Food Scares

Food Sources and Contaminants

Historically, anxieties about food have focused on insufficient supply, inferior products, swindling, fraudulent weight, and adulteration by human agency, including the possible presence of poisons. Infectious foodborne diseases have only been recognized as such since the middle of the nineteenth century. John Snow, the founding father of epidemiology, traced outbreaks of cholera in London in the 1850s to one common source—a public water pump that had been contaminated by an underground cesspool. Although it had been known that disease flourishes under conditions of poor sanitation, Snow argued that this does not arise by a process of spontaneous generation. This view, known as the germ theory of disease, was confirmed by the experiments of Louis Pasteur, the founding father of microbiology. Pasteur's work demonstrated the presence and effects of bacteria, viruses, and parasites in food and beverages. The process of boiling and cooling by which bacteria are removed from milk later became known as that of “pasteurization.” Laboratories responsible for testing food products for the presence of contaminants were first established in industrialized countries in the 1880s. Political recognition of food safety as a policy issue calling for regulation [Page 616]spread throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

Apart from contaminated water, raw milk products, and prepared foods containing multiple ingredients, such as salads, sandwiches, and pâtés, common sources of foodborne diseases are seafood, eggs, fruit, vegetables, soft drinks, beef, pork, and poultry. Some food contaminants are chemical toxins, including dioxins and heavy metals, as well as pesticides, residues of veterinary medicines, additives, and allergenic or carcinogenic substances that are prohibited by the regulations of a particular country or are found to be present in foods in prohibited quantities. Others are microbiological contaminants, transmitted to humans by means of bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi, or, as in the case of vCJD, by prions.

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