Dr. R K Gupta
Food is essential for life because it acts as fuel for the body. Although it helps support the body, its safety must be ensured by removing all the unhygienic elements leading to various ailments. It is a global concern that covers a variety of different areas of daily life and refers to the handling, preparation, and storage of food so as to reduce the risk of diseases. Assuming that COVID-19 originated from the wet food market of China, causing this disastrous pandemic, food safety will gain serious concern in the future as well. It is very important to make sure that the food we eat is not contaminated with bacteria, toxins, parasites, and likely harmful chemicals. It has been long ages since humans started to think about food security for a better world. Food safety practices have been founded or mentioned in a few ancient cultures. In 375 BC, Chanakya (a professor, philosopher, and Indian economist) mentioned the falsification of food in his book "Arthashastra". However, food safety, sanitation, and hygiene laws were developed when food production began to move from home to manufacturers, protecting trade rather than public health. The most crucial factors that trigger food safety are the intensification and industrialization of agriculture and animal production to meet the growing demand for food coupled with the globalization of trade in food, which leads to an increasingly complex and longer global food chain. Since the time immemorial foodborne diseases (e.g., botulism, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, etc.) started prevailing all over the world, peaking in the 19th and 20th centuries, food safety and sanitation legislation were more abundantly adopted. In 1906, the U.S. Congress enacted laws for first food safety and labeled regulations, and after World War II, consumers finally started to pay more attention to food safety. They wanted their governments to establish specific regulations and standards to ensure safe food for all. Therefore, many countries developed food legislation that brought us to the current situation in today’s world. According to a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO), unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances, causes more than 200 diseases – ranging from diarrhea to cancers. Due to contaminated food, almost 1 out of 10 people fall ill in the world and about 4,20,000 die every year. Among them, children under 5 years of age are subjected to 1,25,000 deaths every year. Apart from causing direct mortality, foodborne diseases impede socioeconomic development by straining health care systems and harming national economies, tourism, and trade.
The issues addressed by food safety are the foodborne illness that may be infectious or toxic in nature and caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites, or chemical substances entering the body through contaminated food or water. While the pathogens can cause severe diarrhea or debilitating infections including meningitis, Chemical contamination can lead to acute poisoning or long-term diseases, such as cancer. Bacterias like Salmonella, Campylobacter, and Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli, Listeria and Vibrio cholerae are among the most common foodborne pathogens that affect millions of people annually – sometimes with severe and fatal outcomes. Among viruses, Norovirus and Hepatitis A virus are the major ones while Parasites include fish-borne trematodes, tapeworms like Echinococcus spp, or Taenia solium, Ascaris, Cryptosporidium, Entamoeba histolytica or Giardia, that may enter the food chain via water or soil and can contaminate fresh produce. Recently, Prions composed of protein, are unique in a way that they are associated with specific forms of neurodegenerative disease. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow disease") is a prion disease in cattle, associated with the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in humans. Consuming bovine products containing specified risk material, e.g. brain tissue, is the most likely route of transmission of the prion agent to humans. The chemicals of most concern are naturally occurring toxins including mycotoxins, marine biotoxins, cyanogenic glycosides, and toxins occurring in poisonous mushrooms. Staple foods like corn or cereals can contain high levels of mycotoxins, such as aflatoxin and ochratoxin, produced by mould on grain. Another category is Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that accumulate in the environment and the human body. Known examples are dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Simultaneously, nonfood grade chemical additives, such as colorants and preservatives, and contaminants, such as pesticide residues, heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, and copper are also included
Food safety is currently an important tool for achieving the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Because food regulations and standards vary by country, the uniform Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) has been established, which is an international food standards organization jointly managed by the Food Organization of the United Nations Agriculture (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The aim of this organization is to protect the health of consumers and to guarantee fair practices in the food trade. Currently, the Codex Alimentarius Commission has 189 Codex members made up of 188 member countries and 1 member organization (the European Union). India became a member of the Codex Alimentarius in 1964. This body prescribes international standards for the protection of the health of consumers concerning veterinary drugs, pesticides, food additives, and food contaminants which are followed in various organizations dealing with food safety in each country. ISO 22000 is a standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization dealing with food safety. This is a general derivative of ISO 9000. The ISO 22000 international standard specifies the requirements for a food safety management system that involves interactive communication, system management, prerequisite programs, HACCP principles. ISO 22000 was first published in 2005. It is the culmination of all previous attempts from many sources and areas of food safety concerns to provide an end product that is safe as possible from pathogens and other contaminants. Every 5 years standards are reviewed to determine whether a revision is necessary, to ensure that the standards remain as relevant and useful to businesses as possible. Since the parameters remain almost uniform across all countries, this helps to remove trade barriers for export purposes.
Each country has its own food security organization. For example, in India, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, in association with the State Food Authorities, is responsible for the implementation and enforcement of FSSA, 2006. To ensure the manufacturing, storage, distribution, and sale of safe food, it operates under a food security management system (FSMS) which is a network of interdependent elements that combine to ensure that food does not cause harmful effects on human health. These elements include programs, plans, policies, procedures, practices, processes, goals, objectives, methods, controls, roles, responsibilities, relationships, documents, records, and resources. Security elements include good practices / PRP, risk analysis, management element/system, legal and regulatory requirements, and communication. The design of a food safety system involves around numerous factors. To begin with, minimum hygiene standards should be determined by laws and regulations, food producers must apply food safety measures and procedures and official bodies must supervise and inspect food industry companies to confirm that they are conducting their operations in a manner consistent with the regulations in force.
While rapid and accurate detection of foodborne pathogens is being improvised through Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based assay. enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay (ELISA) , Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) nanotechnology and Gas chromatography in our country, the inspection and regulation for the authenticity of safe products on field scale is very poor so far. Therefore, to be safe, we need to be extra cautious and earn ourselves a healthy life through home interventions. The concern related to food security does not arise if we prepare our own food properly and maintain strict personal hygiene but it biomes cautionary in the case of consuming processed food and eating out at unhygienic places. For the readers, I would advocate the General measures for food safety—Purchase foods from reliable suppliers, from companies that apply HACCP* system.; Always keep your refrigerator clean with a bowl of activated charcoal placed inside it; Keep foods in wrapped or closed containers.; Separate cooked foods from raw foods.; Make sure that the temperature of the food drops below 5°C as soon as possible while cooling it.; Do not let foods remain at room temperature for any longer than two hours.; Re-heat the food properly. If you want to store food for long, add burned coal into it. To escape from infective microbes, cook all animal foods product thoroughly and use only pasteurized dairy products. As far as chemicals responsible for food safety, acute toxicity is seldom met but chronic problems are buildup over time. If you want to remain safe as a consumer, do not go for lustrous and bright colored fruits and vegetables, especially during the off-season period. The plants grown in the vicinity of contaminated nallas and rivers contain parasites and heavy metals as evidenced around Yamuna in Delhi.A quick vigil is therefore required to enquire about the source of fresh produce. Vegetable and fruit consumers prefer to buy cosmetic produce which may be full of contaminants like pesticides and wax polishing. For instance, extra white cauliflower is often treated with copper sulphate, bright brinjal is sprayed with as much as 12 sprays of insecticides and shining fruits contain harmful colourants. One must not hesitate to purchase pest-infested vegetables since it does not have any toxins. One may remove the affected portion and eat the rest after cooking safely—free of insecticides. It must be remembered that most farmers always grow food for their self-consumption in a field free of agrochemicals but for market supply, they use exceptionally high doses of agrochemicals. If one is not sure about contamination, there is no harm to keep the fresh produce in brine water (10%) for at least half an hour. This would help to remove the pesticide residue from it. I would even suggest making your lawns as a kitchen garden or going for roof gardening to grow your own vegetables at least. That would eliminate any safety related risk. |
