Literature Review on the Importance of Food Safety to International and National Organizations

Have you ever wondered how big of a problem foodborne illness is on the federal level in the United States? Foodborne illness is a big problem on the public health. Foodborne illnesses are infections caused by beverages or foods that contain harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites and/or chemicals. Foods can also be contaminated with bacteria during the food preparation you do at home or the preparation done at a restaurant. If the food cooks or food preparers do not carefully wash their hands, kitchen tools, cutting boards, and other kitchen surfaces that come into contact with raw foods, cross contamination can occur which is the spread of bacteria from contaminated foods to uncontaminated foods. If hot food is not kept hot enough or cold food is not kept cold enough, bacteria can multiply. Bacteria multiplies very quickly when the temperature of food is between 40 and 140 degrees. Cold food should be kept below 40 degrees and hot food should be kept above 140 degrees. Bacteria multiplies slower when food is refrigerated. Freezing food can also slow or even stop the spread of bacteria. But once food is brought to room temperature once again the bacteria that is refrigerated or frozen becomes active once again. Thoroughly cooking foods can also kill bacterias that cause foodborne illnesses. The common symptoms of foodborne illnesses are vomiting, diarrhea, fever, abdominal pain, and/or the chills. The Federal government has estimated that there is about 48 million cases of

If you don’t get sick immediately after having these products, this bacteria will be offloaded there resistant genes into your body and then this poses the threat of you having a superbug disease. Source www.student.societyforscience.org. This means that in the travel and tourism industry, which involves accommodation which involves food being prepared for visitors, both domestic and inbound. If food such as beef and chicken or any food that is sourced from a farm that uses antibiotics in order to boast there products in term of quality will have a direct impact in the travel and tourism sector. As if more people become aware of the possibility of contracting a superbug via food they eat on holiday in a foreign country where they may not know the source of the meat or food. This means that the potential impact of superbugs can be taken from once country via travel, as you may contract a superbug whilst on holiday and only see the symptoms when you are back home and if you are not cured before you pass on the superbug to family and friends and then the superbug spreads.

Opposing view point online collection in the article “Food Safety” explains that food safety is an issue that very few people think about until they become sick. Opposing viewpoints online collection supports their explanation by giving statistics on the amount of people that get sick each year along with the different types of foodborne illnesses there are. The author’s purpose is to show the dangers of foodborne illnesses by estimating that “40 million people experience foodborne diseases every year. In order to eliminate foodborne illnesses they must set a certain food standard. The author establishes a formal tone for the reader. This work is significant because it informs the readers what we need to do for solve the food safety issues

McCarthy, A.L., Stevens, S.K., & Weber, R.A. Bacillus Cereus Fact Sheet (2013) Food Safety Counsel. Retrieved from http://www.foodsafetycounsel.com/fo

Foodborne illness, or food poisoning, happens everyday in the U.S. and it is estimated that 48 million people are affected by it every year. Of these 48 million, 128,000 end up in the hospital and 3000 of them die from foodborne pathogens (Tucker, 2014). Foodborne illnesses can be caused by biological, chemical, or physical contaminants. The biological contaminants consist of bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Chemical contaminants are pesticides, cleaning supplies, and toxic chemicals. Physical contaminations are dirt, glass, wood, splinters, stones, hair, jewelry, and metal shavings (Tucker, 2014). Salmonella, a bacterium, has been the most common reported cause of food poisoning. Salmonella is most commonly exposed to humans through animal feces and it is usually from animals that give us beef, poultry, and dairy products. People who do not wash their hands after being around animals can also transmit salmonella into our food. The symptoms of Salmonella are abdominal cramps, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and fever (Tucker, 2014). The symptoms will usually resolve on their own in healthy people but may become life threatening in those with compromised immune systems. In order to prevent Salmonellosis, raw eggs should be avoided, as well as undercooked meat, shellfish, and unpasteurized milk and juice (Tucker, 2014). It is also important to always practice hand hygiene before handling any uncooked food products. Escherichia Coli, otherwise known as E. coli, is

The biggest question for preventing foodborne illness comes from companies following safe sanitation practices, and promptly reporting all incidents of foodborne illnesses when an outbreak occurs. Many former outbreaks of foodborne illness end in companies leaving out vital information of the events that occurred in their facilities the day of the outbreak. In order to stay up to date on current outbreaks, each state routinely monitors diseases that are to be under surveillance by the public health department

Foodborne illnesses is an important problem in the United States, which cause a total of 19,056 infections, 4,200 hospitalizations, and 80 deaths were reported in 2013. Moreover, foodborne illnesses cost the United States an estimated $152 billion per year in healthcare (Scharff, 2010; CDC, 2014). E. coli O157 belonged Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), it was usually classified pathotypically as enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) (Bryan et al., 2015). Between 2000 and 2010 have 5688 cases of O157 STEC infections were reported by FoodNet sentinel states, while the rate of O157 STEC infection decreased from 2.17 to 0.95 per 100,000 (Gould et al., 2013). By the way, Magwedere et al. (2013) also reported retail ground meat samples were purchased at grocery stores, local farmers’ markets, and online vendors, out of 16 ground chicken samples, 7 samples tested positive for O157 STEC. On the other hand, E. coli also causes diverse extraintestinal infections by uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC), urinary tract infections (UTI) is a good example to illustrate. The economic burden associated with urinary tract infections is estimated to be approximately 1.5 billion in the United States annually. According to previous studies, the food animal and meat reservoir might exist and isolate from retail chicken meat products for UPEC (Jakobsen et al., 2010; Shortlidge et al., 2013; Natalie et al., 2015). In recent research suggested UPEC besides the ability to

Nina Redman talks about the international food safety and how it works against the foodborne diseases. The world Health Organization (WHO) plays a major rule on food safety by publicizing the safety related programs and workshops. Beside bacteria and viruses, Nina also wrote about some other food safety threats such as hormones in milk, overuse of antibiotics in farm animals, genetically engineered plants etc. Risk assessment is a tool that scientists use to reduce the risk of these threats. The foodborne illness/disease most likely happens from the bacteria. DNA “fingerprinting” is one of the best tool that scientists have invented to investigate the foodborne illness.

This replaced the 1994 health and safety outlines and was put forth to improve the inspection and compliance action of R.T.E foods, with respect to their potential to support the growth of this pathogen. This applied to all R.T.E foods, including dairy, produce, fish and seafood, meats and was applied to federally registered and non-registered sectors. 16 This policy was administered in such a way that based on perceived vulnerability to grow Listeria; Ready-to-Eat foods were divided into an assortment of categories. The presence of L. monocytogenes in Category 1 foods poses the highest-risk. This would typically generate a Health 1 concern, where consumers would be made aware that contact with the food will likely produce severe health consequences. 17 In addition, Canada’s policy indicated that any R.T.E food tainted with Listeria, specifically produced for at risk groups, would be considered a Health 2 concern. This would illustrate that some form of health consequence is expected to result from exposure to the contaminated food, especially if it is a vulnerable group coming into contact with it.

2. Acidity: pathogens grow best in food with little or no acid (pH between 4.6-7.5)

Over the years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have identified several risk factors and estimated that 76 million cases of foodborne illness occur annually in the United States. Risk factors that contributed to

The United States has the safest food distribution in the world, but regardless of it being the safest country, there are still thousands of deaths per year due to food contamination. Did you know the United States government wants to get involved with the USDA and the

The new FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 (FSMA) was signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011. It aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus of federal regulators from responding to contamination to preventing it rather than relying primarily on reacting to problems after they occur. Everyone play a role in ensuring safe food from field to fork. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is the major inspection and reorganize of United State food safety practice since 1938. This is a big change to US food system, since the new regulations are not just for farms, but facilities that process food for people to eat. These new regulations are important for the food and Drug Administration to get these regulations right, thus that they improve food safety.

Restaurants in particular, have to be very cautious to prevent their customers from being served contaminated food. Not properly handling meat or cross contaminating can cause food-borne illnesses or even death. A story reported in 2013 described an incident where 80 people became sick from improperly handled food (FoxNews, 2013). Their report demonstrates how easy it can be for people to get sick if food is not handled correctly. One of the most important parts to handling meat, is figuring out the safest way to thaw meat in order to prevent bacteria and disease from growing before cooking it. Although the bacteria is killed when heated above a certain temperature, it can still cause harm if not properly handled. This experiment will test the different possible methods of thawing meat to prevent disease and bacteria from spreading before

Secondly, food- testing is a procedure required for food safety. Food- borne illness can be a serious public health hazard. For this reason, some kitchen workers are required by law to have knowledge of food safety procedures. Food-testing procedures should follow clear methodologies that can be reproduced under similar circumstances. When testing the flavor of a food with a focus group, methodology might involve blind taste testing, and then asking test subjects to evaluate the food's flavor on a numerical scale (Gartenstein, 2010, para.7). As for food-borne pathogens, it might involve culturing and counting the number of microorganisms present in a