Welcome back. Let's talk about Food Safety. Food borne illness goes way back in history. Here's a picture of Alexander the Great. He died very young at the age of 32 and there's some evidence that suggest that he was either accidentally or deliberately poisoned. The reports are that he became violently ill after drinking some wine and he was sick for about 12 days before dying a horrible death. food borne illness has also killed kings and presidents. Here's a picture of Henry I of England, who died after eating eels, and here's a picture of US President, Zachary Taylor, who died after eating raw fruit and iced milk. This is a picture of Dr. Rudolph Virchow, a German physician who's considered the father of pathology and was an advocate for food safety. Now, his father was a butcher who might have influenced his interests. He started to study very thin slices of meat and looked at them under the microscope, and when he did, very surprising things came out, including sometimes, very little parasites such as Trichinella spiralis, which can be obtained from eating under-cooked pork. Now Dr. Virchow established the link between animal and human disease, and he coined the term zoonosis. Meaning, a disease of animals that can infect people. Berlin was the first city then to adopt meat inspection, and the US eventually adopted meat inspection, although inspections are generally gross or just looking at them from the outside rather than microscopic, which is a more powerful way to inspect meat. Upton Sinclair wrote in 1906 the book, The Jungle, and he described the horrific working conditions of poor immigrants in beef slaughterhouses. The book was controversial, not because of the poor working conditions of the immigrants, but because of the abysmal conditions in which the animals were being slaughtered, and Sinclair famously said, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident, I hit it in the stomach." In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act, gave the Food and Drug Administration regulatory functions, and then included the prohibition of interstate commerce of adulterated or misbranded food and drugs. Here's a picture of "The Jungle" that was turned into a movie. The US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, split the responsibility of food safety. The US Department of Agriculture through their food safety and inspection service, conducts meat and poultry inspections in order to ensure the safety of meat, poultry, and processed egg products. The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for the safety of 80 percent of the food supply. Through their Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, they oversee all the food products that the US Department of Agriculture does not oversee. So then what exactly is food safety? Well, it's food that is free from bacteria, viruses, parasites, or other chemical substances. I think we can all agree which apple we would rather eat. So according to the World Health Organization, food borne illnesses will sicken an estimated 600 million people around the world, and caused by about 31 food hazards. But the infectious agents cause the vast majority or about 550 million or 92 percent of these food borne illnesses. So you want to have safe food to prevent diarrheal diseases. These diarrheal diseases, are typically spread by the fecal oral transmission of contaminated food. This is food that's contaminated with microbes. According to the World Health Organization, diarrheal diseases are the second leading cause of death in children under five years, and they cost about 500,000 deaths per year. Globally, food borne illnesses cause about 420,000 deaths in old people. The most common food borne illness is the norovirus. Nontyphoidal salmonella on the other hand, is the major cause of death. food borne illnesses then are typically due to fecal contamination of food or water. So the question is, where does all this fecal contamination come from and how big is the problem? To answer that question, we need to look at the biomass distribution on Earth. This is a picture published from the proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Looking at the total biomass on the planet, and at its small corner of it, consist of animals. Now, if we blow up this little triangle, you get to see this larger picture of all the animals on Earth. Now, most of the animals are arthropods, but if you look, here's humans and their livestock. If you look at how much they make up, they make up about 96-98 percent of the total global terrestrial, mammalian biomass on the planet. So in other words, the combined mass of broiler chickens, now exceeds all other birds on the planet. There's almost 23 billion broiler chickens according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. What do humans and animals do? "Everybody Eats and Everybody Poops," as the famous book by Taro Gomi states. So humans and their domesticated animals, produce massive amounts of fecal matter, contaminating and disrupting environments and ecosystems. This other study published in nature sustainability, estimated the global fecal biomass that all the humans and their domesticated animals produce. They found that over seven billion humans and almost 30 billion food animals, produced almost four trillion kilograms of fecal matter in one year. Animal fecal matter makes up almost 80 percent of the total fecal biomass. Since 2003, the total fecal biomass being produced has been increasing by over 52 billion kilograms per year. By 2030, the total fecal biomass is estimated to reach 4.6 trillion kilograms per year. Here's a question for you. How many Olympic-size swimming pools would be filled by four trillion kilograms of fecal matter? I'll give you three hints. First, assume one liter of water weighs one kilogram of water. Second, assume one kilogram of water equals one kilogram of fecal matter. Third, use scientific notation for your calculations. Some additional approximations are needed. A standard-size Olympic pool is 50 meters in length, 25 meters in width, and two meters deep. The pool can hold 2.5 million liters of water. One pool then would hold 2.5 million kilograms of water. Are you ready for the answer? The answer is 4 trillion kilograms of fecal matter would fill over 1.6 million Olympic-size swimming pools. That's a lot of fecal matter. A bit less than one billion people openly defecate and by openly defecating, I mean that people go out into a field and squat and relieve themselves. Around 60 percent of the people live in India, although that number is now decreasing fortunately. But with this excessive exposure of microbes in the environment, that increases the risk for food borne illness. There are different pathways to being exposed to fecal matter. You can be exposed to fecal matter through water, soil, food, your hands can be contaminated, fomites such as door knobs can be contaminated, and you can even have contamination being spread by flies such as this one pictured here. The standard fecal oral transmission image though usually focuses solely on human fecal matter. According to UNICEF, one gram of human feces can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria, and 1,000 parasite cysts. Those are a lot of potential for a contamination to make you sick. So addressing food borne and water-borne illness is much more complex than simply addressing human fecal matter contamination. Recall that I said that animals contribute about 80 percent of the fecal matter in the environment. So if we really want to address food borne and water-borne illness, we must address the animal fecal matter in the environment as well. So the animal feces can contaminate our food, our waters, our fingers, and fomites and cause the spread of illness. Food safety requires therefore, reducing exposure to both human and animal fecal matter, and by animal fecal matter, not just food animals, but including companion animals and wildlife as well. Fecal matter is often used as fertilizer in agriculture. It's sprayed on the fields. Rain can cause runoff into waterways. This runoff can go into lakes and ponds and cause eutrophication or algae blooms. This polluted water can lead to dead fish. All of this environmental fecal contamination can lead to an increase in food borne and water-borne illness. What are some of the symptoms of food borne illness? Fever, nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, cramping, diarrhea. There's different pathogens or microbes that can cause these illnesses including Campylobacter, Clostridium, E. coli, the most common norovirus, as well as Salmonella, and even some parasites. In 2015, the World Health Organization issued a report estimating the global burden of food borne illness. They divided all the nations into six regions and they found regional differences of food borne illnesses. The WHO regions with the highest burden of food borne illness are the African region, the South American region, Eastern Mediterranean region, and Southeast Asian region. Non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica is the most common bacterial cause of food borne illness. Now, this is in contrast to the norovirus, which is the most common of all the infectious agents. But Salmonella is the most common bacterial cause. Symptoms develop around 12-72 hours after exposure. Treatment is generally not needed because the symptoms are self-limited and they typically last about 4-7 days. But if symptoms are severe, hospitalization may be needed. Now, the norovirus, as I said in the previous slide, is the most common cause of food borne illness. It's highly contagious, and you can get sick after direct contact with an infected person or consuming contaminated food or water. Symptoms include diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain. The treatment is primarily symptomatic, just fluids. So there's different strategies to prevent food borne illness depending on where the food borne illness is coming from. Now, of course you need rigorous sanitation and hygiene to prevent the fecal contamination of all types of food, as well as water. So farmers and food producers then must adhere to strict sanitation policies and food safety guidelines. Laws must be mandated and enforced to all foods that are sold to the public. Government food safety officials must inspect all food production systems. Surveillance of systems must monitor the occurrence of food borne illness in order to keep track of trends. Over a half of food borne illnesses come from meat and dairy products. To prevent their astronauts from getting sick in space, NASA hired the Pillsbury Company in the 1960s to develop a strategy to prevent food borne illness. So Pillsbury then developed the hazard analysis and critical control point system. To ensure safe food for the public, in the 1970s, the Food and Drug Administration adopted NASA's food borne illness prevention strategies. These HACCP strategies include seven principles that help food manufacturers identify any hazard in the production process. This is a multidisciplinary team including microbiologists, engineers, quality control managers, and a variety of other professionals. So to assure that your food is safe to eat, the FDA assures HACCP certification, and the US Department of Agriculture has its inspection systems. There is even religious foods certification. You've got Kosher food certification, as well as Halal food certification. Questions for this session include, What is food safety? What virus causes the most food borne illnesses, and why does it cause so many food borne illnesses? food borne illnesses are typically due to what kinds of contamination? Where does this contamination come from? What different types of sanitation systems are used in your community? How is animal waste disposed of in your community? With that, I'd like to thank you for viewing this session.
