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By Melissa Tennen, HealthAtoZ writer
It's hard to imagine. How could our food - the very thing that keeps us alive - also kill us? It's even harder to imagine Americans becoming sick and dying on a mass scale. This, however, is an all-to-scary possibility. Our food can be poisoned by anyone. To protect the nation's food supply, the federal government has quintupled the number of examinations of imported food. Matthew J. Botos, director of the Illinois Center for Food Safety and Technology, answers questions about how safe our food supply is. NCFST, based at the Illinois Institute of Technology, provides a neutral ground where industry, academia and government scientists address food safety issues.
What is the definition of "food security?"
Matthew Botos: The definition has changed. Before 9-11, the World Health Organization defined it as "access by all people at all times to enough nutritious food for an active, healthy life." But after 9-11, that definition changed: "To provide a secure environment to ensure a safe food supply."
In light of 9-11, how has our view of foodborne illnesses changed?
Botos: Each year, we have about 5,000 deaths from foodborne contaminations from e-Coli and salmonella and other bacteria along those lines. There are 325,000 hospitalizations from foodborne illnesses.
The traditional way that foods would become contaminated is unintentional; no one intends to contaminate the food. They may leave it out for too long. They may cut the chicken on the same cutting board where they had the hamburgers. But the poisoning wasn't intentional.
With bioterrorism, someone would intentionally poison the food supply, and foodborne illnesses would be used as a weapon of mass destruction.
How safe is the food supply right now?
Botos: Consumers should be very confident of our food supply. We have the safest food supply in the world. We have 57,000 food processors in this country involved in some kind of food production. All of them have always had strict food safety and manufacturing processes in place.
What is the food industry doing to address this?
Botos: Each processor is looking at their own products and bringing in experts to see where there might be problems. Each product is different and has its own manufacturing processes. A lot of chemical and biological agents can behave differently. We have to look at each product and cannot make a general assumption. The mechanism that poisons juice is not going to be the same that would contaminate a cookie. Foods are processed different ways.
The Food and Drug Administration designated $5 million for food security that will create a large increase in the number of inspectors we have. The federal government has released a tremendous amount of money for developing rapid detection methods.
This is a topic the food industry has not ignored.
What biological weapons would a terrorist use?
Botos: That's a little too difficult to say. It depends on the operating capacity of the terrorists - what they can get their hands on. The objective of the terrorist is to create fear and panic. That's why the processors are looking at their facilities and products.
How would people know if there has been an attack on the food supply?
Botos: The food industry has always been proactive. Adding food security issues is an additional component. If we had an ordinary food recall, we would alert public health departments. But along with that, we would now alert the police and FBI. This is just an added layer. You would specifically be looking for a criminal. If it were just a case of salmonella, the police wouldn't be involved.
Is there a way that the industry could detect a contamination before it got to grocery stores?
Botos: It depends on the agents. Packages would bulge, the food would have a funny smell. Food processors routinely check for this.
I personally think we would catch it long before it got to the consumer. When there was the Tylenol scare, someone on the retail level was poisoning a few bottles. What we are looking at in terrorism are weapons of mass destruction. They cause large destruction and cause terror. Terrorists would have to contaminate the food on a mass level long before it got to the grocery store. And that would be hard to do.
What kind of organisms might we see?
Botos: We don't know. If you had agent A, B, C, you would have different reactions. A might do nothing. B might only affect juices and C might affect fruits and vegetables.
The bottom line?
Botos: The consumer should feel confident that their food is safe.
Editor's note: Just 4 grams of the poison called botulinum dropped into a milk processing plant could cause 400,000 people to become sick. Some of these people may even die, according to a study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. This is ONLY a theory - something that is not necessarily going to happen.
The researchers said milk isn't the only thing that could be poisoned - soda, fruit and vegetable juices, processed tomato products and even grains could be poisoned. The point is that it could happen. Botulinum toxin is one of the most poisonous substances known to humans. The researchers said all it would take is for someone to get a strain of the bacteria from a black market in another country, grow it in a culture and pour it into an unlocked milk tank or truck.
That milk would be added to large processing silos where it would poison 100,000 gallons. While most of the bacteria would be killed in pasteurization, enough of it would make it into grocery stores - enough to poison 400,000 people.
This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.
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