Being a Food Safety and Quality Assurance Professional Takes Daily Detective Work

Thanks to the BritBox streaming app, I’ve watched every denouement from Christie’s fastidious Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, more times than I care to admit. “Modesty forbids it,” as he’d say.

I immediately thought of Poirot and his “little gray cells” when reading this issue’s cover story, “Pest Management: A Mystery Novel." In the story, writer and board certified entomologist Chelle Hartzer reveals a page-turning guide on how thinking of pest control in food facilities like an unsolved mystery can help prevent infestations.

“No facility is completely immune to pest problems,” she wrote. “There is always the chance for something to get in, and when it does, quick reaction time and delving into the details can mean the difference between an introduction and an infestation.”

It made me think of the details Poirot would routinely fixate on in the show (and Dame Agatha’s novels and short stories, on which the show is based).

Just like Poirot, Hartzer’s detective checks the clues, reads between the lines and looks for connections to discover the who, where, when, why, what and how of pest problems in food facilities.

The fact is, being a food safety and quality assurance professional takes a lot of daily detective work. It’s rarely immediately clear how a pathogen, allergen or foreign object managed to find its way into your finished product, and Hartzer’s story is a good reminder on the processes to follow.

As food safety advocate and contributing editor Darin Detwiler points out in his column, “Not All Food Safety Heroes Wear Capes,” FSQA professionals also need a lot of seemingly superhero-level talents: speed, a moral compass, resilience, keen senses and perception.

Not surprisingly, all of those qualities also make for a great detective.

Hopefully, you only need a couple of those skills to pick out all the pests on this issue’s cover.

We made them a little easier to find than they are in real life.