Bonolo Mathekga and Digvijay (Dig) Singh, Drizzle Health

Bonolo Mathekga and Digvijay (Dig) Singh, Co-Founders of Drizzle Health, join host Liza Vilnits to discuss a Forbes article, “Why Food Safety Depends on Every Link in the Supply Chain” by Danielle Nierenberg.

Bonolo and Dig drill into key issues on food safety and global health issues, including farm practices and policies that need improvement. He says there is an incentive problem where detecting contamination can be detrimental to farms, leading to lost shipments, quarantine, negative headlines, and financial losses. Bonolo shares that food safety starts on the farm, and basic hygiene (i.e. using fertilizer, managing water sources) is what protects the population from contamination. She explains that the global food system is complex, with food traveling long distances and involving multiple handlers, which can cause small lapses. 

For more background on Drizzle Health: 

Drizzle Health is using materials science to solve food safety and spoilage in food processing.

Garbage In, Garbage Out. Diagnostic tests are bad due to bad input samples. We make input samples 20x better for diagnostics, ag, and biosecurity.

Most tests miss 80% of their detection targets because natural samples are too dilute. This severely limits diagnostic performance but also makes food supply chains vulnerable to recalls (and also prevents spoilage prevention).

We're building pathogen-matched polymer surface chemistry devices that capture targets at 20x enrichment, <$1 COGS. Already validated in the TB testing vertical (IRB studies, pilots lined up) and expanding the platform into food supply chains and biosecurity where the same physics applies. Same sample, same test, dramatically better detection.

We're not building another test. We're building the foundational concentration layer that makes every test work across ag, diagnostics, and biosecurity.