IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE statistically food poisoning or food safety will affect EVERY person multiple times.
If you look at the statistics for food poisoning it affects every 1 out of 50 people yearly. Restated it affects 1 out of every 2 people over a 20 year period. THIS OPENS YOUR EYES? Wow! Think about these OCCURRENCES AFFECTING EVERY SINGLE PERSON on this planet! Wouldn't it be nice to be able to put a huge dent in this with some advancement in technology? What could this do for our society? What could this be worth? Every time you eat out you put your well being in the hands of restaurant employees.

TRAGEDY STRIKES: Eric Brenn, President of Digital Knights Electronics Inc., explains. "One evening, after a family outing at a local restaurant, my daughter contracted food poisoning. In the middle of night we rushed her to the Emergency Hospital, who in turn, rushed her by ambulance to another hospital better suited to care for her particular vital signs. My wife, riding with her in the ambulance, while I followed as quickly as possible by automobile. Racing out of the elevator to her room, I found my listless daughter lying there with several IV’s in her arm and my wife’s hand still holding hers. Thank God we knew what to do based on past experiences with myself, other family members and friends. It seems most people we know, have at one time or another, had experiences with food poisoning, and many with the trauma of a hospital visit. Food poisoning is an incredibly serious problem and can cause permanent bodily damage as well as death." There has to be a better way to protect the public, I would think to myself!

"BEING A MAN ON A MISSION and having an electronics engineering and robotics background, custom designing circuits for major restaurant corporations, I knew it was time to start changing the way in approaching food safety. In the back of my mind I slowly started figuring out this new invention of Advanced Food Safety Technology. AMAZINGLY the best discovery about food safety came from the CDC - Center for Disease Control. In studies published by CDC analyzing the causes of foodborne disease outbreaks the factors most commonly associated with foodborne illness outbreaks are grouped as follows:

1. Improper holding temperature
2. Poor personal hygiene
3. Inadequate cooking
4. Contaminated equipment
5. Food from unsafe sources

NOTE: 1-4 are store problems, 5 is a distribution problem.

KNOWLEDGE is having the main problem well defined. The food industry needs to take that first step and advance to this technology. The biggest industry wide safety problem, the one that almost took my daughter’s life was– Poor functioning equipment, or in other words improper holding temperatures. After some simple market tests, it became evident the restaurant industry is highly resistant to change and it will take the public demanding better standards for a change to occur.

UNBELIEVABLE, but 99% of the equipment in the field uses 100 year old copper spring technology, when we are in the digital computer age. What happened to this industry, even with their digital readouts are simple spring thermometers attached to an ON/OFF switch. You get a digital readout but that's about it. What about doing something about it, with some brains to prevent bad things from happening and an accountability system where more than one person is responsible? The food industry in some instances has adopted a monitoring system or method, but when something goes wrong we just document it. What's the use, it already has happened. There must be a predictive element to all this, so something can be done before it is too late? How many meals are served out the drive through before a customer comes back and says, hey your food is cold? Hence, so many people get sick. Its like waiting for a plane crash and then putting a check mark on a piece of paper to verify, yep it happened, next. I cannot tell you how fast that monitoring information in the legal department gets shoved under the carpet where no one can find it, or how mysteriously the equipment falls prey to sabotage. If the information ever got out its a green light for law suits.

HONESTLY some franchises lose entire markets to a single incident of food poisoning just from the publicity. Sometimes entire franchises disappear from existence or get sued heavily because of it. Of course they care, but with 100 year old technology what can they do? They have been stuck with this model T in the 20th century for years now. I remember my wife will not eat at this one franchise ever again in her life because she got food poisoning there as a little child. That was 25 years ago. I happened to like their food, but because of her influence, our family and many of our friends will never step foot into the franchise. I had to sneak out and eat there a few times without her. By using advance technology to calm customer fears of food safety and putting the #1 food safety concern from the CDC as the first priority will open up huge markets for franchises. This can also mean huge dollars in business that would have simply walked out of their stores.

WITH FORESIGHT, A good public health goal is statistically to be as safe to eat out at a restaurant as in your own house; similar to airlines where it is more dangerous to drive yourself than to fly. With more and more people eating outside the home on a daily basis this increases the urgency of getting such intervention as Advanced Food Safety to protect the public. It most likely will take some government regulation like with the airlines to get the job done, because the restaurant industry is so competitive that if you don't require everyone to upgrade in many cases no one will.

SUCCESS can only be implemented when operational techniques meet up with hi-tech electronics (or brains). Old or new equipment can now be fitted or retrofitted with intelligence and management systems to handle incidents before they happen and the destiny of food safety in the restaurant and food distribution industries will be improved forever. If we attack the #1 reason for food safety hard, it will take a huge percentage away from the probability of each one having to get sick.

TODAY this Advanced Food Safety Technology and Operational Management System can be purchased inexpensively, generic or custom, for all who want, from Digital Knights Electronics, Inc., www.digitalknights.net (949)830-0731. Also, because Digital Knights want the industry to become much safer for everyone they have developed this low cost technology for those who wish to use or need consultation. Digital Knights is aiming to be your food safety partner in the fight against this problem of epidemic proportion.

Restaurant Technology of the future is here; How to integrate Advanced Food Safety into FDA, Health Department, and Corporate planning?

FOOD SAFETY is a popular topic and statistically this epidemic will affect each of us at least 3 times in our lifetime. Today the food safety standards on equipment is lacking miserably in many ways. One of the ways is that equipment controls are viewed as just an on/off switch. When the temperature is not at the desired level a control will turn on or off. Even food safety testing is simply limited to this, will the control turn on the equipment if outside the desired temperature, for which they charge thousands to verify. The problem is that food safety is the study when things go wrong and how to gain control over these events for a positive outcome. If you don’t test for when they do, the results can be devastating in the field and at times can lead to the bad outcome of hospitalization and law suits.

TECHNOLOGY CAN AID sometimes like a magic wand. With the latest achievements in Advanced Food Safety Technology from Digital Knights Electronics, Inc. one can actually detect certain food safety problems before they occur. This technology can also prevent some from ever happening as well. With the FDA, health departments and corporations, because of being limited by the older technology had to run their organizations similar to trying to detect on/off switches, you have to be there to see it. The policy has been just waiting for something to happen and then react. The problem is that these organization are already over extended and cannot realistically be looking at the 1+ billion pieces of equipment. These new Advanced Food Safety Technologies will present them with significant new abilities of monitoring with greater comprehensive spread and an ability to stop certain kinds of health issues before they can occur and simultaneously reduce the work load.

Digital Knights Electronics, Inc. (www.digitalknights.net) is one of the first to present Advanced Food Safety Technology to the industry. Their controls are predictive and reactive and announce when there is a food safety problem. They also show when this food safety problem has been taken care of by the control until permanent repairs are made by appropriate service personnel. The real and unique aspect is that it can predict with much certainty if the equipment will become a food safety problem. This single knowledge advance, gives operators a chance to fix a food safety problem before it can occur. This is the change that will make its way across the industry.

PREDICTING THE FUTURE: Just imagine a time when corporations and the health department can receive the message from the electronics and actually show up at a site to see if the restaurant is serving unsafe food. Inspectors got the advanced warning and have 20 minutes to respond. Sometimes you may think this is a bad thing for a restaurant, but if you think about it, if one franchisee serves food that is unsafe they are impacting an entire region of stores to closures or hard times, let alone threaten the entire franchise itself as we have seen many times over in newspaper articles. Accountability seems like a good thing especially with food safety.

TECHNOLOGY will fuel the lower cost of the advanced food safety technology. Believe it or not, like advances in computer technology, this technology is selling at the same or lower costs than the old on/off switch controls. Now it is simple to switch the old controls out and increase profits because of the added benefits that come with advanced food safety. ROI in some cases can be immediate and in other circumstances take a few months

For the regulatory bodies like the FDA and Health Departments, it will have a great affect in a number of ways. They will be able to more easily view equipment problems with the long term ability to real time monitor them. This will allow them to use machines or computers to eventually monitor and redflag stores before food safety events happen. This will alleviate some of the burdens that overwhelm the departments today. This will improve food safety detection capability and reduce public health risks. By legislating compliance to these new Advanced Food Safety Technologies they will improve public health and make food safety detection easier. Some goals for the FDA, Health Department, Corporations and legislature will be:

GOAL 1: (SHORT TERM – IMMEDIATE) Legislate or create standards for controllers specifications for the food service industry that tells the users whether or not a food safety issue is occurring and most importantly before a food safety situation will happen. This gives the establishment time to create an alternate plan to serve food without food safety being compromised.

Food Safety Problems that have been solved:

1) Inspectors can easily and immediately check equipment for food safety issues by simply looking at the controller and as seeing if the equipment has been maintained and is in good functioning order.

2) Aids in protecting against establishment serving unsafe food from equipment that is not functioning properly and being served unknowingly.

3) Sees many food safety issues ahead of time so an alternate plan to continue food service safely can be implemented.

GOAL 2: (MEDIUM TERM) Legislate and create standards for food safety and temperature data is recorded by a collection device (black box) that when the inspector arrives on the site he can immediately download into a wireless pda, computer or meter. Then the inspector can discuss the events with the establishment on how to improve food safety.

Food Safety Problems that will be solved:

1) Gives the inspector the power to see a large amount of data over time and analyze it. The inspector then can talk with the establishment any issues that come up, way to improve, establish limits of acceptability and provide documentation.

2) Provides detailed checking when the inspector is not present. Thereby improving public safety.

GOAL 3: (LONG TERM) Legislate and create standards for real time food safety tracking of equipment, procedures, maintenance schedules and hours of use of an entire region. Using an Internet connection with the equipment for constant monitoring and analysis by the health department. Provides the ultimate in public safety and can include camera inspections and automated food safety analysis.

Food Safety Problems that will be solved:

1) Allows health inspectors to be notified before food safety issues happen, watch the establishment fix the problem properly, or be able to call or show up at the establishment just as or before the food safety issue occurs and stop it. This puts the power of information into the hands of health departments.

2) Monitor the violations, document it, and then correct it before a bad decision is made that can affect public health.

3) No additional manpower required for 24 hour monitoring.

These goals by public health organizations and restaurants are already being considered and in some places are being implemented. The goal of implementing this is to automate critical operational procedures, that involves advanced food safety checks and HACCP recordings, while doing it in the most innovative user friendly method available. They will be able to significantly increase the speed and accuracy and predictability of food safety testing procedures and situations, thereby eliminating using countless paper and hours of teamwork by embracing this new technology.

On the corporate side, Eric talks about, one of his friends who is a chef. My friend who was a chef in Hawaii watch this scene go down in the kitchen. Their hotel was selected by a city in Hawaii to hold a huge banquet for foreign dignitaries. That night before the banquet one of their main freezers failed. No one knew about it till the morning and some of the fresh seafood was marginalized according to their thinking. His boss made the decision to use the product, because he could not find enough replacements delivered in time for the banquet. He saw the boss instruct the chef's who were cooking the seafood to cook it an extra long time just to make sure it was OK. Unfortunately his boss made an error in judgment. The entire city and their state guests got very ill and sued the hotel for millions of dollars.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. This happens often, not every day but often in the food industry. A single person is the trigger point for a decision on something they are most likely not qualified to make. Many times the person is more fearful about loosing a bonus than the financial welfare of the establishment. This puts the penny judgments ahead of hundred dollar affects; not good. Today, for the first time, businesses have an opportunity to change by utilizing Digital Knights technology of Advanced Food Safety Operations while being incredible profitable to the establishment.

Food Safety Technology $ MAKES YOU MONEY $

NEW ERA OF AWARENESS of food safety has risen as a major issue for both security and cost to restaurants. With new technologies in food safety, restaurants can immediately start saving money from installing new electronics into the old systems. Because of increasing food costs more companies find themselves squeezed with budgets, these new innovations bring great news and relief to a cost sensitive market. Not only do restaurants need to protect their customers from existing food-borne illnesses, but with the advent of previously unknown threats starting to surface, store closings and many other headaches will face restaurants.

FORTUNATELY, Digital Knights Electronics, Inc. has come out with Advanced Food Safety Technology solutions that allow restaurants and distribution systems to keep control of safety and improve quality control. These state of the art controls have arrived just in time to help restaurant operators improve their establishment’s level of compliance with the US Food and Drug Administration, HACCP and corporate food service guidelines. These high tech controls not only create food safety, but also can make the restaurant more profitable as well as safer for customers and employees.

GENERATING MONEY THROUGH ADVANCED FOOD SAFETY

This new Technology really hits hard where it counts with food safety!

REDUCING FRIVOLOUS MAINTENANCE COSTS: In addition, equipment maintenance costs are unpredictable of which restaurants are constantly trying to contain, while management strives to keep all equipment functional. By detecting the food safety in advance, you get too many benefits to list , but one main benefit is allowing large franchises to standardize and schedule repairs before equipment problems arise. Like a car. If it is constantly breaking down, its not necessarily the repair cost that hurts, it’s the hassle and opportunities missed that is so painful.

GET A NEW BRAIN FOR YOUR OLD EQUIPMENT: The interesting thing about the controls is that it many times cheaper to buy an Advanced Food Safety Controller to replace an existing old on/off parts from the equipment manufacturer. Its like getting a new fast, smarter chip (brain) for your computer for less. Take one of their steam table boards, the old technology from parts houses or a manufacturer is 50% more expensive than the new technology with advanced food safety detection. Great news for those on a tight budget. This technology is going to greatly impact the food industry with food safety, and also save end users money immediately because it is less expensive to implement and operate than just replacing the old part. There are ways you can actually calculate how much it is costing owners to use the product. It’s the repetitive costs that add up, this product reduces some and eliminates others. Their generic controls cover refrigeration, heating, steam, product timers, and food safety data collection. To date they are the only control on the market with advanced food safety.