I am not meant to be in a courtroom — as a lawyer, a defendant, or a plaintiff. That’s one of the things I learned today from a Mock Trial workshop that was put on by one of our own Meatingplace bloggers (Shawn Stevens).

I had a lot of mixed emotions going into this workshop. I was nervous for some reason — not sure why, especially because I was not the one on trial. I have been involved in court cases before as an expert witness, but I have never been involved in the whole trial from start to finish. Granted this was just a 3-hour mock trial, but it was long enough for me to feel some emotions and struggle with the verdict.

The plaintiff in the mock trial was the mother of an 11-year-old girl with leukemia who died from allegedly eating Listeria monocytogenes-contaminated egg salad. The defendant was the VP of food safety for the manufacturer of the egg salad. My emotions were all over the board listening to the mother, the VP, the epidemiologists and the many depositions from both sides. I was sad, angry, embarrassed, and almost cringy at some of the testimony.

When it came time for deliberations (the audience was the jury), I thought it was going to be a slam dunk case. Little did I know that our table ended up having several different thoughts about the testimonies and the evidence. At the end of deliberations, we were a hung jury (4 not guilty and 3 guilty). Emotions were again all over the board – anger, shock, wondering about all the unanswered questions I had, and sadness for the mother.

I cannot express how great a learning experience this workshop was for all of us — retail, allied industry, media, and manufacturing. We all had the same cringy moments when we learned the executive cut costs (in QA, of course), which was tied to his bonus structure, the harsh email that was written from the VP of QA about her concerns of the food safety culture of the facility, the increasing trend in Listeria positive samples, the FDA positive samples obtained from the plant which matched the WGS LM from the patient, the sad description of the patient’s death, and many, many other “oh my” moments.

Of course, this was a made-up scenario for the workshop — but was it really? We all deal with running a profitable business, implementing cost-cutting scenarios, sometimes sending frustrating emails to our executives about our concerns, and we all struggle with food safety culture. Maybe there was some truth to this scenario.

I have heard many experts state that the only way to make a behavior change is to have a drastic and dramatic event in our lives. I am hoping this workshop scenario never becomes the reality for any of us or our customers. If nothing else, I think that going through this exercise was a wake-up call to the reality of the importance of what we do everyday in producing wholesome, safe foods for our customers.

All executives should be required to sit through a mock food safety trial and ask themselves some serious questions about the value of food safety. I highly recommend some workshop mock trial court room drama to roll play and avoid any real-life court room drama.

Court room drama

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