Chapter 3 Food Safety and Food Defense by Dr. Tang在线视频

Chapter 3 Food Safety, Security and Defense by Tang

Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to our course, Scientific Food safety Supervision again.

In today’s lecture, I would like to talk about Food Safety and Food Security or Food Defense, Those two concepts.

We have already learned what food is. What is food and what is health food and hazardous food? What is food safety and how to understand food safety? What is food? We already know that food is an edible substance taken by mouth. What is about health and how is food affecting our health? Human health means the normal development and normal growth. But why is it un-normal or not normal, we consider some kind of hazards.

What is hazard? It is a substance, not edible substance, it is a harmful substance. Hazards can be divided into biological, chemical, physical and process induced. Those are the different resources of hazards. How to evaluate those hazards or how do those hazards affect our human health? We have one indicator or one definition which is called toxicity, or we called risk. How is hazard risk to us? We have the equation

Risk or toxicity = hazard x exposure (dosage).

How potent or how harmful of this hazard is really based on toxicity of this hazard and how much hazards we take or how much we consume or how much we contact. So this is a risk really based on these two things.

In the last lecture, I have talked about the relationship between food and health and also food and business. Based on that food can be beneficial to our health because of the nutrients. But food can also be harm if there is a hazard inside the food. So what is food safety? By definition, food safety means a suitable product which is consumed either by human or animal does not cause any health risks to consumers. Food does not lead any negative effect to our human health. If there is harm does to our health that means there is a health problem. If there is no harm, that is not food safety problem. Based on this definition, we have two questions. Why food does not cause health risk? Because inside food, there is no hazard inside. And why food does cause health risk? Because there is a hazard inside the food, so hazard is the key for food safety.

What is food safety issue or food safety problem? There are 5 factors to determine:

First one it must be a food, related to food. Secondly food hazard must be inside food.

Thirdly that hazard must present in the food not outside the food. And then fourthly those hazard must be toxic or some risk to our health, that means there are some potent of this hazard in the food. If hazard is inside the food but less toxic also does not cause human health problem. So the final one if this hazard inside the food, if the food cause any health harm to us. So that’s 5 factors to determine if this is a food safety issue or not a food safety issue.

So the key for food safety is the food does not contain polluted hazard. And also is safe for our human health. So this is for food safety. Can you give an example for safe food or unsafe food? For example, UHT milk is safe food compared to the pasteurized milk because UHT milk, there is no any hazards inside as we use ultra temperature (over 130°C), therefore all the pathogenic bacteria be killed during the high temperature treatment. So this is the safe food.

What is unsafe food? Can you give an example? It contains polluted hazard which harm to our human body. A simple example is eggs. If the egg are under cooked, that’s not enough temperature, so those egg would have salmonella and salmonella is pathogenic bacteria. If you eat these eggs, you would suffer the problem, this is the food safety problem, and this is for the unsafe food.

For food safety issues, we have two types of food safety issues. Based on the resources of hazards, hazards can be from naturally, for example, in the last lecture, I said the potato has black eyes; these black eyes actually contain the hazard inside. This is naturally attributes. Also the Salmonella in the eggs, also Clostridium botulinum in the meat, these are all natural. So if these sources come from natural or unintentionally, this is generally called food safety issue.

However, if this hazard never happened in our food or food chain, but now we found out this hazard in our food or food chain, that means this hazard is from not naturally, from added by human being, that is from intentionally or deliberately added. If this hazard comes from intentionally or deliberately added, this is called food security or food defense.

Therefore, we have two types of hazards based on their sources and therefore we also have two types of food safety issues. One is intentionally and one is unintentionally. We must have very clear pictures to differ these two types of food safety because for different types of issues, we should have different strategies or different methods to response.

If this is a food safety issue, we use our technology; we use our science to prevent it to eliminate it. If it is a food security issue, this is another story, it is a criminal, we have to use the legal method, we may use the security or we may use the police. So this is the food safety and security issues.

In the recent ten years, the food security is also called food defense, another term, called food terrorism. So what is food terrorism? Food terrorism means to use the bad way or frighten way to add hazard or poison into our food or water, to make this food or water bring those potent hazard to harm to the public. This is called food terrorism.

With this definition for food safety and food security or food defense, the concept is similar. But that is why I said they should have clear picture to differ these two definitions, because two different things must have different measures to take.

So what is similarity for these two, food safety and food security? The similarity is that both of food safety and food security talk about toxin, talk about harmful, that means both types of food have toxin inside and are also harmful to our human health. These are very similar for these two.

What is difference? Food safety is unintentionally and the hazard is naturally and unintentionally. We can use our techniques to solve these problems, use our science to solve these problems. And we have the special institute or organization to supervise this kind of issue. In the United State, it is administrated by FDA. In China we also have China FDA. However, for food security or food defense or food terrorisms, it’s deliberate to add this kind of hazard. The purpose is to harm to the public. It is controlled by the security department. In the United States, it is administrated by the Department of Homeland. And in China it is also controlled by the security department. Those are the differences and similarities of those two. We have two books for you to refer. One is bioterrorism and food safety, another one is talking about food defense or food security. And it is a big issue.

This slide shows food quality. What is food quality? Food quality is the intrinsic attributes or inherent characters. Here is the entire meat product, and you can see the colors, texture, tender, flavors, taste, weight, packaging or even different types of meat for example, PSE pork meat and DFD beef meat. All those are the quality attributes. But they are not hazards, so they are not a safety issue. They are not safety attributes, so those are food quality.

What are food standards? Food standard is actually two words. One is indicator and the other is limit. So for food standard, we have food quality standard we also have food safety standard. For safety standard, we have the indicator of hazard. What is the indicator hazard here?  For example, Salmonella in egg is the indicator of hazard. Another one is limited value, how many or how much Salmonella can be allowed for the egg product. So this is the safety standard.

How about the quality standard? Quality standard again is an indicator first, but it is not a hazard, it is an attribute indicator, for example, color or pigment. Another one is also limit value or description. We can use the standard to manage and supervise the food, food quality, and food safety.

So here I show you the food poisoning. What is food poisoning? Food poisoning means people consumed the food and then suffered from the illness, in particular, acute illness, for example stomachache or headache, this kind of phenomenon. If he or she consumed this kind of contaminated food.

What is food poisoning issue? This means you, if one person had this kind of symptoms, are not a food poisoning issue. This must be more than two people or two patients, have the very similar symptoms and after they consume the same food in the same time in the same environment in the same condition. So this is the food poisoning issue. If one person had only had this kind of poisoning symptoms and it’s not the food poisoning issue.

So next slide, for example, here there is a food-borne illness, and it is for the food poisonings. Why I said must have two people or more than two people because different people would have different sense to the hazard. To the food, different population would have the different sense to the food. For example, the elderly people or sick people, they may easily feel food poisoning. Babies, young children and pregnant women, those are the very special one.

Now we are ready to talk about what are food and food safety and food hazards and food safety issue and food poisoning and two types of food safety, so these depend on the hazards.

But in reality there is no zero risk and no zero hazards in the food. So any food, much food would contain some hazard, but they don’t cause our health problem, therefore food safety is not absolute, it’s relative.

Why the food safety is relative, not absolute? First of all, food is produced not in a vacuum environment, the food produced in the general environment or general condition, so in our general condition, general environment, of course, there are hazards, biologically, chemically and those hazards would naturally contaminate to our food. Therefore we cannot isolate our process from the natural environment, so our environment would have this kind of hazards.

And why we can accept those kinds of hazards in our general food or limited hazard in our food? Because our human ourselves have the defense system. Each of us, if the general people, not the special people, we have 4 types of defense systems. The first one is skin, the second one is our lung, the third one is our digestive system and the fourth one is our immune system. So we have those four defense system in our human. For example, our skin, if there is any burn, hot or acid or alcohol to our hands, we are immediately to remove our hands. This is kind of defense system. Also if we absorb some bad hazard, our lungs would be immediately response and we would run away from this area. If we eat accidentally some kind of hazards, for example, toxic wild mushrooms, we would vomit naturally, the better the earlier you vomit, the less harmful effect to our human health. Also for immune system, if you eat accidentally the very strange food, you would be allergic to this, this allergic response actual is kind of defense system. Therefore, the food safety is not absolute, it’s relative, mean we, for our human, we can accept limited hazards in our food, but this hazard in the food doesn’t cause our illness or disease.

So this is the main topic for our lecture. Mainly on the food safety concepts, and two types of food safety and also relative food safety concept. We have also several questions to be considered. First of all, what is food hazard, and what are the differences between food safety and food security or food defense and food terrorisms and the third question is why relative food safety is? What is food safety standard? What is food poisoning issue? I hope you can answer these questions after this lectures. Thank you. See you next lecture.