AUBURN, APRIL 6---After more than 20 years of
heightened public awareness about food safety, it’s easy for many
people to assume outbreaks of foodborne illness have dropped
sharply.
In fact, by some measures, they haven’t. A few
studies even show a steep increase since 1948.
Can it be true? Have all efforts to protect us
failed?
Actually,
what is widely perceived as an increase in foodborne illness
actually may stem from better detection methods that have been
developed within the last few decades, says Dr. Jean Weese, an
Alabama Cooperative Extension System food scientist. To put it
another way, what is interpreted by many as an increase in foodborne
illnesses may stem from the fact these illnesses have been
underreported in the past.
"It’s partly due to the knowledge most
consumers now have about foodborne illness," Weese says.
"In recent years, people have become better informed about how
to detect symptoms associated with these illnesses, even as doctors
have become better equipped at diagnosing them.
Even so, Weese acknowledges there may be some truth
to widespread public fears that foodborne illness is on the rise.
Several factors may account for this increase, she
says.
For starters, Americans are eating out as never
before – a factor that increases the likelihood of food poisoning
since larger numbers of people are susceptible to the bad habits of
only one careless food handler.
"In the old days, when more Americans ate at
home, outbreaks were confined to the family dinner table,"
Weese says. "Now with more people eating out, it may not only
be you and your family getting sick but your neighbors as
well."
Ironically, the efforts many Americans have made in
recent decades to eat fresh fruits and vegetables in order to
safeguard their health may contribute to a greater risk of
outbreaks.
Coupled with this is the fact more Americans are
eating precooked meals, such as seafood salads and deli meats,
which, instead of being eaten immediately after cooking, are often
left to sit for days on grocery store and restaurant counters.
Another factor may stem from the fact that food is
now imported from all over the world, Weese says.
"Instead of eating from the family farm as we
did only a few decades ago, we’re eating off an international
table," Weese says. "The advantage to this is that we now
have fresh supplies of fruits and vegetables all year round."
However, the globalization of the food supply also
carries a risk, Weese says. Case in point: a recent outbreak of
salmonella that ultimately was traced to tainted fruit juice.
As it turned out, the fruit-juice manufacturer, in
order to meet rising demand, used unpasteurized orange juice from a
Mexican tanker – juice that was chilled with contaminated ice.
Experts believe the outbreak of illness that
followed probably affected about 400 people. One elderly man died.
As the New York Times recently reported, one of the
people affected by this outbreak, 7-year-old Taylor Lake Holt, was
exposed to the tainted orange juice from a fruit shake purchased for
him by his parents to celebrate the end of yearlong chemotherapy
treatment for cancer. After landing back in the hospital, Holt had
to endure 4 more days of recovery.
Unfortunately, Weese says, there are no easy
solutions.
Some experts are calling on the Food and Drug
Administration to post more inspectors at food processing plants.
The FDA currently employs fewer than one-tenth the
inspectors used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to check for
traces of pathogens in meat and poultry plants. In one sense, this
is ironic, since more than 85 percent of food poisoning is linked to
fruit, vegetable and seafood products, rather than to meat and
poultry.
On the other hand, Weese says, this ignores the fact
that FDA inspectors can call on legions of public health inspectors,
located in every county in the United States, to assist with local
plant inspection.
Other experts have called for posting more
inspectors at docks in order to inspect imported food. However, even
so ambitious an effort as this would not ensure our food is 100
percent safe.
"The problem with this approach is that even if
every shipment were inspected, there’s always the possibility of
one tainted apple out of one hundred getting by without being
detected," Weese says. "If, for example, these apples
eventually are squeezed into juice, you’ve essentially ended up
contaminating the whole shipment, and the dock inspection will have
ended up accomplishing nothing."
Ultimately, she says, the burden for safeguarding
the food supply necessarily rests with the food manufacturers.
"No matter whether this food comes from
Kentucky or Katmandu, it’s the responsibility of the food
manufacturer to ensure it’s purchased from a reliable
source," Weese says.
Studies have shown that while less serious forms of
food poisoning have tapered off in recent years, other, more serious
types actually have increased.
