Food Safety and Security
By Albert B. Kelly
Living in a great country such as ours, there are the everyday
things we can easily take for granted. One of those things is the safety and
security of our food supply. I say that, because every week we go to the
supermarket and buy whatever food we choose and we don’t give much thought to
the path it traveled to get to our store shelves. We just assume that those who
grow, pick, inspect, regulate, process, package, and transport the food have
done their jobs well enough so that by the time it gets to us all is in order.
But maybe we shouldn’t take the safety and security of our
food supply for granted. I’m not implying something sinister here, but we live
in a world that is extremely interconnected and what happens somewhere else can
impact us here on a very local level. If you doubt that, consider a recent
outbreak of E. coli which has been traced back to romaine lettuce grown in Yuma,
Arizona.
The outbreak, which first came to light in March, impacted
people in 36 states and according to the professionals who monitor these things
at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the last batch of romaine lettuce
from Yuma was shipped out on April 16th and they declared the
outbreak over as of June 28th. But in between, 210 people got sick
including 8 people here in New Jersey.
It’s troubling to think that some E.coli bacteria in a canal
in Yuma, Arizona could make its way to 36 states and impact over 200 people but
according to the CDC, which conducted tests to determine the strain of
bacteria, that’s exactly what happened. And it’s not like we’re talking about a
single brand of a product that can more easily be tracked, avoided or recalled.
It’s romaine lettuce found in the produce isle at multiple supermarkets and used
by any number of companies and restaurants for salads- pre-packaged or
otherwise.
When you step back and look at the big picture, there’s sufficient
reason for concern. As I mentioned previously, we’re so interconnected these
days that bacteria in a canal half a world away can impact us in our own homes.
But there’s more. We live in a world where the average global temp over the
last century has gone up by 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. I know that doesn’t sound
like much, but according to NASA it translates into the fact that 17 of the18 warmest
years on record have all happened since 2001. If we keep going as we are, temps
will rise between 2 and 10 degrees over the next several decades.
What will that do to the food supply and food safety? For
one thing, there is the obvious problem of crop failure from droughts,
flooding, and other weather-related occurrences. But thinking a little further
outside the box, how does a warming climate impact bacteria, viruses, and
toxins growing in places and ways we can’t even imagine. The largest freshwater
source in the country is the Great Lakes. Over the last several years, we’ve
witnessed unbelievable algal blooms in these waters exposing us to something called
“cyanobacteria”. We’re in uncharted territory.
Plastics are another example of how we are vulnerable
through our food supply. According to a recent article in National Geographic
about plastics, they quote Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering
professor, who puts the amount of plastic dumped in our oceans each year at
between 5.3 million and 14 million tons. These plastics get broken down into
tiny pieces that fish consume -apparently it’s not uncommon to find plastic in
the stomachs of fish- and it gets to us through the food.
There are many more examples, whether antibiotics in
livestock feed causing resistant bacteria, pesticides on our crops that also
end up in our aquafers and wells, or an aging infrastructure which feeds lead
into the drinking water. And these are just the weather-related and
industry-related concerns which don’t factor in acts of sabotage by a group of
bad actors.
The food industry is not just about taste, convenience or
access; nor is just manufacturing, processing, packaging, and distribution.
Today it has to include food safety, something that in the coming year we hope
to make part of the food industry hub that’s evolving with the Food Innovation
Center and Food Specialization Center.