting, where we're here, we'regoing to be hand scrubbing
everything and we'll need sometie-off points in places.

(08:15):
We've never had them before andwe'll need them by tomorrow
morning, right?
We know that things maybe notbe great or we know earlier in
the week, and so we'll, just forsafety, we want to make sure
we're getting looped in rightearlier.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
So we are bringing start getting plans so if we
bring in a contractor in,they're pre-qualified.
So if we need somebody to dosome welding, we got the right
hot work permits.
I mean, we got to.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
It's just a matter of we need a little bit of time to
brainstorm and then, procurethe equipment from a different
state.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
I got to rent a sizzle lift tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Now I mean yeah, it takes a minute to make some of
that happen and we don'tgenerally want to do that.
It's kind of like constructionproject.
We don't want to do it onproject day, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
You know Now my last one here, most interesting
conflict is and the solution wealways talk about.
We want you to take away someof these episodes.
You need to go look ateverywhere you have to hand
scrub or take a sample, take aguard off.
That's elevated so thatelevation hand scrubbing.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Start with that so this could be my fsqr slash
anybody whatever you call it orit could be sanitation that's
correct, because generally wedon't have a lot of ops people
doing the samples during theshift, correct?

Speaker 1 (09:23):
but yeah, you got it, that's whether it be a sample
of product or swabbing so youcan take that and start with the
elevated and that'll starttelling you because who does
that task, how they do it?
What shift is going to starttelling you because who does
that task, how they do it?
What shift is going to starttelling you bigger stories?
And that's what you're tryingto do.
You're trying to go out on awhatever day, week it is, for 15
minutes walking to the floorand you're trying to figure out
how do I find the greatest riskwe have here this week.

(09:45):
That is one way to do it.
Yeah, don't go out all eighthours, just go out that 15
minutes.
It's the most critical and youcan learn.
But look for that elevated,look for those job tests like
that.
It'll tell you a big storyabsolutely.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
I think mine would be .
Anytime we I see a flashlightoh, that's good, because they
tell you where to go lookanytime I see a flashlight, just
want to make sure that we'renot breaking the plane find
space our body, head case, youknow flashlight maybe the light
needs new batteries, check yeahanytime I see a flash yeah,

(10:22):
that's good point like does thisperson need to be locking out?
Are we breaking the plane froma guardian standpoint because
we've already had sanitation?

Speaker 1 (10:28):
remove locks I'll tell you an interesting one
about that.
I had someone do a sir blenderyears ago and they were.
They had this flashlight overand if they would have had some
way to attach it to them, wewouldn't have confined space
entries and been down for solong.
When they leaned over thatflashlight, they let go.
It goes in the bottom mixerblender and now we're doing
confined space permits.

(10:49):
Now we got to stop pre-op.
Now we got gotta reclaim it.
All these cycles took off.
Everybody's like we're down,but it was all because of a
process that we didn't have acontrol, just in case something
went crazy yeah, I guess.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
I guess another thing for me would be you know, if
we've got this qr, food safety,whatever you call them, qas,
climbing things, let's just makesure that got free hands
especially if I'm gonna sendsomebody to do inspection and a
scissor lift.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
I got to give them harness training.
So there's all these thingsthat interact.
So for today's episode I'm justtrying to give you some
different ideas to look at Athousand apologies.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yes, I forgot how to drink.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
So for this episode, we're trying to give you
different things to look at,different ways to maybe look at
puzzle.
Everyone has a differentversion of it.
All we want you to do is backup and say let's have these
discussions ahead of time itdoes.
It's amazing how just having afew minutes Food safety has
valid points.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Food safety has valid points.
How do we get them to meet inthe middle?
These are our opinions.
Take them from what you want.
Do a lot of safety stuff.
We do a lot during pre-op.
We do a lot of sanitation.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
These a lot of safety stuff.
We do a lot during pre-op.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
We do a lot of sanitation, absolutely so these
are just our opinions, someideas that you can look at, you
know, while you're doing yourrounds on different shifts,
during sanitation, during pre-op, all of the things.
If you want some onsite support, Allen Safety LLC we do all
this stuff.
So, allen-safetycom is whereyou'll find all of our in-person
services.
You can reach out that way Ifin-person stuff isn't in the

(12:15):
budget on, safetycoachingcom isa great resource.
Yep.
It's a great resource.
You get free email-basedcoaching with Joe and I as a
member of that, as well asaccess to over 100 different
videos.
They are commercial free.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
You can rewatch them over and over and over.
We got to do something with ourthumbs.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, it really does genuinely help us, you guys, if
you like, subscribe, share.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
It helps.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
The only reason why we're doing this is to be nice.
We want to get videos to thosethat need to see them, because I
can tell you we are not makingany profit whatsoever.
We are way in the hole.
So if you could like, subscribe, share.
It really does help push thatcontent to those that need to
see it.
And until next time we will seeyou later, stay safe, everybody
, thank you.
Thank you for listening to Safe, efficient, profitable a worker

(13:02):
safety podcast.
If you're looking for morein-depth discussions or
step-by-step solutions on all ofthe different safety and
regulatory topics, please visitus at wwwallensafetycoachingcom
for web-based virtual coachingand training, or at
wwwallensafetycom to book ourteam for onsite services,
training sessions, to ordermerchandise, to learn more about

(13:22):
our team and what services weprovide in the field, or just
simply to request a topic for usto cover on our next podcast.
If you found today's podcasthelpful and would like to
support our podcast further,please help us by subscribing,
liking and sharing this podcastwith anyone that could benefit
from the information we coverhere, as that helps us to
continue to put out this freecontent.
Thank you.