by Mitch Lipka
Susan Reef was shopping in a small Andover grocery story one fall day in 2008 when an elderly woman asked her advice about buying tomatoes in the midst of a salmonella outbreak. Reef directed the woman to the store manager, but the recall was still on Reef’s mind when she got home.
Susan Reef was shopping in a small Andover grocery story one fall day in 2008 when an elderly woman asked her advice about buying tomatoes in the midst of a salmonella outbreak. Reef directed the woman to the store manager, but the recall was still on Reef’s mind when she got home.
As she searched the Internet, she quickly found there was no easy way for consumers to learn about food safety recalls, with fragmentary information scattered across the websites of government agencies, grocers, and food industry groups. An idea was planted that would lead Reef to become a leading source for food safety information.Reef is the founder of USFoodSafety.com, a three-year-old Marlborough start-up that is attracting tens of thousands of visitors to its website, providing a wide range of consumer information about food recalls. The site often averages more that 100,000 unique visitors a month while the audience for its award-winning blog, US Food Safety, has been growing at a rate of about 17 percent a month and now tops 30,000 readers. Reef’s Twitter account, @FoodSafeGuru, has more than 85,000 followers.
“Food became a passion,’’ Reef said. “I just had a brainstorm one evening and never looked back.’’
USFoodSafety.com aims to fill the gaps in a fractured reporting system. When a company launches a recall, it could be reported to the Food and Drug Administration; the US Department of Agriculture; or various state agencies. In Rhode Island, for example, the site helped get out details of a state recall after two deaths were connected to zeppoles — Italian fried dough pastries — made at a Cranston bakery.
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