How Safe Is Your Meal?

Overview

Access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health. Unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances causes more than 200 diseases, ranging from diarrhoea to cancers. It also creates a vicious cycle of disease and malnutrition, particularly affecting infants, young children, elderly and the sick. Good collaboration between governments, food producers and consumers is needed to help ensure food safety and stronger food systems.

Major foodborne illnesses and causes

Foodborne illnesses are usually infectious or toxic in nature and caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances entering the body through contaminated food. Chemical contamination can lead to acute poisoning or long-term diseases, such as cancer. Many foodborne diseases may lead to long-lasting disability and death. Some examples of food hazards are listed below.

Bacteria

Salmonella, Campylobacter and enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli are some of the most common foodborne pathogens that affect millions of people annually, sometimes with severe and fatal outcomes. Symptoms can include fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhoea. Foods more frequently involved in outbreaks of salmonellosis include eggs, poultry and other products of animal origin. Foodborne cases due to Campylobacter are mainly caused by raw milk, raw or undercooked poultry and drinking water. Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli is often associated with unpasteurized milk, undercooked meat and contaminated fresh fruits and vegetables.

Listeria infections can lead to miscarriage in pregnant women or death of newborn babies. Although disease occurrence is relatively low, Listeria’s severe and sometimes fatal health consequences, particularly among infants, children and the elderly, count them among the most serious foodborne infections. Listeria is found in unpasteurized dairy products and various ready-to-eat foods and can grow at refrigeration temperatures.

Vibrio cholerae can infect people through contaminated water or food. Symptoms may include abdominal pain, vomiting and profuse watery diarrhoea, which quickly lead to severe dehydration and possibly death. Raw vegetable sand various types of raw or undercooked seafood have been implicated in cholera outbreaks.

Antimicrobials, such as antibiotics, are essential to treat infections caused by bacteria, including foodborne pathogens. However, their overuse and misuse in veterinary and human medicine has been linked to the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria, rendering the treatment of infectious diseases ineffective in animals and humans.

Viruses

Some viruses can be transmitted by food consumption. Norovirus is a common cause of foodborne infections that is characterized by nausea, explosive vomiting, watery diarrhoea and abdominal pain. Hepatitis A virus can also be transmitted by food and can cause long-lasting liver disease and typically spreads through raw or undercooked seafood or contaminated raw produce.

Parasites

Some parasites, such as fish-borne trematodes, are only transmitted through food. Others, for example tapeworms like Echinococcus spp, or Taenia spp, may infect people through food or direct contact with animals. Other parasites, such as Ascaris, Cryptosporidium, Entamoeba histolytica or Giardia, enter the food chain via water or soil and can contaminate fresh produce.

Prions

Prions, infectious agents composed of protein, are unique in that they are associated with specific forms of neurodegenerative disease. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or so-called mad cow disease) is a prion disease in cattle, associated with the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans. Consuming meat products containing specified risk material, such as brain tissue, is the most likely route of transmission of the prion agent to humans.

Chemicals

Of most concern for health are naturally occurring toxins and environmental pollutants.

• Naturally occurring toxins include mycotoxins, marine biotoxins, cyanogenic glycosides and toxins occurring in poisonous mushrooms. Staple foods like corn or cereals can contain high levels of mycotoxins, such as aflatoxin and ochratoxin, produced by mould on grain. Long-term exposure can affect the immune system and normal development, or cause cancer.
• Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are compounds that accumulate in the environment and human body. Known examples are dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are unwanted by-products of industrial processes and waste incineration. They are found worldwide in the environment and accumulate in animal food chains. Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and cause cancer.
• Heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury cause neurological and kidney damage. Contamination by heavy metal in food occurs mainly through pollution of water and soil.

Other chemical hazards in food can include radioactive nucleotides that can be discharged into the environment from industries and from civil or military nuclear operations, food allergens, residues of drugs and other contaminants incorporated in the food during the process.