Food-borne illnesses are still with us, despite the advances we have made in the last century to understand these pathologies and the technologies we have developed to produce 'safe' food. What was simply called "Ptomaine poisoning*" in the early 1900s is now a vast family of more than 200 widely differing illnesses, each with a wide range of causes and outcomes. Outbreaks today seem larger, and more widespread: Romaine lettuce, packaged raw beef, bean sprouts, raw milk, shellfish, poultry, international cheeses made from unpasteurized milk, imported raspberries, even infant formulae.
We are also inundated daily with information about food safety and how to prevent food-borne illnesses. but while much of this is helpful, some is misguided, misinformed, even contradictory, and the result is confusion. An important reason for the confusion is that the national food protection agencies (EFSA, CFIA, US-FDA, USDA) establish rigid standards that incorporate multiple and extensive safety factors, largely because of the scale of food manufacturing, the numbers of people involved, and the complexity of the processes and pathways that extend even between continents.
These industrial-scale 'blanket' standards and operating procedures, while necessary in the manufacturing, commercial, or institutional settings, are in some instances clearly over-reaching or inappropriate when applied to the domestic setting. They result in vast amounts of perfectly safe food that is wasted. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates* that globally, around 13 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail, while an estimated 17 percent of total global food production is wasted in households, in the food service and in retail all together. A third of all food produced on the planet is lost to spoilage, pests, human wastage, poor storage.
ANY wastage of perfectly edible and nutritious food must concern us as crop yields fall and crops fail globally due to floods, droughts, pests, diseases, and conflict. Available arable land diminishes annually due to desertification, climate crisis, salt-water intrusion, urban sprawl, war, conflict, and mismanagement of resources. The global population, meanwhile, continues to rise exponentially.
This website draws attention to the REAL causes of food-borne illnesses, and how we may AVOID much of the wastage of perfectly edible and safe food. The format is edited and annotated versions of questions asked the author over the last 7 years on social Q&A sites.
_________________