20 Years in Food Safety: A Look Back and Beyond

The wide distribution of food products is a challenge, but not a new issue. The fact a food safety problem can enter a product in one plant and be shipped all over the world certainly poses challenges. CSPI has advocated for the adoption of rapid alert systems, similar to those in Europe, to notify national authorities. We’d like these rapid alerts to go all the way to the consumer, so we can be made aware of problems as they occur.

The rise in use of social media potentially provides the food industry and government with the means to get information to the public rapidly. The tools to accomplish this exist, but a strategy is needed to put such a system in place. If consumers know information isn’t being hidden from them but rather is provided at the earliest opportunity, this increases their confidence in the government and food supply.

Gerry Broski, Senior Marketing Director, Food Safety, Neogen Corp., Lansing, Mich.

The next 20 years are going to be interesting as we set the stage to address the food and nutrition requirements for a growing population while recognizing we have finite and precious resources. A projected 15 percent increase in the global population, from 7 billion currently to 8 billion by 2025, is becoming a concern of many in the field of food safety. We’ll have to proactively manage food safety plans and production to meet growing needs. FSMA is a step forward in addressing the needs of modern food production and distribution systems.

Technology continues to advance as new technology and solutions from the clinical, research, and life science areas are applied to food matrices. Food is a complicated product that can be made from many ingredients sourced from many areas, and food contaminants can be difficult to detect. Because many foods are perishable, the need for speed in testing will continue to be a target for improvement, and, because food safety is a basic requirement and not a competitive advantage, the cost of testing will be an area where simplicity and performance determine the adoption of new technology.

Having spent much of my career in food-related industries, my biggest fear is that looking forward we may not have enough qualified people at all levels to support the growing needs of the food safety industry. From lab technicians and analysts to managers, to quality control, to sales and marketing, qualified, educated, and trained people are needed to support the growing food and nutrition needs of the next generation.

Daniel Y. C. Fung, MSPH, PhD, Professor of Food Science and Animal Sciences, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan.

Using standard microbiology methods, several decades ago, it could take a week to identify an organism—to say definitively, for example, that this sample contains Salmonella typhimurium. As methods were improved, the time needed for these determinations was shortened. Within the past three or four years, the time for identification of an organism has been shortened to 12 hours. Within the next five to 10 years, we hope to further shorten that time to four hours. Then two hours, one hour—and eventually to get results instantaneously.

Microbiology is a very dynamic field. Processes are continually getting faster and more efficient. The basic problem in microbiology is we must start with a pure culture to identify an organism. Many researchers’ efforts now are centered on ways to achieve that pure culture: Perhaps a laser can pick out from a sample a single microdrop containing a single organism, and a puff of air can blow that microdrop into a tube or well for multiplication of the organism. Once this or some other method is used to isolate the pure culture, PCR and other tests can be performed to identify the organism.