May 15 2009

Who is responsible for food safety? You are!

Or so says ConAgra, apparently.  The New York Times reports that ConAgra, unable to locate the source of Salmonella in its frozen dinners (oops), deals with the problem by telling you to heat the dinner to 165 degrees and use a thermometer to make sure you do.  The Times tried this.  Not so easy.  Oops again.

Mind you, it makes sense for everyone to follow standard food safety procedures at home.  These, you may recall, involve doing four things in your kitchen: CLEAN – wash hands and preparation surfaces frequently and thoroughly, SEPARATE cooked from uncooked foods so they don’t get cross-contaminated, COOK food to appropriate temperature to kill harmful microbes, and promptly CHILL foods in the refrigerator to retard bacterial growth.

Shouldn’t we expect ConAgra and everyone else to produce safe food in the first place?  And don’t we need some regulation to make sure companies do?  I think so.  Now.

The appointment of Tom Friedan to head the CDC should help.  Let’s hope Margaret Hamburg’s appointment to head the FDA moves quickly through the glacial congressional approval process.

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How is it that these companies aren’t even sure where some of their foods are supplied from?

  • Hylton
  • May 18, 2009
  • 1:36 pm

This is nothing new. Ultimately, it is the consumer’s responsibility to police pathogens in food.

Read assessments and position papers of organizations like the CDC, ADA or FDA. They state that there is no reliable way for production of meat, eggs and (unpasteurized)milk to be free of pathogens and the onus of infection prevention is on the consumer though proper handling and cooking.

Irradiation may be a way to deter pathogens but as of now, it’s not a popular idea (among consumers).

Salmonella bacteria is inherent in fish and chickens. E. Coli bacteria is inherent in cattle and pigs. It doesn’t matter if it is a wild or pasture raised animal, pathogens are inherent in the bodies of animals and when they are processed for food there is always a risk of contaminating the flesh with infectious bacteria.

One commercial hamburger may contain the meat from a hundred animals and it only takes one source to contaminate everything, smae for processed meats of any kind. This goes for eggs that are pooled together as well. Chicken meat almost always harbors salmonella to some degree, it’s the same for fish, it doesn’t really matter where you buy it.

Communicable pathogens are an anomaly for plant food since it means that crops have been contaminated with animal detritus (like the peppers back a few years ago) or the processing plants were operating in unsanitary conditions (like the peanut butter last year).

Zoonotic pathogens aren’t harbored by plant food without something else, typically an animal derived source, being the cause, but the harboring of potentially harmful bateria is unavoidable with animal food prodcution, even at it’s best.

It doesn’t matter who is appointed to what, the risk for pathogens in animal food can be reduced, but at present, cannot be eliminated.

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