I must confess that I’m biased—I love science, I love words, I’m an optimist, and I have worked in food safety for 40 years. So, when my friends at Thinking Forks asked me to help them think through some food safety challenges, I was delighted.
Let me start by stating the obvious. The sheer amount of information available to consumers today is vast, bewildering, and increasing exponentially. This food is good, that is bad, this has pesticides, that over there may have toxins, food fraud is rampant, and new pathogens are emerging. How do we begin to make sense of this, and more importantly, how do we make good choices for ourselves and our loved ones?
Let’s take a minute to understand a few technical terms. "Pathogen" is derived from "pathos," meaning suffering or disease, and "gene," meaning producer of. It was first used to describe disease-causing agents, particularly bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi. "Toxin" originates from the Greek "toxikon" meaning poison for use on arrows. A chemist first used it to describe organic poisons produced by living organisms.
Most pathogenesis is usually a combination of several strategies from the smart pathogens. However, thanks to our brilliant immune system, most foodborne illnesses are relatively mild and short. I did say most; at the other end of the spectrum, foodborne illness can be debilitating, hugely impactful, causing hospitalization, long-term illness, and in some cases, especially for the very young, those who are immunocompromised, and the elderly, it can be fatal.
Some years ago, I was talking to a lady who said she had purchased a product. She opened it, and it didn't look right—kind of curdled. She poured it into a pan. It smelt awful. Undeterred, she gave it to her husband, who, after a couple of mouthfuls, said it tasted off and made a run for the bathroom. I did wonder if their marriage was in a good place….
It would be great to say that all food safety threats can be seen, smelt, or tasted, but that is sadly not the case. Although it's a great place to start, if it doesn't look, smell, or taste right, don't eat it. But we can't always rely on our senses to detect toxins or microbial contamination in food.
So what can we do to decide if food is safe? How is safe food made? A very early mentor of mine, Professor Mossel (Professor emeritus at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands), said getting safe food was straightforward: Use safe ingredients, handle and cook them as if they are contaminated, and then prevent recontamination. Most of our farmers grow and store crops in a way that minimizes the risk of contamination. Food manufacturers using those ingredients ensure they meet the right standards and process (e.g., pasteurise) appropriately to their risk. Distributors and retailers must store the products appropriately, distribute appropriately, and manage shelf life.
An overwhelming force for good in this space is the regulator. They set and enforce the legal standards. The vast majority of people I have met throughout my career want to do the right thing, but occasionally, they might not understand what is required, or they may be tempted to take a shortcut. Pragmatic, clear, enforced regulation protects public health and sets a guiding star for all involved with food.
I bet that you have heard about testing. Testing plays a critical role in ensuring that food safety controls are working. But testing alone cannot answer the question, "Is this food safe?" The issue lies in two places: distribution and statistics. Pathogens and toxins are rarely evenly distributed, so just because something is present in one sample doesn't mean it's present in all samples. Statistically, you simply can't take enough samples to give you complete confidence that anything is safe. So why bother testing at all? Testing provides great information on the safety of a process when used together with all the other things, such as auditing and risk assessment tools like HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point … the acronym kind of leaves you hanging…).
You can't look at one part of a food safety program; you have to look at the whole. Thinking Forks is creating an index, called the Goodness Meter, that captures all that information and puts it onto the label so we can see it. Taking legal compliance data, audit results, data submitted by the manufacturer/participant and using deep industry and technical competence to form a view. Can this be 100% reliable? No, but what a great way to start increasing transparency and awareness. What a great way to allow consumers to be more demanding. And we should be more demanding, much, much more demanding!
I often hear people saying it used to be so much better. How can we have all these problems with food? It never used to happen. So, I need at this point to issue an optimism attack warning… We don't know that things were better; we just believed they were because it's what we grew up with and were familiar with. We didn't have the tests, the government agencies that report, and medical systems that could collect data. Farming, industry, distributor, and retailer standards were lacking. Food safety is better now than ever, but it seems scarier because we can detect things and are aware of their potential impact.. Don't misunderstand me, I’m not arguing for complacency or saying everything is fine – it's not. We can, must, and will continue to make food safer, food supply chains better, and consumer lives better. The Goodness Meter could be a really useful step in that journey.
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