Tips for Food Safety

The Issue:

While the government works to improve safety on the farm and in the factory, consumers can mount their own defense against foodborne illness by adopting safe food-handling habits and avoiding high-risk foods.

The Scope of the Problem

About 76 million cases of foodborne illness occur each year in the United States, according to 1999 estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That means one in four Americans suffer a foodborne illness every year. While many people only experience mild symptoms, about 325,000 cases are severe enough to require hospitalization and 5,000 Americans die each year from a sickness caused by a foodborne pathogen. Young children, very old adults and people with weakened immune systems are often most susceptible to the disease-causing germs in food.

Simple Protections                            

Changing lifetime food habits can be hard. But food safety researcher Lydia Medeiros says a health scare or concern for a loved one's well-being can prompt consumers to take precautions. Pregnant women are often highly motivated to follow health advice for the sake of their unborn child, said Medeiros, an associate professor in the Department of Human Nutrition at Ohio State University.

The Partnership for Food Safety Education promotes four steps to keep harmful bacteria from spreading to food, kitchen surfaces and utensils. Clean: Wash hands and surfaces often. Separate: Don't cross-contaminate. Cook: Cook to proper temperature. Chill: Refrigerate promptly.

The Facts:

 

• In the United States, three of the more common foodborne bacteria are campylobacter—often associated with raw poultry; salmonella—which comes from animal feces and works its way into food and E. coli—which is found on many cattle farms and shows up in ground meat and can spread to fruits and vegetables.

 

• Ionizing radiation is a food-treatment technology that can enhance safety by reducing disease-causing germs. Irradiation is seldom used in the United States, but an FDA review concludes that “irradiation does not harm the nutritional value of food, nor does it make the food unsafe to eat.” ¹

 

• An observational study of 321 food workers found that the employees washed their hands properly only 27 percent of the time when performing activities like food preparation or after handling dirty equipment. ²

 

• Some of the most common risky food behaviors include eating undercooked eggs or pink meat, not washing cutting boards properly and consuming vegetables canned at home, according to a 1995 multistate survey conducted by the CDC. ³

 

• When food-safety researchers installed cameras in the kitchens of 99 people, footage revealed that just one-third of the participants used soap when they washed their hands. Nearly all participants cross-contaminated uncooked meat or seafood with ready-to-eat foods. ⁴

 

• Six percent of consumers seldom or never wash fresh produce while 23 percent of respondents said they place meat, poultry and fish on a refrigerator shelf above other foods, according to a random survey of 2,000 U.S. households. ⁵

 

• Many U.S. families keep opened, vacuum-packed deli meats in the refrigerator longer than the recommended five days—a food-handling mistake that increases the risk for foodborne disease. ⁶

 

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture advises consumers to use a meat thermometer to test whether hamburger is safe to eat. Some hamburger turns brown in the middle before it has reached 160 degrees—the temperature required to kill harmful bacteria in ground beef.  ⁷

 

• USDA regulations require safe food-handling labels on all retail packages of raw meat and poultry. But findings from a study of more than 14,000 survey participants suggest that the labels have limited influence on consumers’ food-handling behavior. ⁸

 

• Compared to other ethnic groups, pregnant Hispanic women may have a higher risk for the infection listeriosis, perhaps because soft cheeses such as queso fresco and queso blanco are common in Latin cuisine. ⁹

The Way We Eat Now

Changing food preferences may raise Americans’ risk for foodborne illness, says food safety expert Christine Bruhn.

Americans have developed a taste for international fare as well as fresh foods, says Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California in Davis.  There’s especially an increased desire for raw or minimally cooked cuisine items,” she says. 

Risky delicacies include seared ahi - a tuna cooked on the outside but left pink at the center; carpaccio - thinly sliced raw beef; and ceviche - a salad of raw seafood pickled in a citrus marinade. “They say it’s cooked by the lemon juice; no, it’s not,” Bruhn said. 

Just trying to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables can be risky, as with the spinach scare in the fall of 2006. Nearly 200 people became ill after eating fresh spinach tainted with E.  coli. Three people died.

“There is no way that a consumer could have made that spinach safe in their kitchen,” Bruhn said. “The bacteria hides in little crevices, goes to cut ends where moisture and spinach juice are trapped, then grows there.”

Ruthanne Marcus, a foodborne disease expert and lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health, says educators try to convey the message that we all have to live with some risk.

The overall risk for foodborne illness is small for most Americans, and consumers should make distinctions between regular and highrisk foods.

Marcus says, “You don’t want to give up your healthy lifestyle, and no one would ever say don’t eat your vegetables.”

Cooking vegetables at the right temperature, for the proper length of time, can cut the risk of pathogens. But many raw-foods enthusiasts resist cooking vegetables because they fear heat will strip produce of essential nutrients. 

“That can be a confusing message for consumers,” Bruhn said. The trick, she says, is not to overcook produce. “There is a myth that fresh is best and everything else is secondrate,” she said.

Some vitamins can be lost in processing, Bruhn concedes. “But generally canned and frozen products provide good nutrition. Often they are canned or frozen at the peak of freshness,” she says.

As for the “raw milk” trend, CDC has urged Americans not to drink unpasteurized milk, which Bruhn says can retain disease-causing organisms, particularly E. coli, which can lead to permanent kidney damage.

Globalization and travel may also expose Americans to exotic organisms. In the mid-1990s, a foodborne parasite called Cyclospora cayetanensis that had been previously associated with developing countries reached the United States and caused a spate of infections.  Researchers traced that outbreak to raspberries imported from Guatemala.

“It’s a whole new world in terms of the pathogens that people are being exposed to,” said Bruhn.