ANIMAL BASED FOODS VS PLANT FOODS-FOOD SAFETY LANDSCAPE

It is not necessary for any one to possess extra ordinary intelligence to discern the fact that animal derived foods, being rich in many nutrients are much more vulnerable than plant based foods to serious contamination with pathogens. Naturally the extent of vigilance needed to safeguard the safety of these foods is much more compared to that required in case of plant foods. It is very true that between 2008 and 2011 vegetables like leafy greens, tomato, melon, sprouts, spices, herbs were responsible for many food poisoning outbreaks though the sources from where they got contaminated were never properly identified. If so is it judicious for a responsible body like European Food Safety Council (EFSA) to blame these foods of plant origin as solely responsible for the outbreaks and resultant consequences?

According to the above high profile body that is supposed to oversee the food safety related tasks for the entire EU has just brought out a statistical treatise which says that "germs from non animal food origin (FoNAO) were responsible for almost half the number of deaths caused by food transmitted pathogens"! Of course these claims were made based on the "scientific opinion'" of its panel on biological hazards obviously consisting of knowledgeable experts! It further goes on to say that from 2008 to 2011 number of  outbreaks, cases, hospitalization and deaths from contaminated foods belonging to the category FoNAO showed significant increase as compared to that from foods of animal origin (FoAO). Biggest risks were from Salmonella infected leafy greens, bulbs and stem vegetables followed by Salmonella infected tomatoes and melons. E.coli was responsible for tainting fresh pods, legumes and grains while Norovirus. Shigella and Salmonella caused food poisoning in leafy greens, fresh pods. legumes and grains spices, dry powder and herbs and sprouts.

Statistically FoNAO were implicated  in 10% of all outbreaks, 26% of cases reported, 35% of hospitalization and 46% of deaths. But can these figures be considered realistic and true? A careful analysis of the available statistics does not substantiate these claims and the attempt to gloss over the fact that meat industry still has the most wretched record as far as food safety is concerned and if there is any industry which stands indicted for sheer callousness and deficient practices compromising the health of the consumer it is this particular industry encompassing meat and poultry processing. Whether rearing the animals and birds or slaughtering them or processing animal product industry has one of the worst safety records and shifting the blame to plant foods for majority of safety related episodes is not fair.

If the stand taken by EFSA is true, the populations in many developing countries, where plant foods are consumed extensively due to culture, religion and economic compulsions, should have disappeared long ago due to food poisoning! In stead of looking inward to find out the reasons for plant foods raised in those countries in Europe posing safety problems and take adequate remedial measures to improve the situation, condemning an entire class of foods is not justifiable. When the whole world is trying to reduce meat consumption due to its association with many life style disorders and shift to more fruit and vegetable in their daily diet, reports like the above can cause a set back to these healthy efforts.

Though fresh produce like leafy greens, tomatoes, melons were implicated in some of the recent episodes, these are all cases of cross contamination in the farms using contaminated water or handling facilities where meat is also processed or common distribution and storage facilities. Probably this is where organic farming is scoring over the commercial farming sector and it is rarely that organic produce is implicated in any major food poisoning episode so far.    

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

PUFFED RICE 'POISONING'-DOES ANY ONE CARE AT DELHI?

In a tragic incidence of food poisoning that occurred in a remote village in Karnataka on November 16, 2009, seven persons were reported to have been killed while four others were hospitalized. The bare report by a news agency mentioned that the poor villagers ate puffed rice served to them where after one women died immediately while four lost their lives while being taken to hospital. Another two died in the hospital subsequently. Probably these deaths occurred within a span of few hours. The episode happened in Konkal village of Shahapur Taluk in Gulbarga district which affected several people and some one seems to have decided it was due to consumption of the traditional puffed rice based preparation "mandaal vaggarane". The knee-jerk reaction of the authorities was to announce ex-gratia payment to the victims, forget the entire episode and wait for the next tragedy to happen!

Several issues regarding this unfortunate incidence are baffling. Why only a total of 11 people were affected out of which 7 died, varying in age between 10 and 60 years, all from one family? Did the local hospital conduct any Post Mortem on the bodies? If food poisoning is indeed the cause, what is the type of poison that caused death so fast? Any thing has been done to trace the source of 'poison'? A dry material like puffed rice with such a low water activity cannot be a good medium for fatal microbial infection and even if so, such infections take time to develop "lethality" in human beings.

A thorough investigation involving police and toxicology experts can only bring out the real facts in this case as puffed rice with low moisture content is one of the safest foods available and as a traditional food material it has a long shelf life. True the process of making puffed rice is confined mostly to cottage scale sector and involved heating of conditioned paddy in sand medium in small batches. Though modernization efforts were made some years ago, very few artisans are willing to change their traditional practices. Possible reasons for the fatalities could be intentional homicide, voluntary suicide, accidental contamination of paddy used with poisonous agri-chemicals, storage of puffed rice along with poisonous substances or unintentional addition of poisonous ingredients during preparation of the mandaal vaggarne which was consumed by the victims.

The casual way the news was reported shows how indifferent our safety monitoring agencies at Delhi and the states are to the sufferings of citizens. Contrast this with a similar episode reported from Minnesota in USA in April last year when puffed rice and puffed wheat made by a local manufacturer caused food poisoning to just 23 people in 14 different states of the country which was immediately traced to Salmonella agona by DNA finger printing! This infection causes nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea, stomach cramp and can be life threatening for people with poor health and weakened immunity system. The response from the health authorities was spontaneous in pinpointing the cause, identifying the causative agent and recalling millions of packs of these products from the market as a precaution. In India we have an "Authority" at Delhi, supposed to be "looking after" the food safety concerns in the country which must lead by action in taking up such cases for detailed investigations to avoid future recurrence of such episodes, in stead of "sermonizing from the pulpit". Some hope!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

ARE YOUR HANDS CLEAN?-CHECK, TO BE SURE

Food industry is faced with the greatest challenge in restoring confidence in the consumers regarding its ability to offer safe foods after a series of episodes of food contamination and costly product recalls in many western countries. It is another matter that contaminated foods do not get sufficient attention in India due to the lax monitoring and enforcement practices prevalent in the country and absence of product liability system sparing the manufacturers as well as the traders from punitive corrective actions. A ray of hope emanated from the corridors of power that is supposed to oversee the food safety in the country, when hotels in New Delhi were chosen to grade them into different categories based on hygiene and food quality, probably keeping in mind the forth coming Common Wealth Games hosted there by India. Whether the declaration of 'intent' will transform into reality remains to be seen.

Inputs for food processing such as raw materials and water, the infrastructure and services, the environment where facilities are located and working personnel are the major sources of microbiological contamination resulting in spoiled foods and consequent damages to the consumer health. Out of these, people involved in handling foods in the processing floor are the carriers of pathogenic vectors, transferring them to the food through their direct contact or through the air they exhale. Till the robots take control of food handling, human hands are bound to be the most crucial tool to manage various operations that constitute processing. While personnel health can be monitored through medical check ups and daily examination, keeping the hands clean is fraught with many practical difficulties. Hands are invariably used by a human during coughing, sneezing, gargling, eating and drinking, visit to the toilets, washing of face and feet and many other purposes. The microbial status of the hands is under a flux, continuously changing during different times of the day.

Current practices of keeping hands clean include washing with soap or detergent and drying or wiping and using antiseptic preparations before entering the preparation area. There is no guarantee that hands of the operators are really clean before entering the processing area because many factors will influence the efficacy of this critical step. Extent of detergent used, quantity of water used, thoroughness of forming the suds and their spread through out the hand, method of drying the hand all will determine how clean the hands are after each washing. According to WHO a person who washes hands often is 24% less likely to acquire a respiratory illness and 45-50% less likely to suffer from a stomach upset. 80% of all illnesses and infections are transported by touch where hand plays the prominent role. A thorough hand washing calls for vigorously scrubbing with water and soap until lather appears, making sure to get them between fingers and finger nails which generally takes about 20 seconds to complete followed by drying with a towel.

Innovations in hospitals which are continuously on alert regrading infection from pathogenic microorganisms are greatly relevant to the food industry managers also and the industry needs to learn from their experience. Popular sanitizing hand gels and liquids, though touted to be efficient, were found to be less effective in practice than washing with plenty of water because the bacteria could still remain on the hand, when not washed. Water and soap wash down these contaminants from hand removing their very source. To make the washing hand operation more reliable, electronic sensors have been developed to detect presence of extraneous matter on the hand which are being tried out in some hospitals in the western countries. Washed hands when brought under a wall-mounted scanner are tested for cleanliness and inadequate cleaning can trigger alarm signals that can be detected, logged and monitored for every individual worker in the organization entering the processing area. Workers wearing appropriate badges pick up the signals and those not cleared can go for more thorough washing. Hot air drying can take as much as 20-30 seconds while towels and tissue paper are often used for quick drying. Drying of washed hands before scanning can now be done in a few seconds using air blades at room temperature using compressed air at 400 miles per hour velocity.

Hand washing is increasingly receiving attention especially during recent weeks because of the pandemic H1N1 virus spreading Swine Flu across the world, expected to affect almost 2 billion people within 2 years. Most effective way of avoiding the infection is washing the hands as often as possible since hands are known pick up the infection first before transferring to the lungs through soft tissues of the nose, mouth and eyes.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

CELL PHONES-NEW SOURCE OF INFECTION

Growth of the mobile telephony in India is one of the highest in the world. With half a dozen desi and foreign companies dominating the market, the average ownership is estimated at one cell phone for every 5 persons which is awe some considering the extent of poverty that is prevalent to day. A cell phone is a personal gadget carried along by individuals for sole use of the owner and not shared by others. There are numerous designs of cell phones offering several advantages and different features. The communication infrastructure as we have to day based on wireless network, can be the envy of many other countries. But widespread use of cell phones may be fraught with some dangers still requiring confirmation. The Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of radiations emitted by the cell phone sets decides the radiation hazard posed by these gadgets. Habitual users are presumed to have risks of 34 to 240% in contracting acoustic neuroma, a type of tumor of the nerves that control body balance and hearing in human beings. While rich nations have set up limits of 1.6 to 2 W per Kg weight as safe limits, India does not have any limits for such radiations.

The recent revelation that cell phone hand sets can harbor pathogens is startling and deserves further detailed consideration. First report on this originated from UK where it was shown that Clostridium and Staphylococcus species were colonizing the cell phone hand sets of doctors in some hospitals and the infection is brought home by these doctors with potential to spread the infection. Same doctors using infected handsets can be instrumental in passing on this infection to other patients also unwittingly. Despite the strict hand washing protocols that exist in all modern hospitals, spread of infection through cell phone sets, especially in hospitals may be difficult to stop altogether unless the manufacturers come up with designs that can stand known disinfection procedures currently in vogue. Clostridium difficles causes serious diarrhea while Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) resistant to most of the broad spectrum antibiotics causes serious skin and soft tissue infections and fatal pneumonia in patients in many hospitals across the world.

Will there be any impact on food industry due to wide spread use of cell phones? With the cell phone use percolating down to the working class level, many industry labor personnel are presumed to be carrying the gadget into the factory and since they come from different home environments with varying degree of microbial loads, there could be some impact on safety of processed foods. This will be more acute in case of retort pouched foods as frequent process standardization will be necessary to factor this unpredictable consequences. Probably barring the entry of cell phones into the factory area may be feasible and once the personnel sanitize themselves they should not be allowed access to their cell phones till they leave the premises. Alternately same sanitation procedure must be insisted on as being done after visit to the toilet. The situation is not alarming yet but can be a potential issue in future for which industry must be prepared.



V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/