Global food safety initiatives gathering steam

EFFORTS to improve food safety around the world are gaining ground, supported by technological advancements and continued studies and research. Results from the latest series of interviews by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) FutureFood 2050 publishing initiative indicate food safety researchers and thought leaders are investigating everything from DNA "fingerprinting" techniques to packaging indicators that state whether the product is safe to consume.

According to Robert Brackett, director of the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute for Food Safety and Health, “Regulatory agencies and food companies have much better resolution and ability today to track specific strains of organisms than they did a decade ago. Whole-genome sequencing [for example] is helping regulatory agencies identify discrete problems much more precisely. Beyond simply showing that there's salmonella in a food sample, we can show that it came from a certain factory in a specific place."

FutureFood 2050 explores how increasingly sophisticated science and technology will help feed the world's population, which is projected to exceed 9 billion by 2050. Several food safety experts have recently shared with FutureFood 2050 the most promising weapons in the fight to make food supply safer. These include Mr Brackett, who predicts new gene-based tools will help pinpoint food-borne illness outbreaks in record time, and Will Daniels, a fresh produce safety expert who said that technology advancements are cleaning up contamination risks from farm to table.

UK food fraud researcher Chris Elliott is waging a war against criminal threats to the global food supply, whilst biochemist Steve Taylor co-founded the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program, which aims to support cutting-edge research on food allergies. Liu Xiumei, a pioneering food safety expert in China, considers pollution as a major challenge in improving food safety in China. William Marler, a veteran food safety attorney, believes consolidating regulatory agencies is essential for better oversight.

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate the impact of food-borne diseases, with one for every six people in the U.S. alone suffering from a food-borne illness every year. Within this group, 128,000 people are hospitalised and 3,000 die.  

The World Health Organization (WHO) plans to release its long-awaited research on the global burden of food-borne diseases this year.

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