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Chapter 19
Food Safety
True/False
1. Freezing foods kills bacteria
2. As long as the expiration date hasn’t
passed, packaged food is always safe to
eat
3. You can wash pesticides off produce
with plain water
Answers
1. False. Freezing foods doesn’t kill bacteria, but
puts them at a dormant state. Once the food is
thawed, bacteria growth resume
2. False. Package date refers to food quality not
safety
3. True. A good scrub with cold running water
and a vegetable brush can remove pesticide
residue and many germs from the produce
Food Safety
What Is Food Safety and Why Is It Important?
• Food safety practices and guidelines established to
ensure the safety of foods from farm to table
• U.S. enjoys one of safest food supplies in world
– CDC estimate 76 Millions people experience some type
of foodborne illness annually
• About 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,200 deaths
– Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book The Jungle led to Meat
Inspection Act
• Food safety precautions led to positive health effects in the U.S.
Food Safety
What Causes Foodborne Illness and How
Can It Make You Sick?
• Foodborne illnesses are often caused by:
– Pathogens (virus and bacteria).
• Can be spread by fecal-to-oral transmission
• Salmonella is the most common pathogen
– Parasites: microscopic organisms that take
nourishment from hosts
– Chemical agents such as pesticides and toxins
in foods we eat also cause illness.
Food Safety
High Risk population
– Older adults
– young children
– pregnant women
– those with compromised immune systems
What Can You Do to Prevent
Foodborne Illness?
Practice “4 Cs” of food safety:
1. Clean your hands and produce.
– Hands: hot soapy water with agitation for at
least twenty seconds
– Sanitize cutting boards, sponges
– Wash fruits and vegetables under cold
running water, scrub firm skins with vegetable
brush
What Can You Do to Prevent
Foodborne Illness?
2. Combat cross-contamination.
– Keep raw meat, poultry, fish separate from
other foods during preparation, storage, and
transport
3. Cook foods thoroughly.
– Color not reliable indicator: measure internal
temperature
What Can You Do to Prevent
Foodborne Illness?
4. Chill foods at a low enough temperature.
– Bacteria multiply rapidly between 40o – 140o F
• Keep hot foods hot: above 140o F
• Keep cold foods below 40o F: perishables shouldn’t
be left more than two hours
• Keep leftovers no more than four days in refrigerator,
raw meats two days
– Freezer temperature: at or below 0o F
• E-Coli
Video
• Find out
more info
at
www.fight
bac.org
Foodborne Illness
Food Safety in the Kitchen
• Safe Handling of Meats and Poultry
– Cook meat thoroughly and use a thermometer.
– Read labeling instructions.
– Recommended safe temperatures
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Whole poultry: 180˚ F
Poultry breast and well-done meats: 170˚ F
Stuffing, ground poultry, and reheated leftovers: 165˚ F
Medium-done meats, raw eggs, egg dishes, pork, and ground
meat: 160 ˚F
Medium-rare meats, roasts, veal, and lamb: 145˚ F
Foods should not be kept between 40˚ F and 140˚ F for more
than 2 hours
Refrigerator temperature: 40˚ F
Freezer temperature: 0˚ F
The Do’s and Don’ts of CrossContamination
Fig. 19-4, p. 669
Foodborne Illness
• Occasionally unsafe
– Soft cheeses
– Salad bar items
– Unwashed berries and
grapes
– Sandwiches
– Hamburgers
• Rarely unsafe
– Peeled fruit
– High-sugar foods
– Steaming-hot foods
Advances in Food Safety
• Pasteurization since early 1900s
• Irradiation – (cold pasteurization) use of low
dose irradiation protects consumers from
foodborne illnesses. Minimal vitamin is lost.
– Control mold in grains
– Sterilizing spices and teas for storage at room
temperature
– Control insects
– Extend shelf life of produce
– Destroy harmful bacteria in fresh and frozen beef,
poultry, lamb and pork
This international symbol,
called the radura,
indentifies retail foods that
have been irradiated. The
words “Treated by
irradiation” or “Treated with
irradiation” must
accompany the symbol.
The irradiation label is not
required on commercially
prepared foods that contain
irradiated ingredients, such
as spices.
Product Dating
Closed Food
Product Dating
Open Food
Product Dating
Who Protects Your Food and
How Do They Do It?
Agency:
Responsible for:
USDA Food Safety and
Inspection Service (FSIS)
Safe and accurately labeled
meat, poultry, eggs
Food and Drug
Administration (FDA)
Safety of all other foods
Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA)
Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS)
Protecting you and
environment from harmful
pesticides
Protecting against plant
and animal pests and
disease
Natural Toxicants in Foods
• Toxins occur naturally to help plant or
animal fend off predators or capture food
• Natural foods may contain harmful toxins
• Cooking won’t destroy toxins
– Poisonous mushrooms
– Eating in large quantity, cabbage, turnips, mustard
greens, kale, broccoli, radishes contain goitrogens that
may enlarge the thyroid gland
– Lima beans contain cyanogens – produce cyanide
poisoning when activated by certain plant enzyme
– Potatoes contain solanine and can be toxic when
consumed in large quantity
Natural Toxicants in Foods
• Marine toxins:
– Spoiled finfish can cause scombrotoxic
(histamine) fish poisoning.
– Large reef fish can bioaccumulate
ciguatoxins produced by dinoflagellates.
– Shell fish can be contaminated by
neurotoxins produced by dinoflagellates,
causing paralytic shellfish poisoning.
Bioaccumulation of Toxins
Chemical Agents
Pesticides widely used in
agriculture
• Pesticides help promote abundant crop
production.
• Types of pests include insects, weeds,
microorganisms, fungi (mold), and
rodents
• Organophosphates affect nervous
systems of pests, are being re-reviewed
by EPA to ensure safety
Chemical Agents
• Biopesticides (naturally-derived) typically
less toxic than synthetic chemical
pesticides
– Examples: insect sex pheromones interfere
with mating of pests; baking soda can inhibit
growth of fungi
The risks of pesticides:
– Synthetic pesticides can cause harm to animals,
humans, environment depending on level of
toxicity and how much consumed
– Pesticide use is heavily regulated in the U.S.
Chemical Agents
Regulating pesticides: who’s watching the
crops?
– EPA evaluates all food pesticides using human
health risk assessment: hazard identification,
dose-response assessment, exposure
assessment, risk characterization
Minimize pesticides in your diet.
– Washing fruits and vegetables with clean,
running water and vegetable brush removes up
to 81% of pesticide residue
Reducing Pesticides In Your
Foods
What Is Organic and How Do You
Find Organic Foods?
• Organic farming: growing crops without the
use of some synthetic pesticides, synthetic
fertilizers, bioengineering or irradiation
– Organic meat, poultry, eggs, dairy foods are free
of antibiotics and growth hormone
– USDA: National Organic Standards
• USDA organic certification: must contain at least
95% organic ingredients
• May not be free of all pesticides
• USDA hasn’t found organic foods to be safer or
nutritionally superior to conventional foods.
The USDA Organic Seal
Various Levels of Organic
Table 14.6
Food Additives
• Additives are substances not normally eaten
as foods, but added to food either
intentionally or accidentally
– Most are preservatives
– Nitrite used in curing meat prevent poisoning
from toxin
– Nutrient additives enhance nutrient quality
– Regulated by FDA: Federal Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act and 1958, Food Additives
Amendment authorized FDA to regulate food
and food ingredients and additives
Food Additives
• FDA require additives to be:
• Effective
• Detectable and measurable in the final
product
• Safe when consume in large doses
• Exemptions: prior-sanctioned status (such as nitrates to
preserve meats) and GRAS (generally recognized as
safe) substances, such as salt, sugar, spices, vitamins,
etc.
Food Additives
• Nutrient Additives
– Common Nutrient Additives
• Thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, folate, and iron in grain
products
• Iodine in salt
• Vitamins A and D in milk
• Vitamin C and calcium in fruit drinks
• Vitamin B12 in vegetarian foods
• Monosodium glutamate (MSG)
• Sulfites
What is Genetic Engineering
• Use of biotechnology to modify the genetic
material of living cells so they will produce
new substances or perform new functions.
• Use to increase crop yields
• A single gene can be transferred from the
same or different species to produce one
with desired characteristics.
– Genetically modified or genetically engineer
Why GE Foods
• Extended shelf life
– Tomatoes
• Improved nutrient composition
– Biofortification to produce more nutrients
• Efficient food processing
• Efficient drug delivery
– Bananas and potatoes are used to make
hepatitis vaccines
– Tobacco leaves to make AIDs drugs
Why GE?
• Genetically assisted agriculture
– Increase crop yields
– Extend growing seasons
– ½ of the soybean crop in the US have been
Ge’d to withstand potent herbicide
– Corn broccoli and potatoes receive a gene
that toxic to caterpillars to protect the crop
Problem with GE Foods
• Food industry driven by profit, not food
safety
• Unpredictable outcome
• Disruption of natural ecosystems
• Introduction of disease
• Introduction of allergens and toxins
• Creation of biological weapons
• Ethical dilemmas
GE Foods and the FDA
• GE foods are not substantially different
from others and therefore does not
require:
– Special testing,
– Regulations, or
– Labeling
• GE foods differ from conventional foods by
only one or two genes
De-coding the Numbers on the
produce
• For conventionally grown fruit, (grown with
chemicals inputs), the PLU code on the
sticker consists of four numbers. (4011)
• Organically grown fruit has a five-numeral
PLU prefaced by the number 9. (94011)
• Genetically engineered (GM) fruit has a
five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number
8. (84011)
• Processed foods do not have PLU codes
Extra Credit
10 points extra credit:
• Complete worksheet for chapter
19, posted on the course website.
Note the worksheet has two parts,
you must complete part 1 and two
to get full credit.