The Modern Age of Food Quality and Safety

By the 1990s, many industrialized countries had already introduced new, more stringent food safety standards, such as mandatory process controls to reduce risks throughout the production process.

“Meeting these standards for higher food safety and quality poses a challenge to less developed countries as they seek to expand agricultural exports,” Unnevehr wrote. “While such exports can provide an important source of income for the rural poor, meeting higher standards can require additional management, capital investments, purchased inputs, monitoring and certification.”

The 1990s did yield progress. The gospel according to HACCP spread like wildfire worldwide. The NASA-born protocol, which was first only required of seafood processing facilities, is also now a must for juice manufacturers and is recommended at the retail level and for meat and poultry processors by federal agencies.

“HACCP has evolved into an overriding principle for the entire food chain, from raw materials, processing, distribution, restaurants to the regulatory community,” says Darren Blass, director of quality assurance and product safety for Jack in the Box Inc. (San Diego, Calif.).

In 1996, more stringent meat inspection procedures were put in place by USDA, and the FDA approved the irradiation of meat. A year later, the FDA’s Modernization Act brought forth regulations for food health claims. By 2001, Europe opted for the American Way when the EU established the European Food Authority, an agency similar in focus to the FDA and USDA.

And innovations in technology seemed to blossom from the woodwork. ATP technologies, combined with HACCP and SSOPs, bettered food processing plant hygiene and upped traceabilities that aimed to stop contamination and illness in its tracks. Rapid microbiology methods began to emerge as well, promising a speedier path to specificity.

While there is still a tremendous reliance on classical microbiology methods, the appreciation for specialty diagnostic tools grew immensely.

“I’ve noticed a steadily growing appreciation of the cost and time benefits of pre-measured or pre-sterilized laboratory products, which, by definition are disposable,” says Fred Weber, president of Weber Scientific (Hamilton, N.J.). “There is a tremendous demand on the laboratory to do more with less, and this enhances their ability to do more work with fewer resources by having these pre-measured and pre-sterilized combinations of products.”

Diagnostic technologies most certainly helped facilitate the two largest meat recalls in USDA history. The first was 19 million pounds of ConAgra ground beef tainted with E. coli that was recalled in July 2002. The second occurred in October 2002 when Pilgrim’s Pride (Pittsburgh, Texas) initiated a nationwide recall of 27 million pounds of poultry products for Listeria monocytogenes contamination from its subsidiary, Wampler Foods (Franconia, Pa.).

The importance of traceability reached a higher level of importance after terrorists decided to fly planes into New York City skyscrapers. At the time of this report, departing Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson set off alarms, saying he worries “every single night” about the possibility of a bioterrorist attack on the nation’s food supply.

“Since 9/11, after the country realized that it not only was the food industry facing natural threats, but potential man-made threats, that raised the level of awareness in the minds of senior level managers,” says Rick Biros, publisher of Food Quality and president of Carpe Diem Communications Inc. (Yardley, Pa.) “They started paying attention, and now three years later, they have all found quality religion. They see the light. In many cases, their existing quality assurance program was preventing natural threats and these same programs can protect them from man-made threats just by making a few slight alterations.”

The intent on protecting the food supply was intensified last August when the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 went into full effect. Owners, operators or agents of domestic and foreign facilities that manufacture, process, pack or hold food for human or animal consumption in the United States must now register with the FDA. The agency also requires prior notice of all shipments of human or animal food imported or offered for importation.