The risky business of food
Even home growers may be unsafe. German authorities have warned that bean-sprout seeds used for growing at home may be risky.
Other high-risk food items could also become rare due to this latest food scare. After all, the authorities found that the operation of the organic beansprouts farm at Hamburg was flawlessly hygienic and followed all the regulations.
As a result, the farmer is unlikely to be prosecuted — but the farm has been shut down.
There are a number of reasons why you can do everything right, and still be implicated in a terrible food-poisoning outbreak — as happened in Germany.
Many foods are the result of a production maze, starting, for example, at farm level where vitamins, minerals, animal remedies and animal feed can come from anywhere in the world. During processing, the farm produce can be co-mingled with ingredients from many processors, often on different continents. Food safety is determined by the standards of the weakest supplier along these food chains or mazes. One negligent, or criminal, operator can damage the output of a complete sector. And new technology for analytical chemistry and forensic microbiology will uncover more and more contamination incidents.
These risks were recently highlighted by Dr Patrick Wall, professor of public health, UCD, who advised all in the food industry to consider themselves as part of the human-health business — rather than the animal-feed or production business, for example. He said doctors and nurses are in the sickness business, whereas those in any stage of the production of food, the fundamental fuel for the body, are in the health business.
He said food-safety legal requirements are like the pass level in the exam. To succeed, you have to be on the honours paper. Depending on the regulatory agencies to protect your brands and reputation is foolhardy in the extreme, not least because regulatory standards and enforcement capabilities vary from country to country. Also, in many countries, food-safety regulation is affected by cuts in the public service, and many routine surveillance and monitoring programmes are being under-funded. As a result, a food-poisoning outbreak may be well under way before it hits the headlines and the full public resources are rolled out.
Dr Wall warned against processors buying ingredients by price only; quality assurance must be considered by processors intending to stay viable for the long term.
If everyone at every stage of the increasingly complex food chain is paying attention to detail, risks can be controlled. But this is unlikely in the real world, says the UCD expert.
That’s why constant quality-control checks and audits are necessary, while guarding against emerging risks in another part of the globe that can be at your door within 24 hours.
The question for food-industry operators is: can they afford to keep up these demanding standards in high-risk food categories, and can they survive the inevitable food scares to come?
Even collateral damage from the German poisoning outbreak has been enough to endanger companies producing salad crops as far away as Britain, where sales plummeted as much as 60% by value.
