Food and Consumer Product Safety Hazards.

Well, it's no big secret by now that bad things can and do end up in our food and other consumer products Off the top of my head, I can think of:

- E. coli in spinach
- Melamine in dog food
- Fungal contamination in contact lens fluid
- Diethylene glycol in toothpaste.


That's just within the past year or so. Going back a few more years, there's been Salmonella in ice cream, Listeria in soft cheeses, and E. coli in juices and Jack-In-The-Box hamburgers. It's increasingly clear how vulnerable our food and consumer supply chains are to deadly contamination due to errors, haste, greed or neglect.

However, the way I see it, the rate of incidents due to contamination is actually pretty low, considering the sheer volume of goods being manufactured - there is the potential of many, many more of these incidents happening, which is kept in check by regulation.

So, discuss:


- Do these safety scares affect the way you think about food and the choices you make?

- Do you think your government is doing enough to regulate food and consumer safety?

- Do you think the media is overblowing these food safety scares? Or are they doing a valuable job in informing the public about these hazards?

- How much do you think you know about food and consumer safety? If you're in college, would you take a course that specialized in food microbiology or safety to learn more about it?

- What topics in food safety and microbiology would you be interested in knowing more about? Like, "the 5-second rule", "how cheese is made", etc?


My opinion? I'm not really bothered by a lot of these things - I mean, there's not much I can do, considering I'm not a farmer or a hunter. I need to depend on corporations for most of my food. However, I know there are things that I can do to reduce my risk of exposure - for example, I never eat raw oyster ( Vibrio cholerae and parahaemolyticus, yo).

Anyway, this post is long enough, so I'll reserve the rest of my opinions for later.




(In the interest of full disclosure, I'll just say that I'm an aspiring food safety scientist, and I've worked as a microbiologist testing food and other consumer products before. If I start teaching microbiology, I'd like to know what topics are on people's minds.)

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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- Do these safety scares affect the way you think about food and the choices you make?

No

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- Do you think your government is doing enough to regulate food and consumer safety?

Yes

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- Do you think the media is overblowing these food safety scares? Or are they doing a valuable job in informing the public about these hazards?

Both, they are trying to make money like any business. So they make many things sound worse than they are, however it is because of this that there is greater public awareness.

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- How much do you think you know about food and consumer safety? If you're in college, would you take a course that specialized in food microbiology or safety to learn more about it?

:/

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- What topics in food safety and microbiology would you be interested in knowing more about? Like, "the 5-second rule", "how cheese is made", etc?

None of them. I doubt a great deal of other people share your passion or interest in this subject but please do your best once in the workforce to ensure that our food is clean.

Most amazing jew boots

- Do these safety scares affect the way you think about food and the choices you make?

Well, yeah. If they say a food is contaminated I don't buy it. I usually will go back tp buying the food again a while after the scare is over.

- Do you think your government is doing enough to regulate food and consumer safety?

I guess so. They can't be everywhere, ALL the time. These things are bound to happen...

- Do you think the media is overblowing these food safety scares? Or are they doing a valuable job in informing the public about these hazards?

I'd say they do a good job informing the public. We need to know when our food is tainted, and they tell us.

- How much do you think you know about food and consumer safety? If you're in college, would you take a course that specialized in food microbiology or safety to learn more about it?

I guess I only know the basics. Cook all your meats well. Don't eat raw meat or eggs. Wash your hands... etc. I doubt I'd take a class on it, though.

- What topics in food safety and microbiology would you be interested in knowing more about? Like, "the 5-second rule", "how cheese is made", etc?

I'm not too interested in that stuff. I do know the 5-second rule is bologna, though. =)

How ya doing, buddy?

I'd like to see more regulation on the pet food industry. It's gone largely unregulated and, as a result, most people don't know crap about what they should be feeding their pets anymore.

In the old days, say, 40-50 years ago, it was rare that people would feed their dog "dog food". The dog would typically eat table scraps. Then there came a push from the dog food industry and now we're at a stage where people think it is harmful to feed a dog people food. The interesting thing is that the incidence of things like cancer and heart disease has gone up in dogs (as has our ability to treat it) with this change in diet. If pet food was held to the standards of people food (or if people stopped being so lazy and made their dog food), pets would be much healthier.


As for things like E. coli and the like, I do think the media blows them out of proportion a bit. Viruses and bacteria are natural things. They are bound to happen. There's nothing bad about eating a steak that had E. coli as long as you cook it properly. And, frankly, I don't want to eat a poorly cooked hamburger, whether or not it started out with E. coli.

How ya doing, buddy?

BM, you also have to wonder if those things have gone up in dogs since they're more likely to live longer and develop these kinds of late-life diseases. It's kinda like how you don't see many people dying of cancer and heart disease in Uganda. It could also be with diagnosis rate. I mean, how many people would have actually been able to find out their dog had cancer 50 years ago.

I was speaking idiomatically.

That's part of it, of course. Most of what I've read indicates, though, that diet is also a contributing factor. You have to keep in mind, too, that the number of purebreds goes down as time goes on, which means that genetic defects leading to issues like these also will go down.

And part of it is just me wanting pets to get better treatment. You wouldn't have a child and, for the entire time he lives with you, feed him only one single thing and never stray ever. And, even if you did do that, you wouldn't feed your kid something that has no regulation, little nutritional information, and mostly filler (as what a lot of dog food on the shelves is these days).

There's a vet that was interviewed for the last The Bark magazine (yes, I get that) on a story about the recall:

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The industry learned to advertise and describe their products as being the "best", at least according to them. They send a lot of literature and books to veterinarians who teach. One of the dogmas they have promoted, and that many veterinarians have bought into, is that you should only feed commercial pet foods because they are balanced and provide everything an animal needs. And that you shouldn't feed any human food or add any table scraps to it. ...most of the people who are trained in nutrition programs get their degrees and are hired by the pet food industry. Most of the money available for research on small-animal nutrition comes from the industry as well. It is a conflict of interest.

And from another pet food researcher:

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They can use anything they want for proteins, grains, fats, anything they want. If it says meat meal, it can be from road kill to zoo animals or diseased material from slaughterhouses -- anything is fair game.

I talk to old-time vets and they say that years and years before this industry grew, our pets ate table scraps; the vets will tell you that back then, pets either died of old age or were hit by a car. We didn't see so many cancers like we are seeing now. Pets ate what we ate.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I heard they found rat feces on cans of tomato sauce (the big 64 oz. + cans) at one of our 3 local Cosco's (don't know which one, sorry to say). The feces would stick to the brim of the cans, people would open them, pour the content out into their pots...and oopsey daisy.

ALWAYS wash your cans when you get 'em at warehouses where you know shit has a fucking lifetime guarantee of a shelf life, and you have no idea how long it's been sitting there.

FELIPE NO