My work entails encouraging developing country governments to provide nutritious school meals sourced from local farmers. Hundreds of millions of children around the world are benefiting from meals at school each day. School meals help children to thrive and learn. They present a large-scale, predictable, and long-term market for farmers’ produce. School meal programs create jobs and can help the private sector to develop.
However, food safety issues keep me awake at night. Feeding so many children in diverse and complicated situations is not without its perils, especially in poor countries, where the meals are often prepared under very rudimentary conditions, by workers without training and proper quality control measures.
The challenge is not limited to school meal programs, nor to the developing world. In the United States alone, tens of millions of cases of diarrhea disease caused by bacteria occur each year, costing billions of dollars in medical care and lost productivity. Food-borne illness can be caused by a number of other factors as well, including heavy metals, parasites, fungi, chemicals, and viruses.
How much do we know about the safety of our food and food-borne threats? Some of the facts and challenges are quite astounding. A few of those are highlighted in the five-question quiz that follows:
What are they?
1: About 400 million of these together would only be about the size of a grain of sugar. Under ideal conditions, their number doubles every 30 minutes! They increase in numbers, but not in size.
2: They are all around us. Some are beneficial and do good things; the bad ones can cause nausea, cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and more.
3: These threaten human and animal health and exist in a band around the world from about 40 degrees north to 40 degrees south of the equator. They pose the biggest challenge in developing countries, where outbreaks may be seasonal and depend on weather conditions and farming practices, particularly post-harvest practices.
4: They are sometimes found in peanuts and many tree nuts, corn, milk, and other foods as well as cottonseed. High levels can be present without being visible.
5: High levels of exposure to these can result in symptoms for which the cause is not readily identifiable. The condition is not transmissible, but treatment with antibiotics and other drugs have little effect. Low levels of exposure can still result in health problems, particularly in the liver. They can also suppress immune systems and cause stunting and reproductive problems in poultry and livestock.
Answer to 1 & 2: Bacteria. There are many thousands of kinds of bacteria, but only about 20 of them cause food-borne illness. Illness from food-borne bacteria can be prevented by (1) limiting the number of bacteria present, (2) limiting growth in the number, (3) proper cooking, and (4) preventing re-contamination.
Answer to 3, 4, & 5: Aflatoxins. While detection and control methods generally protect humans and livestock in rich countries, exposure to aflatoxins and other toxic fungi are of significant concern in poor countries. While there are promising new methods of controlling aflatoxins and other mycotoxins*, the most commonly used methods require diligence and good practices to be employed at each step from field to consumer. Unfortunately the new methods are not yet widely available and even the more commonly used methods are not yet being implemented at scale in developing countries.
We would all love to be able to trust the food we and our friends and family eat– no matter whether at home, in school, travelling, at a picnic, or in a local restaurant. These are just a couple of examples of food safety challenges that could affect any of us, any time, no matter where we are.
The take-away? Food safety requires vigilance and good practice throughout the value chain– from farm to fork– all around the world.
*Some of the promising new examples and organizations working on them are: AflaSafe: Beneficial fungi – IITA; AflaSTOP: Storage and Drying – Meridian Institute and ACDI/VOCA; Developing transgenic aflatoxin-free maize and peanuts – MSU; AflaControl – IFPRI; RNA interference - Jomo Kenyatta University; Solar-powered grain drying unit - Egerton University; Hermetically sealed bags, storage facilities—Purdue, GrainPro; low-cost diagnostics—Diagnostics for All; coordination and information sharing—the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA) at the African Union
About the author: In April 2014, Arlene Mitchell was named Executive Director of the Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF), which works to ensure that children around the world have nutritious, locally-sourced meals at school. This responsibility builds on her 40 years of international program development and management experience, including working and living in Niger, Mauritania, Ukraine, and Italy. In addition to her responsibilities at GCNF, Arlene serves as the co-president of SEAPAX, the Seattle, Washington-area network of former Peace Corps Volunteers and as board member for two other organizations, Solidaridad North America, and GrainPro.
Sources:
- http://www.foodsafetysite.com/educators/competencies/general/bacteria/bac2.html
- http://www.iita.org
- http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/CausesOfIllnessBadBugBook/ucm071020.htm
- http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/food-technology/bacterial-food-poisoning/
- http://www.aflatoxinpartnership.org/
- http://www.merid.org/Content/Projects/Partnership_for_Aflatoxin_Control_in_Africa.aspx