Caroline Smith DeWaal: Welcome and thank you for joining us for this World Food Safety Day Interview Cruncher. I am Caroline Smith DeWaal, Deputy Chief of Party for EatSafe.
This is a GAIN led project with the US Agency for International Development and other consortium partners. You'll learn more about that later. We have an exciting panel of experts together for an in-depth discussion of the critical role that food standards play in ensuring food safety.
This year's theme of World Food Safety Day is “Food Standards Save Lives”. So we want to learn more about why this is true. Food standards certainly play an important role in protecting consumers from foodborne illnesses, and they promote safe and healthy eating.
In this Interview Cruncher hosted by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), we will explore the impact of food standards on food safety at both the global and local levels.
Our panel of experts will draw on programmes and activities engaged in food safety efforts, including EatSafe: Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Foods.
We'll discuss the latest developments, best practises for implementing food safety standards and the challenges and opportunities that can occur while enforcing compliance with these standards.
Whether you're a food industry professional, policymaker or consumer advocate this discussion will
provide valuable insights into how food standards can help save lives. Together we can build a safer and healthier food system for all.
Steve Wearne is Chairperson of the, CODEX Alimentarius Commission.
Kelley Cormier is the Food Safety Division Chief for the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security at the US Agency for International Development.
Keya Mukherjee is a Food Safety Specialist with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, the FAO.
Genet Gebremedhin is the Head of Policy and Advocacy in the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) in Ethiopia.
And I'd like to welcome our first speaker, Steve Wearne. He is the Chairperson of the CODEX Alimentarius Commission, a role that you have to be elected to by almost 200 countries. He's had a career spanning over 30 years in food regulation, in the government of the United Kingdom and internationally. When he's not Chairperson of CODEX, he works for the UK Food Standards Agency.
Over to you, Steve.
Steve Wearne: Hello everyone. It's really great to be here to help mark World Food Safety Day 2023 with its theme of food standards saves lives. And I often start when talking to people about this topic to ask them when they eat, how do they know their food is safe? Well, hopefully people have washed their hands, cleaned their kitchenware, cooked their food to the right temperature, all of which are good food safety practises. If the food is pre-packed, they may have read the food labels to see what ingredients the product contains or how to cook it.
And perhaps without realising it, everyone has trusted everyone else involved in growing, processing, packaging, distributing, and preparing their food in the right way, so they can enjoy it without becoming one of the 600 million people worldwide, who fall ill from contaminated food each year.
And that burden of illness affects all countries. Over 200 diseases can be caused by eating food contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites, or chemical substances such as heavy metals. Children under five make up 9% of the global population, but carry 40% of the foodborne disease burden. So your food is safe, and your trust is justified because the people involved in making it, whether close to your home or sometimes on the other side of the world, have followed established food safety practises which are transparently available and codified in the form of standards. In other words, food standards form the bedrock of trust and protection for us all, and that's why food standards saves lives.
So who sets these food standards? You might say. Well, many governments or organisations set their own. They adopt and enforce food standards based on scientific risk assessments covering hazards that might be biological, chemical, or physical.
But those standards can also be developed by individual governments, as I said, or by intergovernmental standard setting bodies.
And one such international body that sets food, safety and quality standards is the CODEX Alimentarius Commission or CODEX, for short, it's the place where representatives of 188 member countries work together to develop those standards, to protect consumer health and ensure fair practices in food trade with import from around 240 observer organisations, including gain our hosts today.
So as we look at those food standards. CODEX standards guide the National Food Safety Legislation, they ensure best practices. They're at the heart of food safety I'd say, and that's why I'm proud to be the chairperson of that body. And those CODEX standards have been around for six decades, and each year the food code grows, and as new standards are introduced and the existing standards are updated when new data becomes available.
But even with such an extensive food code developed over many years, there are gaps. We have regional standards in full, with six global regions relating to street vendored food. And we're now working on a single global standard for food hygiene in traditional markets. Which I hope will focus on practical guidance for market owners and stall holders together with guidance for national food safety agencies on development, communication, verification of food safety controls in these settings. And that work, I think is particularly vital, ‘cause we know such a significant proportion of the world's population secure a significant proportion of its food from those traditional markets.
Thank you back to you.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Thank you, Steve. And just to just to build on that, do you think that food standards for traditional markets will be embraced by governments if CODEX adopts them?
Steve Wearne: I hope they will be, because we know that CODEX standards have a high standing with national food administrations and with governments because they're the people who negotiate and agree them. So what we aim to do is to provide this framework bringing in all the most relevant aspects of food hygiene guides and standards from the existing food code, codifying them in one place so we have a single, easy to understand document that can be used to help assure food hygiene in those markets.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Well, thank you. We know that so many of the world's population buys fresh foods like fruits, vegetables, and meats from traditional markets, so that's exciting news. Next I would like to introduce Kelley Cormier. She is the Food Safety Division Chief at the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security at the US Agency for International Development. She leads a diverse team to increase investment in food safety throughout local and regional food systems, and we're very excited to have Kelley with us today. Kelley, over to you.
Kelley Cormier: Thank you, Caroline. It's really a pleasure to be invited to speak on this panel. It's such an important topic. I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on the role of standards specifically in traditional markets.
At USAID, we're focused on expanding local consumer access to, and affordability of safe, nutritious food to improve diets. It's not acceptable that safer food in lower and middle-income countries is directed to international markets in compliance with market standards, while unsafe food remains in domestic markets. And we don't know the costs of unsafe food remaining within borders for domestic consumption. This puts people at risk.
I lead the USAID's Food Safety Division. We manage a diverse portfolio of partners including US government inter-agency partners, research partners like GAIN, private sector, and other development partners. Collectively, we're exploring ways to improve the enabling environment for food safety in different parts of the food system, including local food systems.
Our Food Safety for Food Security Project is an inter-agency agreement that's implemented through the US Department of Agriculture in collaboration with the US Food and Drug Administration. And I mention this because USAID collaborates with USDA and FDA to strengthen the enabling environment for food safety, including policies and institutions, as well as farmer and consumer readiness. It largely focuses on formal market spaces.
But the informal and traditional market spaces have become an important research focus at USAID too. A few years ago when food safety wasn't the development imperative that it is today, it was easy for development organizations like USAID to ignore addressing food safety risks in domestic markets within our programming. When the Covid pandemic disrupted global supply chains, we were forced to pay closer attention to where the majority of people in lower-middle-income countries get their food.
Safer traditional markets became an important focus as a critical access point to nutritious food, particularly in areas already vulnerable to malnutrition and food insecurity. Continued supply chain disruptions resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine reinforce the need to bolster the resilience of traditional markets so that access to safe, nutritious food is maintained even in the face of shocks and stressors such as Covid, conflict, and climate change.
When consumers across the African continent access over 80% of their food from informal markets, action and investment become really critical. Challenging, though, is the cost of compliance with standards. For example, farmers supplying informal market channels are less willing and/or able to absorb the costs required to comply with private voluntary standards and lower value channels, even if informal retailers expect them to do so. A recent analysis by one of our partners, AKADEMIYA2063, shows that the average cost of food safety standards compliance is highest in Africa. At the same time, consumer demand for food safety is not motivating food safety best practices among vendors at scale.
So USAID is exploring how to build the demand for food safety among micro, small, and medium-size businesses, vendors in traditional markets, and consumers through Feed the Future, which is the US Government's global hunger and food security initiative led by USAID. We're doing this specifically through the Feed the Future EatSafe Project and the Business Drivers for Food Safety Project.
The EatSafe project is currently implementing formative research in traditional markets in Nigeria and Ethiopia. It tests country-specific food safety interventions that seek to increase consumer demand for food safety. Findings are showing that increased consumer demand for safe, nutritious foods in traditional markets results from awareness raising education and capacity strengthening among consumers and vendors. And as consumer demand for safer food increases, so do business incentives to adopt best practices in food handling.
This is where the Business Drivers for Food Safety Project comes in. BD4FS as we call it partners with growing food businesses in Senegal, Nepal, and Ethiopia to build food safety capacity through technical training targeted to business needs and food safety concerns.
Some of these businesses are able to pass the cost of food safety to consumers who demand it, depending on consumers' ability to pay. So not only does improved food safety compliance protect consumers from foodborne illnesses, but it also improves business competitiveness and growth. Moreover, many of the promoted practices are low cost and relatively simple to implement, but we still have a lot to learn.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Kelley, it is certainly exciting news for consumers in many of the countries where Feed the Future operates that you're focusing down on where consumers really buy their foods. This is very exciting. I did want to ask, what has USAID learned about how to increase consumer demand for safer food through your research?
Kelley Cormier: Thank you for the question. I'm happy to share a few of the findings, and before I do, I do want to just make a note that the research agenda is a big one and there are lots of questions remaining, but what we've learned primarily from our work in Nigeria are a few things, I mean, influences like cultural environment and personal hygiene practices we know impact consumers' preferences, habits, behaviours, biases, and beliefs regarding food safety, and we really want to understand how these influences can shape food safety-related motivations and how they affect food vendors' behaviour in traditional markets, too.
Four key interventions were implemented in Nigeria, and so I'll just mention these. We, with EatSafe and GAIN, Caroline under your leadership, established an association for the promotion of food safety and improved nutrition. This convenes market stakeholders via a Nigerian government-registered association. This advocates for food safety, and there are over 800 members currently participating, 50% of whom are women.
A second intervention relates to a safe food brand. So the one focuses on the effectiveness of associations in stimulating consumer demand for food safety, a second is a safe food brand. In this case, the brand Abinci Fes-Fes, or Clean Fresh Food, creates visual cues in markets to inform consumers about which vendors are implementing food safety best practices.
A third intervention that also focuses on food safety education supports a radio show, the Sayan Nagari radio show. There are regular episodes, right now over 700,000 listeners across two states in Nigeria, and this is another way to inform consumers, and we're testing the effectiveness of this.
And then a fourth intervention relates to a safe food market stand. This is a physical space within traditional markets where consumers can access food safety information. It's open six days a week, there are demonstrations and trainings, and again, we're evaluating the effectiveness of this intervention on building consumer demand and affecting vendor behaviour in traditional markets.
So I'll stop there, but it is a really exciting research agenda.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Thank you, Kelley. Next, I would like to introduce Keya Mukherjee. She coordinates the Food and Agriculture Organisation's work on food safety foresight, where she uses future thinking to identify and evaluate new trends and drivers with varying impacts on the global agri-food landscape, with particular emphasis on food safety. Keya, thank you for joining us today.
Keya Mukherjee: Hello everyone. Thank you for the introduction, Caroline. It is really a pleasure to be here and to talk about such an important topic for the World Food Safety Day. I would like to talk about the topic for this Interview Cruncher through the example of mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are toxic metabolites that are naturally produced by different types of fungi. They can enter the food chain as a result of infections of crops before or after the harvest and can be typically found in a very wide variety of commercially important crops. And mycotoxin contamination of food commodities as we know, it poses a very serious challenge to food safety, nutrition, as well as global trade.
So what are the different food safety mechanisms that are present to tackle this issue? From a risk assessment standpoint, which is where I'm involved in, the joint FAO-WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, or JECFA, which is one of the major risk assessment bodies, has evaluated many of these mycotoxins over the years. And JECFA does so by independently considering all the available information regarding mycotoxins, so that includes toxicity of the contaminant, the levels and patterns of contamination in various points of production, handling, and marketing, as well as the dietary exposure of the population, which includes any vulnerable populations.
This, of course, these risk assessments serve as a basis for the national and international food safety standards and regulations, and I think Steve went over this process really well. But the question is, are standards enough? Effective national programmes for reducing mycotoxin contamination requires not only an awareness of the international food safety standards and how they are developed, but also an adequate regulatory framework that enables the implementation and enforcement of these relevant standards, and also provides the necessary support that takes into perspective the local context to facilitate the effective update of good practises by the value chain operators.
Now, in the low and middle income countries, or the LMICs, standards tend to be adhered to for products that are destined for export. There is limited control that exists for ensuring that the food that is entering the domestic market is not contaminated during production, transport, storage, or processing. And we know that the full burden of food-borne diseases in LMICs is not known, but experts believe that LMICs really bear some of the disproportionate brunt of food-borne diseases.
The structure of the food sector in LMICs can also compound this kind of problem because the food systems there can be quite heterogeneous with a very large and fragmented number of actors, a number of small scale actors, a very large informal sector, and relatively little organization along with sometimes a very poor capacity to enforce regulations. Now, food-borne contaminants can lead to food rejections, which of course has a very high economic cost, and mycotoxin contamination is one of the major leading causes for food rejection in international markets. So food safety standards can really help with this. But if standards are too restrictive, there is a risk that poor producers and value chain operators will be displaced from a rapidly growing market, so there really needs to be a balance here. And I would like to end by saying that food safety risk assessments that form the basis of these standards are in continuous evolution to match the current state of scientific knowledge.
So keeping pace is really needed to improve and maintain the reliability, the robustness, and relevancy of food safety risk assessments. The interconnection between science, risk assessments, and risk management is very complex, and more so really, in an era of very rapid technological innovations and scientific advancements. So for this, foresight is becoming a very important tool in our toolkit for food safety work. It allows us to proactively understand and be prepared for new challenges ahead, for new opportunities that emerge in this very rapidly changing global context. So climate change, for instance, we know it's likely to lead to increased occurrence of mycotoxins, but foresight allows us to figure out where and how much, and that allows us to tell countries to be prepared for this.
New technologies are coming up which may prove effective in contributing to future efforts in mycotoxin control, or we are having all these new plant-based products that are out there. What does that relate to new exposure to mycotoxins from them, for instance? So foresight can really orient our work in scientific advice towards the revision and the setting of international food safety standards, as well as any new and improved guidance to national authorities or to value chain operators.
With that, I say thank you.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Keya, thank you so much for your update on the standards for mycotoxins and the work you're doing in future thinking. One question, in the mycotoxin area do you have examples, some successful examples of initiatives or programmes which have really reduced the risk of mycotoxins for consumers?
Keya Mukherjee: Well, we do have quite a few examples in general of how our food safety initiatives or programmes have worked out. So for instance, the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre has made available to member countries a toolkit of about 200 different analytical methods for detecting residues and contaminants in food. And so thanks to this, Bangladesh, for instance, can now use some of these nuclear-based technologies to test milk, eggs, chicken, shrimp for mycotoxins and antimicrobial resistance.
And one of the things that we use in our exposure is dietary data, for instance. And dietary data provides very important information for food safety and nutrition, and policymakers and programme managers depend on this dietary data to estimate exposure to chemical and biological hazards. But this kind of information can be quite hard to access and collect, and so FAO and WHO have developed a global individual food consumption data tool, or GIFT, which is just easier to say, is an open access repository of dietary data about what people eat and drink.
Another very good reservoir is the FAOLEX, which is the world's largest legislative database on food and agriculture. It's been active since 1995, continuously updated, so there are quite a few such examples in food safety initiatives that are being implemented today and definitely reach a lot of people.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Great. So I want to turn for our last segment to a panel discussion. And the first question I want to pose to the panel is how can public, private, and non-profit partnerships help to improve the adoption of food safety standards? Steve, would you like to start on that?
Steve Wearne: I'm happy to start, and this is critical, and I think this is a realisation we're coming to in CODEX. I often say that our work in CODEX isn't done when the ink is dry on a new standard, but we need to ensure we partner with those organisations who have experienced implementation on the field and in translating standards into action. So we have started working with GAIN, for example, with UNIDO, with the development arms of FAO, and with a range of other bodies to try to help ease that translation, so CODEX reaching out into the development and implementation space, not to take the works themselves because we're not expert, but just making sure that we have the linkages to make sure there is this more seamless transition from internationally agreed standards into action on the ground. I think that's critical. Thanks.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Kelley, would you like to give a view there? I know USAID has some new MOUs, so we welcome your thoughts here.
Kelley Cormier: Yeah, happy to. You know, as Steve noted, it's critical. I mean, I think, it's almost a non-sequitur, food safety is everybody's business. So one of the things that USAID is thinking critically about is what is an international development donor's role vis-a-vis the private sector, vis-a-vis government, vendors, consumers, et cetera? You mentioned a new MOU. We are very excited about the memorandum of understanding that we signed with the Global Food Safety Initiative. Partly, one of the reasons why we're interested in that, and I won't go into great detail, but is that they're planning to test the design of a pilot to implement their new capability building framework in Africa, and we see ourselves as a learning partner with them. So in this kind of partnership, as we define our role at USAID, we want to learn with them. As they develop their plan for implementation, how can we help show whether or not the intervention aligns with sustainable development goals, over.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Keya, thoughts on this?
Keya Mukherjee: Yes, of course. As Kelley said, ensuring safe food really is a shared responsibility, and what we are seeing is against a background of sometimes limited government resources and expertise, innovative partnerships that really bring businesses, government, and civil society actors together are really being promoted increasingly as a mechanism for improving productivity and driving growth by touching on some of these regulatory legislation, suitable lab capacities, for instance, adequate disease surveillance, food monitoring programs. All of this really needs to be supported by innovative technologies, transparent sharing of information, and FAO has made a lot of progress in strengthening this institutional framework and for managing partnerships and for establishing some of the necessary capacities for engaging with the private sector. We, of course, do a lot of work in collaboration with other UN agencies, national/international organizations, research centers, and now we also do a lot of this work with food business operators and other stakeholders, so yeah.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Genet Gebremedhin, the Senior EatSafe Programme Manager in Ethiopia, welcome from your office in Addis Ababa.
Genet Gebremedhin: Thank you for this opportunity. I'm going to take this opportunity to share about our food safety work in traditional markets in Ethiopia. EatSafe is a programme called Evidence and Action Towards the Safe, Nutritious Food, which aims to influence consumer behaviours to demand safer food in traditional markets. As you know, food safety requires a lot of things to be in place, if you can categorise them in three major pillars. Food safety requires behavioural change of both consumers and vendors, behavioural change on knowledge, attitude, as well as practice.
The other component is best practices and appropriate technologies. Best practices, like standard operating procedures, good manufacturing, and good hygienic practice, and technologies like storage, transportation, and displaying products. The other key important component of food safety is the enabling environment, both in terms of physical infrastructure as well as legal enforcement of standards. Thank you. Food safety is a public health concern all over the world, for all countries.
Food is contaminated by chemical and microbial, which causes food-borne disease. Annually, it is estimated that, according to the WHO, 600 million food-borne cases are registered, out of which, 420,000 are deaths, and children below five years old are 125,000 of them are deaths because of the food-borne disease. The risk is even higher in traditional markets where many are sourcing their food.
Traditional markets are very important in many aspects, like you can find diverse nutritious food in traditional markets at the same place, and many sellers and buyers, especially sellers, are earning their living as well by selling the product and other works in the market. Beyond selling and buying, traditional markets are a kind of hub for a community to exchange information and take part in some social activity. In traditional markets, there are trusted shopping without any signed agreement, and the price is also competitive unlike the formal market. In the formal market, you buy things at a fixed price, but in traditional markets, you can compare from vendor to vendor to get a competitive price. In traditional markets also, as I said earlier, the range of products is very diverse. You can find animal products, fish products, cereal products, and quite a range of products.
EatSafe in Ethiopia is implemented in Sidama Region in Hawassa. The three proxy commodities are fresh produce, like lettuce, kale, and tomato. The vendors are both vendors with a permanent stall as well as vendors with stalls outside the store. The food purchasing journey involves a lot of activity and decision, like starting with planning what to buy, deciding where to go, which market, which vendors, and selecting appropriate vendors, as well as choosing the product. This is influenced by both internal and external factors. Internal factors like knowledge, attitude, and practice, external factors like food price, budget, convenience, and family interest.
As indicated earlier, food safety is influenced by many factors, one being the enabling environment, the physical infrastructure like sanitary, clean water, drainage, waste management system. And the other factor is the regulatory, having appropriate standard regulation and enforcement of the regulation. Taking into consideration the research that we have done in Ethiopia, we have designed three projects that potentially can address the food safety or improve the safety of food in traditional markets.
The three interventions that we have started implementing are Food Safety Motivational Campaign. This campaign is targeted to our consumers to improve their understanding and influence their choice to demand safer food. The other component is targeted to our vendors to implement safer best practices to handle their products safely and to implement good hygienic practices. In addition to this, the other attribute that needs to be addressed is the enabling environment. This can be addressed through market improvement initiatives where multiple stakeholders come together to discuss and work together to improve the enabling environment with the physical infrastructure as well as legal requirements.
Having said this, I would like to emphasise the importance as we celebrate this year the World Food Safety Day with the theme of food safety standard save lives. I would like to emphasise that the standard is the base of every activity in the area of food safety. To do a motivational campaign, we need a standard, to do training we need a standard, to do the infrastructure regulation and other activities, we need to have a standard. Standard based or recognised, international standard, like CODEX, and customised standards, customise the standard based on localness, like Ethiopian standard. Thank you. Over to you.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Thank you Genet, and that's such an important point you made about the need, both for international standards, but then to take those basic food safety standards and adapt them to the needs in the countries or even in the local environment, so thank you.
So tell me a little bit about when your research on these three initiatives in Ethiopia and Hawassa will be completed?
Genet Gebremedhin: The initiative, the implementation will take us a year, and as we implement, we'll capture learning, so that this pilot can be scaled up and can be implemented elsewhere as well, and the scope can be broadened even in Ethiopia in different markets.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Great. And this is part of the EatSafe programme that Kelley Cormier was also talking about, so very interesting. Genet, I know that partnerships have played a big role in your work in Ethiopia for the EatSafe Project. Tell us how you've worked with partners.
Genet Gebremedhin: Okay, thank you Caroline. Yeah, food safety is everyone's responsibility. And to make food safer, it requires a lot of collaboration and working together. So under EatSafe, we work together with our consortium members, we work together with government partners, private sector, and academia. Together we just have planned and start implementation, and shortly we'll have a success factor of those collaboration. Thank you.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: So for our next question, I would like our panel to discuss what is their most important advice to national governments and policy makers on what standards could help reduce the burden of food-borne illness globally?
We saw in Genet's slides the horrible burden, 600 million illnesses, 420,000 deaths annually, and a huge burden for children under five. So I'd love to ask this group to give a piece of advice to policy makers on what we can do to address that burden.
Kelley, do you mind, could we start with you please?
Kelley Cormier: Thanks, Caroline. In short, my advice to national governments would be to invest in data. We just don't know the scope of the challenges, and until we do, it's very hard to adopt the risk-based approach that we know is needed, over.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Steve, over to you.
Steve Wearne: Me, I think it's about understanding the capabilities there are along your whole domestic food production chain, and if there was one CODEX food standard I'd point to that I think is fundamental, it's the standard on general principles for food hygiene, which really explains how you might take a business from considering the prerequisites for producing food safely on a journey through to more demanding hazard analysis for processed food. Thanks, Caroline.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Thank you, and I know that was just updated, so it really reflects the most modern thinking. Genet, if you had one piece of advice for policy makers to improve food safety and reduce the burden of disease, what would that be?
Genet Gebremedhin: That would be just giving attention equally to the informal sector as formal sector. The formal sector has been given quite a lot of attention and food safety systems are considered and being implemented, whereas the informal sector is not yet touched, so giving attention to the informal sector by starting to develop a national standard would be my recommendation. Thank you.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Thank you Genet. And Keya, you get the last word on this.
Keya Mukherjee: Well, I would like to echo Kelley here. Evidence-based food policies and legal frameworks underpinned by effective food control management and consistent compliance and enforcement are really pivotal in promoting safe and healthy food, and food legislation needs to be based on international food safety standards and recommendations that are applied to all steps in the food chain and are based on, and I cannot stress this more, the best available science. We need to keep up with the science. Thank you.
Caroline Smith DeWaal: Thank you. So I want to thank our panel of experts for providing such valuable insights for World Food Safety Day this year. It's important that we all recognise the importance of food standards and celebrate when they are adopted and used by countries to ensure the safety of foods. We all have a big job to do to reduce the burden of illness that is way too high, as we've seen documented, so we need to do our best and support governments and consumers and businesses in making the best food safety choices. Thank you for joining us, and look for our next Interview Cruncher soon.