Is the world about to give up the efforts to safeguard the quality of foods produced because of repeated episodes of food contamination being encountered in many advanced countries in spite of the excellent infrastructure and expertise available with them? If the tenor of statements by some of the experts is any indication, consumer may have to eventually face the uncertainties of food contamination by himself, not sure about the ability of the system that is in place, designed to pre-empt such episodes. Here is the confession from an expert.
"We work on a number of foodborne diseases here at WSU, but there are no easy tricks to solve the problem," he said. "These issues are complex." Besser and Sischo are researching foodborne diseases, including the O157:H7 strain of E. coli. E. coli is a hardy, prolific disease found in a wide range of locations and foods, Besser said. Besser said the U.S. slaughters about 10,000 infected cattle per day. There's no way to tell which ones are infected because of insufficient testing. "We don't do enough testing to show that all the meat is safe," he said. "But when testing for E. coli, it destroys the meat." The best way to tell if food is E. coli contaminated is through human exposure, he said.
It is difficult to agree with the contention that these aberrations are taking place because Americans are taking more meat and spending less money on foods. Probably the fact that organic food industry is able to command a better price, reflects the willingness of the consumer to pay more if safety is guaranteed. No problem on this planet is too big for human ingenuity to overcome and food scientists must not give up or dilute their mission to come up with more and more reliable and practical systems to counter act the threat from pathogens that contaminate the food chain.
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