Food-Borne Illnesses And Irradiation Of Foods

Officials at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment were concerned. During the first week of August 1997, the agency had received an unusually large number of reports of people who had become ill after eating ground beef. Department researchers had been able to confirm that five of them had eaten ground beef produced by a company called Hudson Foods, a subsidiary of Tyson Foods Inc. The Colorado health...

Food-Borne Diseases and Their Prevention

Food-borne illnesses have afflicted humans for centuries, if not for millennia. Historical records suggest, for example, that Antonius Musa, physician to the first Roman emperor, Augustus (63 b.c.e.-14C.E.), treated his patient for typhoid fever by immersing him in cold water. Credit for the first clinical description of the disease usually goes to the English physician Thomas Willis (1621-75), who in 1659 reported on its...

Thomas Willis (1621-1675)

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. That quotation, credited to Sir Isaac Newton, reflects the understanding of many great geniuses: that most great accomplishments in science (and in other fields) depend to a large extent on the work of those who have gone before. Sometimes, the early pioneers are themselves famous. At other times, their names are virtually unknown to the general public and,...

Trends in Food-Borne Illnesses in the United State...

In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spon­sored an extensive study of the number and types of food-borne ill­nesses and death occurring annually in the United States (Paul S. Mead, et al., "Food-Related Illness and Death in the United States," Emerging Infectious Diseases, September-October 1999, 607-617; since 1999 the CDC has conducted more limited studies of food-borne illnesses in a...

Prevention of Food-Borne Illnesses

Knowledge of how agents that cause food-borne illnesses get into food makes it possible to outline procedures to prevent such illness­es. Pathogens, for example, survive and grow in foods only under certain favorable environmental conditions, such as a warm tem­perature, the presence of moisture, and neutral acidity (pH of about 7.0). People can decrease the likelihood that pathogens will remain in foods, then, by treating...

Regulating Food Safety

Protecting citizens from food-borne illnesses like those described above is a priority for governmental agencies at all levels, from federal to local governments. Because food safety is important to all levels of government, laws and regulations are often complex and overlapping. At the federal level, the regulation of food safety is a large operation shared by four major agencies: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA),...

Surveys of Domestic Food Safety

Regulatory agencies are required by law or administrative rules to report the number of food inspections they have conducted and the results of those inspections. The FSIS, for example, issues an annual report on its activities to Congress, while the FDA issues irregu­lar reports on its inspections of fruits and vegetables, milk and egg products, and seafood. In its 2000 report, the most recent available, the FSIS reported...

Issues of Imported Food Safety

One of the most serious problems facing government officials in­volved with protecting the safety of Americans' foods is the dramatic increase in the amount of food products imported from countries around the world. As numerous studies have shown, federal and state agencies have done a remarkable job of ensuring the safety of domestically grown food, no mater the type of food, its origin, or its manner of preparation. But as...

One Solution: Irradiated Food?

For nearly a century, some scientists have been suggesting that an effective way of killing the pathogens that cause food-borne illness­es is with radiation. The history of irradiated food dates to 1895, when the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845-1923) discovered the existence of X-rays, a high-energy form of electro­magnetic radiation with great penetrating power. Less than a year later, a colleague of...

Samuel Cate Prescott (1872-1962)

The chemical and bacteriological principles of food preservation; dis­eases of the banana plant; chemistry of the roasting and preparation of coffee; studies of the irradiation of foods for the purpose of preservation; bacteriology of water supplies; preparation of dehydrated and quick-frozen foods; the history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—these are among the topics to which Samuel Cate Prescott turned his...

Methods of Food Irradiation

All methods of food irradiation operate on a common chemical principle: Destruction ofcertain critical molecules in an organism, such as enzyme < WORLDWIDE APPROVED USES OF IRRADIATED FOODS V COUNTRY FOOD PRODUCT(S) Argentina spices, spinach, cocoa powder Bangladesh potatoes, onions, dried fish, pulses, frozen seafood, frog legs Belgium spices, dehydrated vegetables, deep-frozen...

The Irradiation Controversy

The practice of irradiating foods has aroused significant debate be­tween proponents and skeptics. The subjects of debate relate to the actual effect of radiation on pathogens, the chemical changes that ir­radiation produces in food, the environmental effects of irradiation practices, and the nutritional value of irradiated foods. Proponents of food irradiation point out that radiation is an ex­tremely effective means of...

Public Opinion on Irradiated Foods

The debate over irradiated foods has thus far involved relatively small numbers of people, primarily those with a vested interest in the use of radiation technologies and consumer groups with strong feelings about food irradiation. Public opinion polls tend to show that less than half of the general public is informed about the subject. But if food irradiation is to be adopted in the United States and other nations, the...