Simple steps can help control food contamination
By MARY SHEDDEN | The Tampa Tribune
Published: November 30, 2009
Ignorance is anything but bliss when it comes to food safety.
None of us wants to think about the invisible organisms lurking in our lunch, but bacterial and parasitic pathogens sicken more than 76 million Americans a year, including 325,000 who head to the hospital. And foodborne illness kills 5,000 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Consumers have no control over some of the contamination, something we learned from high-profile recalls of peanut butter, ground beef and fresh spinach. But a lot can be done to control contamination.
For example, people don’t realize as much as half of all the chicken they buy contains some kind of bacterial or parasitic pathogen, says Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida.
That isn’t so scary if you recall proper cleaning and cooking practices learned from Grandma or in home economics class, he says. “Good food handling in the kitchen can take care of 95 percent of the problem.”
Those practices — washing cutting boards, plates and utensils with hot water — are the first line of defense in dealing with raw meats. The Food and Drug Administration suggests cleaning cutting surfaces with a solution of one teaspoon of chlorine bleach to one quart of water. Produce also should be thoroughly scrubbed and washed with water, and dried with a clean cloth or paper towel before eating.
“It’s simple stuff,” Morris says.
So simple, people may have grown complacent. But as concern about the government’s role in food safety increases, the public may be taking those food safety tips more seriously. A recent consumer survey found that 73 percent of adults polled were as concerned about food safety as the war on terror.
According to the American Society for Quality survey of nearly 2,100 Americans, 61 percent felt the current U.S. food recall process was fair or poor. That response likely reflects the increased use of corporate farms or processing plants in American food production. For example, if one chicken at a farm of 20,000 is contaminated, the risk for spreading illness, and a subsequent recall, is higher than it would be at a small, local farm.
“We’ve moved into a factory farming age,” says Morris, whose institute looks at how pathogens and infectious disease affect humans, plants and animals. “We’ve created new opportunities for food-borne illness to get into the food supply.”
Morris is most concerned about E. coli O157:H7, which emerged in humans in just the past 30 years. It has been responsible for multiple high-profile recalls in recent years, from ground beef to fresh spinach. Recalls related to that illness have been responsible in part for changes to federal legislation, including the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which is undergoing review in the U.S. Senate.
Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees meat and poultry, and the FDA is responsible for inspecting all other foods and drugs.
Morris says regardless of politics, many Americans understand the need for government food inspectors. The consumer survey went a step further: 82 percent of respondents said the food industry should be required to follow international food safety standards.
Morris says the final solution involves a balance of oversight and commonsense.
“Be aware there’s a risk and the government is working to reduce the risk,” Morris says. “But also know that humans have dealt with foodborne illness for millennia.”
