How the cold chain and restaurants are preparing for FSMA 204

[00:00:00] Our biggest concern overall is that we're less than two years away from this rule being implemented, and we still don't know how it's going to be implemented at the retail and restaurant level. Restaurants are generally governed and inspected by the FDA model food code. This isn't in the food code. This is in the Code of Federal Regulations, which historically has not regulated restaurants. So there's a huge question here about how is this going to be implemented?

[00:00:30] Hello and welcome to the Next Level Supply Chain with GS1 US, a podcast in which we explore the mind-bending world of global supply chains, covering topics such as automation, innovation, unique identity, and more. I'm your co-host, Reed. And I'm Liz. And welcome to the show.

[00:00:48] Amanda Brandy from the Global Cold Chain Alliance and Patrick Guzzle from National Restaurant Association and I just had a conversation around FSMA and how FSMA 204 is impacting their members in a little different way. We know that FSMA 204 is coming into play and folks are getting ready.

[00:01:08] And they really just gave an overview of how their members from a cold chain perspective as well as a restaurant operator perspective are getting ready for the rule. Amanda, Patrick, welcome to the show. Thank you, Liz. Thank you. Okay. Before we jump in and get started and talk about all things FSMA 204, I would love for you each to introduce yourselves and what your roles are within your organizations. Amanda, I'm going to start with you. Hi, Amanda Brandy.

[00:01:38] My title is a vice president of global projects and partnerships, and I sit within our policy team, and that's a relatively new transition. So I feel like everybody and all of the FSMA working groups and all of these different activities all know each other so well and that these long histories and I've kind of shown up on the fringes and I'm learning a lot about everything. But my background and much of my role has always been on our international projects where we work through our foundation to grow the cold chain globally.

[00:02:08] So stepping into this a little bit sideways, but really, truly and honestly, happy to be here and very excited to be learning it. So it's been great getting to know you and helping you come up to speed and learning so much from you about the cold chain process and that whole thing, too. Yeah. Patrick. Yeah, I'm Patrick Guzzle. I'm the vice president of food safety with the National Restaurant Association. Unlike Amanda, I am normally not involved in our policy stuff.

[00:02:37] I sit on our serve safe side. We are the organization that prepares and publishes serve safe products. And that's where most of my work takes place is helping with the serve safe team. The perspectives that I'm going to be sharing are really restaurant centric, if you will. And we do represent restaurants throughout the U.S., but we don't represent every restaurant throughout the U.S., but we certainly try to help out where we can. Awesome. Awesome.

[00:03:06] So that helps kind of ground the conversation. And you both are talking and interacting with members of NRA and GCCA every single day. And when you talk to them from a FSMA 204 perspective, what are the concerns that they are telling you about their specific role within the supply chain? Amanda, I'll start with you. There's three really that come to mind.

[00:03:32] The first is a concern over the lack of standardization within the data. Patrick did such a good job explaining kind of their role. I did not say Global Cold Chain Alliance. Our members are third party logistics providers. And so it means that we're servicing multiple customers.

[00:03:49] And the problem with lack of standardization is that as they're developing systems and aiming towards compliance, they're getting multiple guidelines or requests or parameters in which they need to receive that data and be able to transfer it along. And that just creates a lot of complications. I also think that would be I've never verified this with FDA, but I feel like that would be complicating for them as well.

[00:04:13] You know, trying to go through a traceback and each organization has its own way of doing things might be a little bit more difficult. But that's kind of the first area. The second kind of main challenge that I hear from our members is concern over missing data and what happens where there is a KDE that's missing and who's liable for that and who needs to take responsibility. Again, kind of goes to the standardization. Even if there's missing data, what's the way in which we move forward?

[00:04:41] How does that get input in a way that's clear that it is missing? Because a lot of the systems, as I understand, require data to be inputted. And then we're also hearing from our members that the ASNs are often arriving too late. So the load comes in, they get the information after the fax. They don't even know what's missing before they have to kind of move it through the supply chain.

[00:04:59] And then the third one is, and I think that this is not unique to GCCA, but Patrick can back me up or contradict me on this, is throughout all the stakeholders within the supply chain, I feel like there's just a lack of awareness amongst everybody. Where you've got the bigs and the ones who are well-resourced, really, who've been watching this from day one and who are working through all the groups and trying to get themselves situated.

[00:05:23] And then we have a lot of family-owned companies and smaller cold storage warehouses that are struggling for a variety of reasons today, just daily. And so something that's happening two years down the road, you feel like you have the luxury of time. So even if they are aware of it, it's not top of their list. And perhaps it really ought to be considering the challenges that it could present for them. So those are kind of the big three areas. But I would love to hear from Patrick on that.

[00:05:48] Before I turn it over to you, Amanda, you and I spent the last two days together at a meeting where we talked so much about what you just identified with missing data. What to do when the data isn't there as expected. And the segue to what Patrick's about to say, because he and I've talked often about this, is businesses today are concerned with staying in business.

[00:06:14] And they don't understand that the time that it may take to put fixes in place or have conversations with trading partners to identify something like data instead of selling food. Those conversations are so broad. And I think just to get it to filter down has, I mean, we've been at this for a couple of years already. So Patrick, from your perspective, what are your folks hearing, saying or not hearing, saying? Wow.

[00:06:44] So much information with this question. And I made the mistake of writing a couple of notes down. So I hope I don't get too far off the deep ends and end up speaking too long. So I work remotely from my home in Boise, Idaho, and I've heard everything from small restaurants that are independently owned in Boise to some of the largest national brand names that we would all recognize that are located throughout the U.S.

[00:07:14] And I really wholeheartedly agree with Amanda's comments on the three concerns. But we've got a little bit different view on this. Let me first of all start with lack of standardization. Our biggest concern overall is that we're less than two years away from this rule being implemented. And we still don't know how it's going to be implemented at the retail and restaurant level.

[00:07:41] Restaurants are generally governed and inspected by the FDA model food code. This isn't in the food code. This is in the Code of Federal Regulations, which historically has not regulated restaurants. So there's a huge question here about how is this going to be implemented? And the reason why it's such a concern for us is because, and we can look at the summer as an example,

[00:08:03] most foodborne illness outbreaks, when this rule becomes applicable, start, the investigation starts at the retail level. We saw that with the cyclospora outbreak this summer, where a restaurant name brand was named before the supplier was ever named of the lettuce that was causing the concerns. So Amanda mentioned lack of standardization. So restaurants are generally inspected by local and state health departments.

[00:08:33] When you count all the different local health departments across the U.S., there are approximately 3,000 different ones. And they don't agree on some of the most simple paragraphs out of the food code. And so a complex rule like this, we really see the concern here or the prospect for having great confusion and great misunderstanding about what the rule requires. When does it require? When does it require? How does it require it? So that's a big concern.

[00:09:00] So we share the concern of lack of standardization just through different eyes. Yeah. Amanda mentioned missing data. Here again, that's a big concern for us. And who's going to be responsible for that? Well, we don't know the answer to that question either. And again, with 3,000 local health departments approximately throughout the U.S., we see that as a big concern. We estimate that there are 1.3 million restaurants throughout the United States.

[00:09:27] Virtually every single one of them will be impacted by this rule. I know that FDA wrote in an exemption that if your facility sells less than $250,000 a year of food, you're exempt outright from the rule. Well, successful restaurants sell more than that in a given year. So even some of the smallest mom and pop owned restaurants are going to be subject to this rule. And then Amanda mentioned lack of awareness, and I wholeheartedly agree with that.

[00:09:53] And again, going back to the food code and the fact that this is in the Code of Federal Regulations, again, your larger name brand restaurants are aware of what's coming with this rule. But we think of small, independently owned restaurants that might be in the middle of rural America in what are commonly called some of those flyover states in a small town. They make up a vital part of that community, and they may not be aware that this rule is coming.

[00:10:19] We're trying to educate everyone through our state restaurant associations, but it's a big ask with approximately 1.3 million restaurants throughout the U.S. So those are some of the concerns that we have as this rule starts to unfold. We just don't know how it's going to roll out. And we've been asking, and we haven't been given any clear answers yet.

[00:10:41] And I don't, I mean, based on conversations we had this week, when I was talking to FDA yesterday before we left, the food code, and Patrick, I've been listening to you talk about the food code for years. But what I didn't realize is that each state could implement whatever version they want. So if it ends up in the food code, a state doesn't have to use that food code. That's exactly right.

[00:11:09] And so the most recent full edition of the food code was published in 2024, two years ago. And there's a supplement that's published every two years. We know there are states that are using the 2026 supplement. But if a state is using the 2024 food code, it took them years to get to that point. Yeah. It's not.

[00:11:33] Most states, there are a couple states that adopt a food code upon publication, but most states have to go through their own legislative process to adopt whatever version of the food code is. So if FDA puts it in the food code, let's suppose they put it in the 2028 food code. It's still going to be years before a state actually is enforcing it through their food code. Yeah. It's just there's so many moving parts.

[00:11:57] And to be able to educate effectively and with facts seems very difficult in the world that y'all are living in today. Yeah. Shifting gears a little bit, I wanted Amanda to talk about cold chain specifically and how they play a unique role in connecting suppliers and distributors and operators that need food.

[00:12:20] And many of us who have been in the industry for a long time don't realize the impact of cold chain and how many products move through that part of the supply chain. But what questions are concerned do you hear most from members as they're trying to get ready for 204? I think to answer, I'll just back up for just one second. And I mentioned that our members are primarily third party logistics providers.

[00:12:47] And I think probably a lot of the people that would listen to a podcast on FSMA 204 understand what that means. But there's a surprising amount of people that still don't know what that means and why it's important. And so just to kind of say a third party logistics providers who, again, the primary GCCA membership, they are logistics specialists. They build, own, operate, they store, handle, distribute fresh and frozen products, but they don't typically take ownership.

[00:13:17] If they do take ownership, it's in very rare circumstances. And that does have implications for the way that FSMA and other even like kind of state level traceability rules can be interpreted and applied. I think people often say, you know, farm to fork. And it's a very simplistic view that I think it oversimplifies the way that our food moves through the supply chain. And it implies that it goes from A to B to C and the ownership transfers with it.

[00:13:45] And that is often, very often not the case. And so I think when these regulations get written, something like a 3PL gets left out of it. And then our members find themselves in the position of trying to be compliant because ultimately nobody wins from a food safety issue. Nobody wins from a recall. We all have this. One wonderful thing about this issue is that we all have a shared goal. It's really hard to be against this one.

[00:14:12] And so it's more just how and how we're going to do it. And some of these regulations get written in such a way where a third party logistics providers who doesn't have a contractual relationship with anybody beyond their customer are put in a position where they're being asked to get information from suppliers. They have no contractual relationship with them. They can ask their customer. The customer often doesn't want to reveal that. They don't want to share it for just privacy reasons.

[00:14:37] And so if the customer says no, they're kind of in a position where they're being forced to comply with something they can't. And so I think that's kind of the primary driver. It's not really about the objective of the rule or, you know, we agree with the efficiency. None of us want to get sick either. But it's just simply how it's going to be, how the regulations were written. They didn't take into account some of those complexities. And now we're working with these different state regulators and federal regulators to determine how best to move forward.

[00:15:06] And there certainly is a pathway. It is just a lot of work to determine that pathway forward. And a lot of information. I guess I didn't realize, and I've been to one of the facilities with you all, but I guess I didn't realize that the relationship lies with the 3PL and its customers. So who that product is going to, not necessarily where it came from. And when we talk about, well, just have customer trading partner conversations, there's a blank spot there.

[00:15:36] Right? I'm assuming there's a blank spot there that you can't go ask for it because you don't have a relationship with them. Correct. Right. That's exactly right. In some cases they may, every business is different, but by and large, that's kind of the main crux of it. That's a whole different puzzle. Because they work with so many different trading partners.

[00:15:58] When you talk to folks as you're unraveling this big ball of spaghetti or yarn, what advice are you giving to help them collaborate across the supply chain as they prepare? I mean, we're a year, not, what is it, 2026? I don't even know what year it is. It is 2026. Just under two years, just under two years of compliance. So what are you telling them in this kind of gray area time period?

[00:16:25] The first thing, and I always feel a little bad saying this, but the first thing is come talk to us at GCCA. Talk to me. And I feel bad about that because, like I mentioned, I'm new to all of this. I only started working on FISMA in March of this year, and so I'm not the expert, but I'm very good about connecting the right people to the right people.

[00:16:48] And we are working on updating some of our materials on FISMA, really leaning into FISMA 204 and getting some more documents out to help. But that's a great starting point. GCCA is also a member of the Partnership for Food Traceability, which had hosted the workshop that you referenced earlier, as well as having a collaboration with GS1. So we know the right people.

[00:17:10] And so I think working through that, we also try very hard to get our members to engage with those groups themselves where it makes sense, especially when PFT offers, you know, kind of open to anybody options like the workshop. Or with GS1, we've had you guys speak at webinars and things for our members. That's kind of the first thing. I think the second one is really have the conversations themselves with their customers. And there's two sides to that. It's working with their customers to determine the best pathway forward.

[00:17:40] But I think on the flip side, they should also recognize their customers may be in the same position and may have no idea or very little idea what's coming down. So there's preparatory kind of conversation, but there's also maybe a little bit of education that needs to happen as well that we're trying to do. I will say a couple of things that have been very positive for me, at least kind of entering this anew compared to some of the folks that have been living and breathing it for the past several years.

[00:18:06] I think FDA has been incredibly engaged in at least through PFT. And it hasn't been a situation where they set up the regulation, you know, wiped off their hands and walked away and said, deal with it. They recognize the complexities and are really trying very hard to listen and to learn and to ask questions and to answer questions. And so there is a really great level of collaboration that I think is kind of surprising in a sense.

[00:18:35] You know, just everybody always thinks government is broken and people don't talk. And I think that's the one kind of very positive aspect of this is that I've really seen people trying to come together and to work very hard to make this right, to figure out how to do it. Because, again, it's a shared goal. We all want food safety. We all want these tracebacks and recalls to work when they need to happen and to work in the quickest amount of time possible. Our members are logistics experts. Efficiency is what they live and die by.

[00:19:03] And so anything we can do to speed that up, we're all for as long as we can do it in a way that are legal standing and is compliant with just the contracts that we have in place. Yeah, absolutely. I think that your observation of FDA, I've not worked with them in any other work than this, but it does feel like they are willing to answer the questions they're allowed to answer.

[00:19:28] There is a line, obviously, they can't cross, but they come to meetings, they show up at webinars, they participate on PFT, they come to some of our work groups and discussion groups. And I think that just lends to a feeling of, OK, we are kind of in this together. And if they can hear some of the complexities that are going around, they at least can understand why people are having some challenges and trying to work through them in the way that they're working through them.

[00:19:55] Patrick, I am going to shift over from the middle-ish of the supply chain to the end-ish of the supply chain. Your members are at the end of the supply chain where we all enjoy going out for dinner or lunch or breakfast. And I know that because of where y'all sit at the end of the supply chain, there's a whole different list of complexities, most of which that, you know, they're small guys.

[00:20:23] What do you think that operators should be thinking about when they start working with their suppliers so that they can get the information that they need to have? And today, I am assuming many of them have zero technology. So that's probably a fair assumption. Sometimes the technology is built into their POS systems, the point-of-sale systems, but sometimes it isn't.

[00:20:49] Sometimes we might still be using paper and pencil to help track some of our records. Now, I wholeheartedly agree with what Amanda said about nobody benefits from a foodborne illness outbreak. And oftentimes the investigation for a foodborne illness outbreak starts at the restaurant level where we're going to try to gather the information about what food is it that's causing people to be sick. And, of course, we never want that to happen.

[00:21:15] Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, hey, what can I do to cause a foodborne illness outbreak today? And tragically, they do happen and they impact families and people across the United States. And so food safety is always at the top of our minds in restaurants. We have some resources available for restaurants, and I don't have the availability to show you on the screen what they are.

[00:21:38] But if you were to go to your internet browser of choice and type in National Restaurant Association traceability, probably the second or third page you'll be taken to, maybe the first page, depending on the browser, will be our website where we have several different resources listed. Those resources include guidance. It includes a calendar about where you should be in this process. And at this point, our message is, yeah, you should be definitely speaking to your distributors

[00:22:08] to help identify what foods are on your menu that are going to be subject to the traceability list. It doesn't cover every single food. It's specific foods. So we need to make sure that we know what foods are on our menu that are subject to traceability. The rule fortunately allows for the distributor to keep those data points if we have that agreement.

[00:22:35] And I also echo everyone's statements about FDA has been very helpful throughout this process. Like Amanda said, it's not a rule that they wrote and then decided to walk away from it. It's they're being very engaged in the conversations. So the rule allows for your distributors to have this information. So speak with your distributors and find out, are you going to be doing this for me? And what does that process look like? Help me get a better understanding.

[00:23:02] The other thing is that the rule does require you to write a traceability plan. It doesn't have to be too, too complex. We have an example of what a traceability plan could look like. So I guess that's another thing that I would be telling restaurants is start preparing your traceability plan to help identify some of these elements we've talked about. Who's going to be responsible for what aspect as this rule unfolds?

[00:23:29] I think that's such a good point, Patrick, about the traceability plan because it gives you an outline of what needs to be done for the rule. And you can almost start with the end in mind and back into what do I already have? Where are my gaps? Oh, my gosh, this isn't just a food safety thing. This is a supply chain. This could be a regulator if I have somebody, you know, in a bigger organization. But it's not just a food safety FSQA conversation. It's much broader than that.

[00:23:57] And I think the traceability plan is a really good place to start for that first outline. I would say it's also a good place to learn. If you read the rule, that's one thing. And you read the FAQs, it's one thing. But when you look at the way kind of a template or if you come up with a template yourself or with your association, the way it's structured, all of the different aspects of it, that in and of itself is like it's a practical application that really does help you understand some of the nuances of the rule a little better. Yeah, that's a really good point. It's a really good point.

[00:24:27] And FDA, we've been singing their praises. Their website is quite good. Amanda, you just talked about the FAQs. There's a lot of information out there. There's also some really good flow charts on you can choose where you sit in the supply chain and what the specific critical tracking events and key data elements are that you need to be thinking of as you put your own supply chain hat on. And so I would urge everyone to go out who's impacted or maybe not impacted by the rule to go there and learn to.

[00:24:56] And then the association websites are also amazing. I know that we're all trying to put as much information out there as we can because we know this isn't easy. Patrick, one more question for you from the end of the supply chain. When you talk to the operators, do they struggle with evaluating traceability readiness? Like, is this something that's on their mind anyway because of recalls? Do they not think of it as traceability? It's just every day.

[00:25:25] I would love to get your thoughts on it. Well, Liz, that's a great question. As I've been engaged in conversations, we too are members of Partnership for Food Traceability. I've been engaged with a lot of other groups. And I think sometimes there is a conflation of terms when we talk about traceability versus recall. Those are adjacent but different processes.

[00:25:50] A recall can be initiated because something got mislabeled or it's in the wrong box or the size, the weight of the container is wrong. All of those can initiate a recall. Traceability becomes applicable, according to our understanding, during the course of a foodborne illness outbreak investigation. And again, I think this is where we've been trying to learn from FDA,

[00:26:18] what is the process for if a restaurant is implicated in this outbreak investigation, who's going to go to that restaurant and start this traceback procedure? Who does that? And we just don't know the answer to that yet. I see the two terms used sometimes interchangeably, and they're not. They're very similar, very closely related concepts, but they are different too. Yep. No, I agree. I agree. Okay. Last question.

[00:26:48] I'm kind of going to have both of you answer this because I would love to hear what your thoughts are on what successful collaboration looks like across supply chain, across segments. Because like Patrick, you said, there's a lot of foods on the food traceability list that are implicated, but not everything. And so how do you suggest that the supply chain should best be working together to move towards this compliance state? Amanda, I'll start with you.

[00:27:17] I think there's kind of the process. And I think honestly, what you and I went through the past few days, that's an example of what it needs to be. The conversations that we had, because they were very good about organizing the table such that different parts of the supply chain were sitting together. And hearing a small food manufacturer who's transforming product and then shipping it out to retailers, very small organization, but large enough to where they're going to be

[00:27:47] required to have compliance with FSMA. And their day-to-day was fascinating for everybody at the table for us. And I think so often, even hearing Patrick talk about the restaurant side of it, it's you just learn so much more without that collaboration, without those meetings, without those workshops, even though the PFT and the GS1 calls, you just being on the sidelines. I've learned so much about what others are going through. And that, I think, is critical. So that's kind of the process.

[00:28:16] For an output for all this collaboration, what I'd really love is if there was just some agreement on structured kind of guidelines for this at an industry level. This is how we believe the best way to do this. There'll be outliers. There'll be some companies that have the ability to say, nope, we're going to do it like this. But if we could come to some agreement with how we're going to approach this as an industry, I think that that would really go a long way towards what the collaboration should be.

[00:28:42] But I do think just this constant conversation that needs to be happening. I hope to see more of what happened yesterday. It doesn't have to be an in-person event, but just more of this. And it really also increased my willingness and kind of commitment to joining as all of the calls that I can to hopefully one day being able to speak at them. So I've still been on the sidelines as I've like, you know, worked my way through learning about all of this stuff. But it is just so important to have those connections and understand how your challenges both are

[00:29:09] the same and then also different from the others working in the supply chain. 100%. And then you can call somebody and say, hey, this is what I'm running into. Do you have any advice? Have you done this before? Which is amazing. Exactly. Exactly. That peer-to-peer based learning and also not just the peers within your own segment of the supply chain, but, you know, the option to have like Patrick come speak to our members. Like this is what it is that we're facing. I think that type of collaboration is really important. 100%.

[00:29:39] Yeah, that's a great example, Amanda. You know, you mentioned earlier that the food chain is a little more complex than we sometimes might think it is. You're right. We often use that phrase farm to fork. And what does that mean? And it's not a straight line as we go through the food processing and distribution chain. I'm reminded of one of my favorite movies is called It's a Beautiful Mind or A Beautiful Mind. I can't remember exactly how it was. It starts with Russell Crowe. Yeah. Yeah. The mathematician.

[00:30:10] Okay. Yeah. And he's got this. There's a scene where he's imagining this whole interaction of things. And he's got all these lines that are drawing all back and forth and across. And that's kind of a little bit closer to how the food distribution chain really is. And I think that the rule was intended to allow us to be able to go from, you know, fork back to farm in one direct line. And it might not actually be that way.

[00:30:38] So I think for collaboration, like you're saying, it's helping us all understand that, for lack of a better word, I'm going to say web. And that's not really the word I'm looking for. But the complexities that are involved as we go back in that traceback procedure from fork and eventually back to farm.

[00:30:58] And yeah, like you said, I think it's an opportunity or the opportunities for us to communicate back and forth, to share ideas, to advise each other. Hey, here's what's working for us. Maybe you can learn from us on this and to appreciate where everybody else lies in this. For me, that's what collaboration on this will ultimately look like, is the ability to do that. And then I also think, and I think FDA is open to this.

[00:31:25] They seem to be open to understanding that we're going to have to grow into this rule. As much as we would like to have on July 20th, 2028, everybody say, well, we're getting to go with our traceability systems now. There's nothing else to worry about. I think it'll, I don't think it'll be reality. And I think FDA is open to understanding that, that we're going to have to grow into this rule a little bit.

[00:31:49] From everything we've heard, they've talked a lot about educate before regulate. And so hopefully that that's one of those messages that continues. And I think as they're seeing industry come together and have this kind of conversation and learn from each other and not just have those, oh my gosh, this is hard. But also this is hard and how do we solve this problem together? They'll be even more willing to do that education before regulation.

[00:32:15] Because I think we both have said, we're all in this for the same reason of safe food for our families and ourselves. And as long as we're leaning in, and I think even the term this week, you know, progress over perfection, there's always going to be exceptions. But leaning into let's move this forward as best we can, it's going to go a long way. Okay, so that wraps up the time that we have.

[00:32:41] We usually end the podcast with a couple questions. I'm just going to ask you one. And hopefully it is not going to throw you too much for a loop because I don't know what I would say to be quite honest. But Amanda, in your either personal or private life, what is the favorite technology that you're using right now? I'm going to go professional. My use of it is going to be very extended.

[00:33:05] But I mentioned most of my work prior to joining the policy team was on growing the cold chain and developing and emerging markets. And the technology that I recommend and share and work on in those countries is what I feel is going to really move the needle with growing the cold chain, which is really critical for reducing food waste and for expanding access to nutrition, supporting smallholder farmers.

[00:33:30] So there's a lot of it's a broad bucket, but there's a lot of new technologies that are very relevant for any underserved market. Honestly, we recommend the same to a lot of the food banks we work with, but also in developing emerging markets with little access to grid electricity. So solar is a big one. They're using biofuels. There's all sorts of companies out there that are really looking to ways to expand access in a way that's cost effective. And so those are the kinds of things I can't remember if your question was like, what's my favorite or what's what exactly?

[00:33:59] But yeah, on the personal level, I literally have a Kindle from like 2007 that I still use. So I do use Cloud. It's not my, I'm still a little, little iffy on on AI stuff that I probably don't use them as much as I could. But I think on the professional side, I'm just really excited and interested in what I see that's been developing. And that's relevant for those markets that I've kind of had a history working in. That's awesome. It's making people happy and well-fed. And that's awesome. That's really cool. Patrick. Wow.

[00:34:28] My answer is so much shallower. So to give you some context here, I played saxophone all through my university days and I still love big band jazz. And so my favorite technology is my phone. I have over eight hours downloaded of a particular artist's big band songs. His name is Gordon Goodwin, by the way. Love his music.

[00:34:57] Love, just, it's just a great way for me to relax after the end of the day. And even sometimes during the day, I'll turn on some music in the background. So that's my favorite technology. I love that. That is not shallow. When you have justification for it, that's not shallow at all. I love that. And because we don't have- You went professional. I went, no, I'm thinking personal here. I'm on technology for all day long.

[00:35:23] At the end of the day, I want to get off technology so I can just sit back and listen to some great music. No, I think that's awesome. I think that's awesome. This has been great. We've talked about different parts of the supply chain and how FISMA 204 is coming. But I think what I took away most is that we're all better together moving forward with a safer supply chain. So thank you both. That's a great way of putting it. Yes. Thank you. Have a great weekend, both of you. Thank you.

[00:35:50] Thank you for joining the Next Level Supply Chain with GS1US. If you enjoyed today's show, you can subscribe to our feed or explore more great episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to share and follow us on social media. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.