Food-Borne Illness Prevention

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Nancy Donley remembers sitting helplessly beside the hospital bed of her 6-year-old son Alex as he fought for his life after eating hamburger contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.

"He endured explosive bouts of vomiting. His screams were followed by silence; he had tremors, delusions, and no longer knew who I was. I sat with him as monitors recorded organ failure after organ failure. A massive seizure left him on a respirator.

"I tell you Alex's story to remind you that behind every statistic is a life," Donley told a hushed crowd at "Changing Strategies, Changing Behavior: What Food Safety Communicators Need To Know," a food safety education conference attracting over 550 people to Georgetown University's Conference Center in Washington, D.C., last June 12 and 13. "Alex mattered — I will not allow his death to be chalked up as an unfortunate statistic. To me, the 'E' in E. coli O157:H7 stands for evil."

Donley, a real estate broker who also serves as president of S.T.O.P. (Safe Tables Our Priority), frequently speaks to all types of groups about food safety issues. Her heart-wrenching story is a horrific illustration of the importance of food safety. Although the U.S. food supply is among the world's safest, as many as 9,000 Americans die each year, and millions more are sickened, as the result of a food-borne illness, according to government estimates. Those who came to Washington in June — people responsible for food safety, consumer educators, the media, and representatives from the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — all came with the same goal in mind: to reduce the incidence of food-borne illness to the greatest extent possible.

"People ask me all the time if I cooked the hamburger [Alex ate] ... of course I did," Donley said. "But consumers need the truth: It needs to be 160 degrees as measured by a meat thermometer, or don't eat it!"

Susan Conley, director of USDA's Food Safety Education and Communications Staff, and a former director of USDA's Meat and Poultry Hotline, told the conference audience that most consumers rely on the color of meat to determine "doneness" and have little information about proper cooking techniques.

"There's a lot of conflicting information out there," Conley says. "Based on my Hotline experiences, people need to understand the characteristics of bacteria — that it grows rapidly at room temperature and slowly while refrigerated. The issues of cross-contamination, improper cooking, and poor personal hygiene of food preparers all must be addressed."

Experts agree that prevention of pathogens in food requires an understanding of how foods become contaminated during production, processing and distribution, as well as understanding cultural changes affecting food consumption. Michael Sansolo, vice president of industry relations for the Food Marketing Institute, an organization supporting retail food stores, notes that changing eating habits of consumers and seeming lack of consumer concern about food safety all are important factors when it comes to understanding food-related illnesses.

"Competitors [for supermarkets] include restaurants as well as other markets. It was uncommon to eat out in the 1950s, but today restaurant eating is way up," Sansolo told conference participants. Eating out as often as eating at home changes the way people think and cook, he explained. "For example, 70 percent of people who eat out say [they do it because] they don't want to cook, so how do we educate them on food safety [in cooking]?" he asks.

Sansolo notes that while these days customers are demanding low-fat restaurant meals, it took a long time for the message of the importance of low-fat eating to take hold in consumers' minds. His correlation is easy to understand: Food educators also need to note that it may take time to get the issue of safe food handling and cooking practices both at home and in retail settings to become a regular part of the American psyche as well.

For example, "[When it comes to] supermarkets, consumers say they want quality produce, a clean store, etcetera, but they never mention food safety," he explains.

When it comes to safe food production, Sansolo says Institute members are focusing on HACCP ( Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point). A science-based preventive approach to safe food production, HACCP requires a firm to identify food production, manufacturing and transportation "critical control points" where contamination could occur. Then the firm puts control measures in place at those points. HACCP varies from plant to plant and product to product.

But the most crucial issue — educating the people who buy and prepare foods, be they consumers or restaurant workers — remains a key challenge in the battle against food-borne illness.

Food Safety Misconceptions

"People don't see food safety problems as related to their personal food handling practices," says Alan Levy, Ph.D., a statistician and chief of the consumer studies branch in FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. "[Studies have shown that] 80 percent think failures occur in the food processing system. Few see their own actions at home as having an impact.

"Consumers have major misconceptions regarding food-borne illness. Most people think food prepared at home is safer than restaurant food although food safety experts say the opposite is true. They also think food-borne illnesses are mild. If people don't see food-borne illnesses as a real problem, they will be less likely to change their behavior."

About the Author

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