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Food safety – future challenges
Food Control 14 (2003) 73–74 www.elsevier.com/locate/foodcont
Opening remarks Food safety – future challenges With the benefit of hindsight we can see that some of the current food safety challenges have crept up on us rather slowly over several decades, and we are now fully engaged in our efforts to control them. Some of these efforts will occupy us far into the future. Therefore, in one sense, some of our future challenges are embodied in our present challenges. A good example of this situation is the emergence of Listeria monocytogenes as a hazard in certain perishable ready-to-eat foods. The same could be said of Escherichia coli O157:H7, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and other recently emerged foodborne hazards. In contrast to this relatively slow emergence of hazards, the tools with which we work are changing very rapidly. And these changes are already having a profound effect on all of our efforts to manage food safety and to protect the public health. The interrelated advancements in biotechnology, computer applications, and genomics will continue to change the way in which we work; and in themselves will present future challenges to us. I would like to take a few minutes to describe a major shift in public and professional attitudes regarding the responsibilities for food safety. This shift will become one of our greatest future challenges. It will require us to learn new techniques and to work in different areas. This shift in attitude is evident in the promotion of food safety responsibility from ‘‘Farm to Table’’. We now realize that some food safety practices can be applied at each step of the global food chain; from the growing of crops and the raising of animals, to the processing of these commodities, and through the production, distribution, and consumption of consumer food products. This attitude was not widely held 20 years ago. For example, when the first foodborne outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses occurred in hamburgers in 1982, the prevailing attitude was that the responsibility for food safety belonged exclusively to the food preparer, either in the home or in the foodservice establishment. ‘‘If only people would cook their hamburgers sufficiently, there would be no problem’’, was the prevailing attitude. At that time the responsibility for food safety clearly rested on the ‘‘Table’’ end of this continuum. This attitude did little or nothing to reduce foodborne E. coli O157:H7 illnesses. In the 1990s the meat proPII: S 0 9 5 6 - 7 1 3 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 1 9 - 1
cessors recognized that they could assume some responsibility to help improve this situation. Process innovations such as carcass sprays, steam pasteurization, and electronic irradiation were developed and applied. Now, in the year 2001, E. coli O157:H7 is still a very serious potential hazard in raw ground beef. (While my comments here are limited to beef, the same hazard with E. coli O157:H7, of course, exists in a variety of other raw foods such as sprouts, fruit juices, and even water). A lot of work is now being done to understand how we can reduce the hazards in beef during the raising of animals. Potential control measures include competitive exclusion by beneficial bacteria, vaccination, and bactericidal feed additives. In the future, whether we are talking about the need to control E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, or BSE; we can expect to find a relatively uniform emphasis on a ‘‘Farm to Table’’ approach to food safety management. The BSE epidemic has really forced our attention to the ‘‘Farm’’ end of this continuum, with one of the major areas of attention being the control of ruminant meat and bone meal. Developing food safety measures at this end of the spectrum will be a significant challenge for us. I want to give a few examples of additional future challenges, and opportunities, that will be available to us because of advances in biotechnology and computer applications. In the US, our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has implemented two programs in the past several years. One of these is FoodNet, a surveillance system that tracks foodborne illnesses. The other is PulseNet, an electronic system that stores the ‘‘DNA fingerprints’’ of pathogens. These fingerprints are obtained by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). This PulseNet technology is quickly revolutionizing epidemiology. In the past, outbreaks of foodborne illnesses were usually not detected unless a very large number of people were affected, or unless the individual illness cases were geographically clustered, so that the outbreak could be confirmed by conventional epidemiological procedures. The advent of PFGE now makes it possible to detect outbreaks that are very small or are geographically widespread. In the US about two years ago an outbreak of E coli O157:H7 involving only three people in several states was detected. Last December,
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Opening remarks / Food Control 14 (2003) 73–74
cooked turkey products were implicated by PulseNet data in an outbreak of listeriosis in which 29 individuals were infected. These individuals lived in ten states, ranging across the entire continent from California to New York. Without PFGE, outbreaks such as this would never have been detected. Because of PFGE and CDC’s PulseNet system, many more such outbreaks will be detected in the future. These tools will simultaneously assist the public health epidemiologists to detect outbreaks, while focusing more attention on the need for better control of the products and the plants that could become involved in these previously undetectable outbreaks. Another outstanding example of technological advancement is the new field of genomics. In the US we have two major teams of biotechnologists that have just sequenced the entire human genome. This is truly a staggering accomplishment. But how will this accomplishment affect us in food safety? The human genome teams have vast arrays of computers and automated biotechnical instrumentation that will soon be idle. This arsenal of hardware will then be available to map the genome of every ‘‘significant’’ plant, animal, and microbe on the planet. It took about 10 years to sequence and map the first bacterial genome. Now, I am told, it should take only about one day or so to sequence a bacterial genome. In January, researchers at the University of Wisconsin published the E. coli O157:H7 genome, with rather astonishing revelations about the genome’s size, evolutionary history, and numerous specific genes for pathogenicity. Surely, we can expect countless such
revelations in the future as the genomes of other microorganisms are examined. There are many other future challenges. I know our speakers will discuss some of them today. I will briefly list some of them. There will be many challenges in methodology. Methods of detection will become ever more sensitive as we try to prove ‘‘zero contamination.’’ One very interesting challenge will be the development of methods to detect the prions involved in spongiform encephalopathies. While on the topic of prions, what is their mechanism of transmission? How can they be inactivated? Talk about food safety challenges! There will be challenges related to the rapidly developing areas of nutraceuticals and GMOs. I am looking forward to advances in cleaning and sanitation technology; and especially to advances in the sanitary design and construction of food processing equipment. We can also expect advances in the development of new food processing technologies, for example, ultrahigh pressure processing, and pulsed electric field processing, to name but two. And we can hope that one of these will eventually be better accepted and used than has been irradiation. Irradiation has been a public relations challenge. Our technical advances in the future will be of little use if they cannot be applied to better protect the public health. W.H. Sperber Cargill, P.O. Box 5699 Minneapolis, MN 55440-5699 USA
Opening remarks Food safety – future challenges With the benefit of hindsight we can see that some of the current food safety challenges have crept up on us rather slowly over several decades, and we are now fully engaged in our efforts to control them. Some of these efforts will occupy us far into the future. Therefore, in one sense, some of our future challenges are embodied in our present challenges. A good example of this situation is the emergence of Listeria monocytogenes as a hazard in certain perishable ready-to-eat foods. The same could be said of Escherichia coli O157:H7, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and other recently emerged foodborne hazards. In contrast to this relatively slow emergence of hazards, the tools with which we work are changing very rapidly. And these changes are already having a profound effect on all of our efforts to manage food safety and to protect the public health. The interrelated advancements in biotechnology, computer applications, and genomics will continue to change the way in which we work; and in themselves will present future challenges to us. I would like to take a few minutes to describe a major shift in public and professional attitudes regarding the responsibilities for food safety. This shift will become one of our greatest future challenges. It will require us to learn new techniques and to work in different areas. This shift in attitude is evident in the promotion of food safety responsibility from ‘‘Farm to Table’’. We now realize that some food safety practices can be applied at each step of the global food chain; from the growing of crops and the raising of animals, to the processing of these commodities, and through the production, distribution, and consumption of consumer food products. This attitude was not widely held 20 years ago. For example, when the first foodborne outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses occurred in hamburgers in 1982, the prevailing attitude was that the responsibility for food safety belonged exclusively to the food preparer, either in the home or in the foodservice establishment. ‘‘If only people would cook their hamburgers sufficiently, there would be no problem’’, was the prevailing attitude. At that time the responsibility for food safety clearly rested on the ‘‘Table’’ end of this continuum. This attitude did little or nothing to reduce foodborne E. coli O157:H7 illnesses. In the 1990s the meat proPII: S 0 9 5 6 - 7 1 3 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 1 9 - 1
cessors recognized that they could assume some responsibility to help improve this situation. Process innovations such as carcass sprays, steam pasteurization, and electronic irradiation were developed and applied. Now, in the year 2001, E. coli O157:H7 is still a very serious potential hazard in raw ground beef. (While my comments here are limited to beef, the same hazard with E. coli O157:H7, of course, exists in a variety of other raw foods such as sprouts, fruit juices, and even water). A lot of work is now being done to understand how we can reduce the hazards in beef during the raising of animals. Potential control measures include competitive exclusion by beneficial bacteria, vaccination, and bactericidal feed additives. In the future, whether we are talking about the need to control E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, or BSE; we can expect to find a relatively uniform emphasis on a ‘‘Farm to Table’’ approach to food safety management. The BSE epidemic has really forced our attention to the ‘‘Farm’’ end of this continuum, with one of the major areas of attention being the control of ruminant meat and bone meal. Developing food safety measures at this end of the spectrum will be a significant challenge for us. I want to give a few examples of additional future challenges, and opportunities, that will be available to us because of advances in biotechnology and computer applications. In the US, our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has implemented two programs in the past several years. One of these is FoodNet, a surveillance system that tracks foodborne illnesses. The other is PulseNet, an electronic system that stores the ‘‘DNA fingerprints’’ of pathogens. These fingerprints are obtained by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). This PulseNet technology is quickly revolutionizing epidemiology. In the past, outbreaks of foodborne illnesses were usually not detected unless a very large number of people were affected, or unless the individual illness cases were geographically clustered, so that the outbreak could be confirmed by conventional epidemiological procedures. The advent of PFGE now makes it possible to detect outbreaks that are very small or are geographically widespread. In the US about two years ago an outbreak of E coli O157:H7 involving only three people in several states was detected. Last December,
74
Opening remarks / Food Control 14 (2003) 73–74
cooked turkey products were implicated by PulseNet data in an outbreak of listeriosis in which 29 individuals were infected. These individuals lived in ten states, ranging across the entire continent from California to New York. Without PFGE, outbreaks such as this would never have been detected. Because of PFGE and CDC’s PulseNet system, many more such outbreaks will be detected in the future. These tools will simultaneously assist the public health epidemiologists to detect outbreaks, while focusing more attention on the need for better control of the products and the plants that could become involved in these previously undetectable outbreaks. Another outstanding example of technological advancement is the new field of genomics. In the US we have two major teams of biotechnologists that have just sequenced the entire human genome. This is truly a staggering accomplishment. But how will this accomplishment affect us in food safety? The human genome teams have vast arrays of computers and automated biotechnical instrumentation that will soon be idle. This arsenal of hardware will then be available to map the genome of every ‘‘significant’’ plant, animal, and microbe on the planet. It took about 10 years to sequence and map the first bacterial genome. Now, I am told, it should take only about one day or so to sequence a bacterial genome. In January, researchers at the University of Wisconsin published the E. coli O157:H7 genome, with rather astonishing revelations about the genome’s size, evolutionary history, and numerous specific genes for pathogenicity. Surely, we can expect countless such
revelations in the future as the genomes of other microorganisms are examined. There are many other future challenges. I know our speakers will discuss some of them today. I will briefly list some of them. There will be many challenges in methodology. Methods of detection will become ever more sensitive as we try to prove ‘‘zero contamination.’’ One very interesting challenge will be the development of methods to detect the prions involved in spongiform encephalopathies. While on the topic of prions, what is their mechanism of transmission? How can they be inactivated? Talk about food safety challenges! There will be challenges related to the rapidly developing areas of nutraceuticals and GMOs. I am looking forward to advances in cleaning and sanitation technology; and especially to advances in the sanitary design and construction of food processing equipment. We can also expect advances in the development of new food processing technologies, for example, ultrahigh pressure processing, and pulsed electric field processing, to name but two. And we can hope that one of these will eventually be better accepted and used than has been irradiation. Irradiation has been a public relations challenge. Our technical advances in the future will be of little use if they cannot be applied to better protect the public health. W.H. Sperber Cargill, P.O. Box 5699 Minneapolis, MN 55440-5699 USA