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Authors: Marion Nestle
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and species of bacteria—
Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella
, and
Escherichia coli
(
E. coli
)—most episodes are never reported to health authorities and their cause is unknown. 1 From a science-based perspective, the risks and costs of foodborne illness are extremely high.
Furthermore, although outbreaks of foodborne illness have become more dangerous over the years, food producers resist the attempts of government agencies to institute control measures, and major food industries oppose pathogen control measures by every means at their disposal. They lobby Congress and federal agencies, challenge regulationsin court, and encourage local obstruction of safety enforcement. We will see, for example, that the culture of opposition to food safety measures so permeates the beef industry that it led, in one shocking instance, to the assassination of federal and state meat inspectors.
To explain this culture of resistance, we need to understand that current problems of food safety are not new but are
different
. A century ago, the main sources of foodborne illness were milk from infected cows and spoiled meat from sick animals. Public health measures that we now take for granted—water chlorination and milk pasteurization, for example—eliminated typhoid fever, cholera, and most lethal diarrheal diseases. The food supply depended on local production and was largely decentralized. Fish, for example, were caught wild from the sea. Even though cattle were transported to common areas for slaughter and kept in close quarters—conditions ripe for spreading infections—federal inspection and veterinary care kept most sick animals from entering the food supply.
Today, centralized food production has created even more favorable conditions for dissemination of bacteria, protozoa, and viruses. We call these organisms by collective terms: microbes, microorganisms, or “bugs.” If harmful, they are pathogens. Many pathogens infect the animals we use for food without causing any visible signs of illness. Infected animals excrete pathogenic microbes in feces, however, and pass them along to other food animals, to food plants, and to us. If the pathogens survive cooking, stomach acid, and digestive enzymes, they can multiply, produce toxins, upset digestive systems, and do worse. Their effects are especially harmful to people with immature or weakened immune systems—infants, young children, the elderly, and those ill from other causes. Even from this brief description, it should be evident that people involved with every stage of food production, from farm to fork, must take responsibility for food safety to prevent animal infections (producers), avoid fecal contamination (processors), and destroy pathogens (food handlers and consumers).
Sharing of responsibility, however, also permits sharing of blame. As these chapters explain, producers blame processors for foodborne illness, and processors blame producers; government regulators blame both, and everyone blames consumers. The role of government in food safety demands particular notice. Current laws grant regulatory agencies only limited authority to prevent microbial contamination before food gets to consumers. Federal oversight of food safety remains unshakablyrooted in policies established almost a century ago, in 1906. Congress designed those policies to ensure the health of
animals
, in an era long before most of the current microbial causes of foodborne illness were even suspected, let alone recognized. Although food safety experts have complained for years about the gap between hazards and oversight practices, attempts to give federal agencies the right to enforce food safety regulations have been blocked repeatedly by food producers and their supporters in Congress, sometimes joined by the agencies themselves, and more recently by the courts. Some progress has occurred, driven by the appearance in common foods of new and more deadly pathogens such as
E. coli
O157:H7, an
Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella
, and
Escherichia coli
(
E. coli
)—most episodes are never reported to health authorities and their cause is unknown. 1 From a science-based perspective, the risks and costs of foodborne illness are extremely high.
Furthermore, although outbreaks of foodborne illness have become more dangerous over the years, food producers resist the attempts of government agencies to institute control measures, and major food industries oppose pathogen control measures by every means at their disposal. They lobby Congress and federal agencies, challenge regulationsin court, and encourage local obstruction of safety enforcement. We will see, for example, that the culture of opposition to food safety measures so permeates the beef industry that it led, in one shocking instance, to the assassination of federal and state meat inspectors.
To explain this culture of resistance, we need to understand that current problems of food safety are not new but are
different
. A century ago, the main sources of foodborne illness were milk from infected cows and spoiled meat from sick animals. Public health measures that we now take for granted—water chlorination and milk pasteurization, for example—eliminated typhoid fever, cholera, and most lethal diarrheal diseases. The food supply depended on local production and was largely decentralized. Fish, for example, were caught wild from the sea. Even though cattle were transported to common areas for slaughter and kept in close quarters—conditions ripe for spreading infections—federal inspection and veterinary care kept most sick animals from entering the food supply.
Today, centralized food production has created even more favorable conditions for dissemination of bacteria, protozoa, and viruses. We call these organisms by collective terms: microbes, microorganisms, or “bugs.” If harmful, they are pathogens. Many pathogens infect the animals we use for food without causing any visible signs of illness. Infected animals excrete pathogenic microbes in feces, however, and pass them along to other food animals, to food plants, and to us. If the pathogens survive cooking, stomach acid, and digestive enzymes, they can multiply, produce toxins, upset digestive systems, and do worse. Their effects are especially harmful to people with immature or weakened immune systems—infants, young children, the elderly, and those ill from other causes. Even from this brief description, it should be evident that people involved with every stage of food production, from farm to fork, must take responsibility for food safety to prevent animal infections (producers), avoid fecal contamination (processors), and destroy pathogens (food handlers and consumers).
Sharing of responsibility, however, also permits sharing of blame. As these chapters explain, producers blame processors for foodborne illness, and processors blame producers; government regulators blame both, and everyone blames consumers. The role of government in food safety demands particular notice. Current laws grant regulatory agencies only limited authority to prevent microbial contamination before food gets to consumers. Federal oversight of food safety remains unshakablyrooted in policies established almost a century ago, in 1906. Congress designed those policies to ensure the health of
animals
, in an era long before most of the current microbial causes of foodborne illness were even suspected, let alone recognized. Although food safety experts have complained for years about the gap between hazards and oversight practices, attempts to give federal agencies the right to enforce food safety regulations have been blocked repeatedly by food producers and their supporters in Congress, sometimes joined by the agencies themselves, and more recently by the courts. Some progress has occurred, driven by the appearance in common foods of new and more deadly pathogens such as
E. coli
O157:H7, an
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