So many consumers are expected to purchase their holiday gifts online this year that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are predicted to be the most lucrative online shopping days ever.   

For those of us online shoppers who aren’t über tidy and don’t rush off to the recycling bin as frequently as we should, our homes are filling up with teetering towers of corrugated boxes. We want all the stuff but not all the boxes in which the stuff arrives. It’s causing a lot of stressful post-merchandise mayhem.   

As anyone with any kind of social media account can tell you, unboxing experiences are not created equal. Photos and videos of the good, the bad, and the ugly are posted for the entire world to see. Yet these images represent just a fraction of the folks who are interacting with brands across the globe every day via boxes and other kinds of shipping cartons.

I recently had the privilege of accepting the 2017 Fellows Award from the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP). The annual award recognizes IAFP members who have contributed to the association and its affiliates over an extended period of time. As a food microbiologist with more than 20 years of industrial R&D experience, I’ve learned a thing or two about food safety, and have a passion for sharing best practices to help businesses reduce risks. Here, I’m sharing a list of food safety fails that every food service operation should avoid: