Food Safety Assessment - ACS Publications - American Chemical

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Chapter 22

Current Concerns in Food Safety Downloaded by UNIV OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO on February 19, 2015 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: February 14, 1992 | doi: 10.1021/bk-1992-0484.ch022

R. V. Lechowich National Center for Food Safety and Technology, Bedford Park, IL 60501

Consumers are concerned about the safety of their food supply. Their major concerns are identified as food additives, pesticide residues, food processing aids, and preservatives. This is in direct opposition to the relative priority placed upon food safety concerns as evaluated by food microbiologists and the U . S. Food and Drug Administration who rank microbiological hazards as the major food safety issue. For at least the past fifteen years a regulatory priority assessment has ranked food safety issues in descending priority as shown in Table I. Table 1. Relative Risks of Food Safety Issues 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Microbiological Hazards Nutritional Natural Toxicants Environmental Contaminants Pesticide Residues Food Additives

While microbiological problems can and do appear in our food supply, these problems arise from infrequent breakdowns in the food production, processing, storage, distribution and final handling of our foods. These situations are the exception rather than the rule when we consider the more than 250 billion meals that are prepared and eaten in the U. S. each year. Summaries of annual foodborne illness outbreaks reported in the U.S. have a lag time of several years and may not reflect the latest outbreaks. In 1988 there were more than 107,000 cases of reportable foodborne diseases according to the Centers for Disease Control (1) (Table 2.). Many public health authorities feel that the number of cases of foodborne illness are substantially under-reported and the Centers for Disease Control has estimated that there are possibly more than six million cases of foodborne illness involving 9,100 deaths each yearin theU.S.(2).Theratioofreported cases to estimated cases of illness has been reported by several authorities including Archer and Kvenberg (3) to range from 1:10 to 1:25. Todd (4) has stated that the number of cases of foodborne disease 0097-6156/92/0484-O232$O6.00/0 © 1992 American Chemical Society In Food Safety Assessment; Finley, J., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1992.

22. LECHOWICH

Current Concerns in Food Safety

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Table 2. Cases of Reportable Foodborne Illness in the U. S., 1988 Illness

Downloaded by UNIV OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO on February 19, 2015 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: February 14, 1992 | doi: 10.1021/bk-1992-0484.ch022

Salmonellosis Shigellosis Hepatitis A Trichinosis Botulism

No. of Cases 49,000 30,000 28,500 45 28

in the U . S. could be as high as five million per year with an attendant annual cost of $ 1 to $ 10 billion associated with medical costs, loss of productivity, and product loss. Food poisoning microorganisms can originate from animal or plant products due to the wide distribution of microorganisms in nature or because of agricultural practices. Everyone in the food chain, from the farmer or rancher to the consumer, has responsibilities in maintaining the safety of our foods. Many factors influence the relative safety of our foods; the type of food itself, how and where it is grown, harvested, processed, packaged, distributed, and stored. The most critical step in prevention of foodborne illness is the ultimate preparation step as carried out in the home, restaurant, hospital, or food service establishment. The major factor contributing to all foodborne illness is mishandling of food in final preparation steps which results in microbiological problems. The media and educational institutions should emphasize consumer education concerning safe food handling practices to prevent these outbreaks rather than "sensationalizing" relatively minor hazards like small amounts of pesticide residues in apples. An extensive review of foodborne illness reported in the U . S. from 1977 to 1984 was published by Bryan (5) (Table 3). He tabulated the major food categories and frequency of involvement in more than 1500 food poisoning outbreaks that were reported during this eight-year period. Table 3. Foods Implicated in U . S. Foodborne Illness Outbreaks 1977-84 Food Group Seafoods Meat Poultry Salads Vegetables Chinese Foods Mexican Foods Milk and Dairy Products Baked Goods Beverages Other Foods

Frequency (%) 24.8 23.2 9.8 8.8 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.2 3.3 2.3