You work in the food industry. Your company produces a high-risk product. Your job title — Food Safety and Regulatory Manager, Director of Quality or Vice President of Global Food Safety — makes you the person who is ultimately responsible for the safety of your food products. You love (most of) the challenges of your job, and are proud of the food safety programs you have developed and the resulting safety and quality of your foods.

Nevertheless, pathogens remain elusive. It’s 4:38 p.m. on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. You sit quietly in your office, sweat beads forming on your forehead. Your eyes glance nervously from your wall clock to your phone, and then back from your phone to your wall clock — over and over. Minutes tick by slowly, feeling like hours. Each second feels like an eternity.

Eventually, it’s 4:53 p.m. Only seven minutes now until you can leave. You are afraid to gather the papers on your desk to take home, because you don’t want to jinx it. You’re so close to your long-awaited (and well-deserved) holiday weekend. Only six more minutes, and you can run for it, you tell yourself.

When the clock strikes 4:59 p.m., you decide to move. You quickly gather the materials you need to take home, along with your cords and laptop. With your arms full, you stand up, round the corner of your desk and stumble for the door. The world begins revolving in slow motion, it seems, as you step into the hall. But you can’t run fast enough.

With the shrillness of a blaring locomotive, your office phone rings — stopping you in your tracks. Resigned to another holiday weekend lost, you close your eyes, take a deep breath, turn back into your office, and slowly pick up the phone. The bad news is that your food products collected at retail by federal regulators tested positive for a harmful pathogen. The good news, your boss proclaims (in many cases from the comfort of his or her vacation destination), is that you are still in the office to deal with it.

This scenario is familiar to seasoned food safety professionals. Whether it’s a holiday weekend, a Friday afternoon, or some other important event (such as your son’s first birthday or your daughter’s high-school graduation), food product recalls always seem to happen at the most inopportune times.

So, as we approach Thanksgiving, I wanted to write this missive to thank all food safety professionals, not only for the safe and quality food you consistently provide to the nation (and, increasingly, the world), but also for the long nights and lost weekends you have sacrificed keeping us safe when problems do occur.

The job of a food safety professional is one of the most important jobs in the world, and will always remain so. I truly wish that, this holiday weekend, all food safety professionals (and all Meatingplace readers) will be able to enjoy the holiday with their families from the comfort of their homes. For those who are unable, we send you our thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving, to all — and thank you for all you do.

The sacrifices of a food safety professional

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