Providing Safe Foods
t’s that time of year again — Thanksgiving and the official start of the 2008 holiday
season. Every Thanksgiving, family and friends gather to celebrate round dinner
tables heaped high with those classic dishes. Roasted turkey, cornbread stuffing, cran-
berry sauce, mashed potatoes, yams, green beans, salad, pumpkin pie, pecan pie. The works!
There’s praise and thanks for the food, of course. But we’re also thankful for all the year’s
blessings. For grandma and grandpa. The love and support of family and friends. And, of
course, thankful for all the scientific advances that make our meals safe during the holiday
season and throughout the year.
Hold on there, now! What was that last “thankful”? Perhaps scientists do deserve a
word of thanks for their often-invisible role in protecting our food supply. It takes just one
encounter with food poisoning from E. coli, Salmonella, or other microbes to make a person
oh-so-very-thankful. We are thankful to avoid a second dreaded bout of nausea, vomiting,
cramps, and diarrhea.
HIGHLIGHTS
◆ Researchers have discovered that simple
changes in diet to
include “natural feed
ingredients” can
reduce levels of the
disease-causing bacteria in poultry that
cause food poisoning
in people.
A Host of Food Safety Threats
Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the CDC — suggests
that 76 million cases of food poisoning occur in the United States every year. High-profile
outbreaks linked to spinach, peanut butter, frozen pot pies, tomatoes, jalapeño peppers, and
other foods have heightened public concerns.
In 2008, CDC reported significant declines in foodborne illnesses between the mid-1990s
and early 2000s. However, there has been no significant improvement since 2004. New
threats also are arising. Think the variant form of mad cow disease that can infect humans
and cause an incurable brain disease.
Think the E. coli variant known as 0157:H7. Think melamine contamination in certain
imported foods. Scientists are responding to these and other challenges, from Thanksgivings
past and present, with discoveries that promise to keep our food supply as safe as possible.
◆ Sanitizing fruits, vegetables, and other
foods eaten raw
with irradiation kills
dangerous microbes
without making the
food radioactive or
less nutritious.
Putting Poultry on a Germ-Free Diet
For example, Dr. Dan Donoghue, of the University of Arkansas, is attempting to reduce one
of the major causes of food poisoning that arises from eating contaminated poultry.
◆ A new antibacterial
coating may lead to
food wraps and other
packaging materials
with built-in disinfectants incorporated
directly into their
chemical structure.
“Our ultimate goal is to reduce foodborne pathogens, which in our case is poultry, in the
poultry gut. Foodborne pathogens are very prevalent in a lot of our domestic animals,
and especially in poultry. We’re trying to use a number of different techniques to reduce
the incidence of foodborne pathogens in poultry.”
◆ Miniature sensor
devices based on
cantilevers — that
resemble a diving
board —are being
developed to quickly
detect a wide variety
of food poisoning
bacteria before food
reaches consumers.
DiD YOU KNOW?
About 76 million cases of food poisoning occur in the United States every year.
Simply keeping cold foods cold and hot foods hot before serving can prevent many
cases of food poisoning.
Salmonella is better known, but another bacterium called Campylobacter (found on
foods like raw chicken) is the No. 1 cause of food poisoning in the United States and
the world.
There are two main kinds of food poisoning. One results from toxins or poisons
produced by microbes in food before consumption. The other results from microbes in
food that infect the body and grow after consumption.
Most cases of “24-hour u,” with its vomiting and diarrhea, actually are food poisoning.
◆ Chemists are developing a method that
will allow meat packers to scan entire animal carcasses at once
for the presence of
spinal and brain tissue, which can harbor
the infectious proteins that cause mad
cow disease.
