Produce Safety Starts with Creating a Culture of Food Safety with Humberto Maldonado from Organically Grown Company | Episode 150

In this episode of Don’t Eat Poop!, our hosts Matt and Francine are joined by produce safety veteran Humberto Maldonado, the Director of Safety and Compliance at Organically Grown Company, straight from the Food Safety Consortium 2025.

Humberto shares lessons from his 20+ years in produce safety. Starting out with the 2003 Hepatitis A green onion outbreak at the beginning of his food safety career, to his time at Driscoll’s Mexico navigating auditors and growers, and his newer role.

Get ready for an episode packed with food safety wisdom and practical ways to build a culture of food safety from the field all the way to the C-suite.

In this episode:

💩 [01:32] Humberto’s 20+ years in produce safety

💩 [03:04] Audits and certifications at Driscoll’s Mexico

💩 [10:29] The 2003 Hepatitis A outbreak in green onions

💩 [16:17] Going beyond audits to a culture of food safety

💩 [20:34] How to educate all your workers on food safety 

💩 [25:48] Humberto’s work at Organically Grown Company

💩 [29:57] Build a food safety culture from the field to the C-suite

💩 [34:23] Humberto’s favorite thing about the Food Safety Consortium

Disclaimer: Episode title and content do not constitute legal or health advice.

Resources from this episode

Read about the 2003 Hepatitis A Outbreak Associated with Green Onions here.

Learn more about the Organically Grown Company.

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“One of the pushbacks I always received was, ‘This is too complex for the growers to understand. This is too complex for the harvest crew people to understand.’ That’s not true. We are the ones making things complex. You can explain complex things in a simple way, so keep it simple.” – Humberto Maldonado

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Check out Francine’s book Who Watches the Kitchen? on Amazon!