From the Editor: Why doesn’t the food industry get it?
06/01/2005
Four questions:
1) Are the latest contamination-control practices and technology being applied to food safety?
2) Does the food industry mandate the use of sterile packaging environments to ensure food products are not contaminated, cross-contaminated or recontaminated with deadly organisms?
3) Are irradiated food products completely safe to eat uncooked?
4) Are the food industry and government first and foremost concerned about ensuring food safety, and absolutely trustworthy to never let higher profit margins or political concerns influence their decisions?
One answer:
Since the answer to the first three questions is an unequivocal no, by my calculations at least, the answer to the fourth question must also be an unequivocal no.
In fact, another question might be how the FDA justifies being so specific and firm about its pharmaceutical and biotechnology safety procedures and enforcement practices while it is so vague and equivocal when it comes to ensuring the safety of the nation’s food supply.
Over ten years ago, I was convinced that contamination-control technology was on the verge of exploding into the food industry. Within these pages, we talked about the benefits, the potential applications, and the solutions available. And, we talked about the shortcomings, inadequacies, and very real dangers of the existing practices. Yet, today, little has changed.
Instead, the industry and government have opted for a “make-the-public-feel-good” approach to food safety. Although the once highly-touted notion of HAACP seemed like a good start, it was apparently also the finish, since there have been no subsequently mandated procedures, and no new standards or practices to enforce. Similarly, irradiation is now being irresponsibly advocated as an all-satisfying food-safety panacea, when it is clearly not. Irradiation does not kill all potentially harmful organisms, nor does it prevent future recontamination. Regardless of any other concerns raised by the use of irradiation, it certainly should have nothing at all to do with the institution, and enforcement of, well-established contamination-control practices and technology.
The bottom line is that we can educate and inform until the cows come home (pun intended), but the food industry has thus far shown no indication that it plans to voluntarily take contamination control seriously, and make the necessary investments in their facilities to ensure safe food handling. That’s the reality. The other reality is that we have created and funded several large government agencies whose responsibility it is to do just that. It’s time those agencies finally start doing their job: stop recommending-and begin establishing, mandating and enforcing the use of the same specific contamination-control practices and technology successfully used by, and required of, other industries.
-J.S.H.