FOOD CONTAMINATION

The food a person eats is as much a part of his environment as the water he drinks or the air he breathes. Altogether air, water, and food provide the physical substance, the chemical elements, out of which living organisms, including man, are compounded. Just as population expansion and technological progress in civilization have created new problems of water and air pollution, they have also introduced new hazards of food contamination. True enough, the advances in microbiology and public health in the past century have happily eliminated some of the old hazards of unclean, impure food for example, botulism and typhoid fever but new risks have arisen

The following statement from the Report of the Committee on Environmental Health Problems to the Surgeon General highlights the predicament of the 1960's:

'The traditional food sanitation programs of local health departments generally speaking cannot keep up] with the new responsibilities resulting from advances in food technology, changing eating habits, and population growth. So many new problems have arisen that many departments are no longer capable of providing adequate food protection. There is urgent need to reverse this trend toward obsolescence.

"The food supply for metropolitan centers presents an increasing number and variety of public health problems, based on the potential hazards associated with technological changes, the continuing widespread occurrence of food borne illnesses, rapidly changing economics and pattern of distribution, and the influence foods may have on man's response to environmental stresses. Food protection is the keystone of environmental health."

The demand of the American public for foods of greater convenience, variety, quality, and in ever-increasing quantity is at the root of new problems in health and safety. In general stores of a century ago, fewer than a hundred different food items were sold. Today you can buy about 8000 food items in America's supermarkets.

Food production in the United States has advanced steadily in the twentieth century. Thanks to power-driven machinery, selection and hybridization of seed plants and animal sires, and agricultural chemicals, the American farmer now produces ten times as much food per acre as his Indian or African counterpart.

But it is the agricultural chemicals, constantly being "improved," which have introduced new problems of food contamination. Agricultural chemicals include fertilizers, weed killers, feed supplements, fungicides, insecticides, and pesticides. There are tens of thousands of them. Some are suspected of being carcinogenic (cancer-causing). Not all of them have been adequately tested. The pesticides in particular appear to offer the greatest risks, and a special amendment (1954) to the federal food and drug laws empowered the Food and Drug Administration to set safe limits or "tolerances" for residues of pesticides on fresh fruits and vegetables when shipped.

Three Basic Contaminants: Microbes, Chemicals, Radioactivity

The foodstuffs sold and served in America today run risk of contamination from three sources: (1) microbes, owing to faulty processing or handling; (2) chemicals, commonly known as "food additives," deliberately or indirectly added to foodstuffs; and (3) radioactivity, arising from controlled weapons testing, industrial, and accidental sources.

Not counting the occasional gastro-intestinal upsets that almost everyone experiences, it is estimated that a minimum of one million cases of definite food poisoning occur in the United States every year. The infective agents usually reported are the staphylococcal and salmonella or shigella organisms.