CHEMICALS IN FOOD-SAFETY IS NO BODY'S BUSINESS!

The sturdiness of man against all odds in sustaining himself is a remarkable natural trait ever since his advent on earth, say 40,000 years ago. In ancient world it was fight against fierce carnivorous animals and fight for food in competition with them which provided the challenge. To day the odds are same, the only difference being that hundreds of chemicals finding their way into the foods in the name of processing and preservation may be slowly killing him in stead of the quick kill happening to the Paleo man during fighting with wild and ferocious animals. While enemy in old days was clearly visible, the unsuspecting chemicals in the food added deliberately are silent and invisible slow killers. Here is a shocking revelation about the way chemicals are added to foods by the processing industry while the so called safety authorities either close their eyes or are unaware of this practice.

"If you are shocked to learn that industrial chemicals are routinely in the food you are feeding to your family, you will be even more shocked to read about a study published this week in the professional journal Reproductive Toxicology by researchers from the Pew Charitable Trusts — which funded the work — and the Environmental Management Institute. Problems in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food programs look even worse than the problems I know so well from EPA! After extensive research into what manufacturers add to our food, the researchers report that about 1,000 additives are in the food supply without the FDA's knowledge. And, for those additives the FDA does actually know about, fewer than 38 percent of more than 8,000 FDA-regulated additives — including those manufacturers intentionally add directly to food and materials that may come into contact with and contaminate foods — have a published feeding study. (Feeding studies comprise the basic toxicology test — the first test a scientist would do to evaluate the safety of a chemical additive.) For direct additives, added intentionally to food, only 21.6 percent of the almost 4,000 additives have undergone the feeding studies necessary for scientists to estimate a safe level of exposure, and the FDA databases contain reproductive or developmental toxicity data for only 6.7 percent. It appears the FDA and the food industry were often making safety decisions by comparing one chemical to another rather than doing an actual toxicology study. In making such decisions, they were building a house of cards based on assumptions and unsupported extrapolations instead of direct scientific evidence. How has the oversight of our food regulations gone so terribly wrong? The researchers have a few insights. First, many chemicals were grandfathered into the system in the 1950's, and so they are in our food supply without information on their safety. Once a chemical is cleared for use in foods, the clearance is forever, so there are no requirements or incentives for a manufacturer to support additional testing. And, under the outdated U.S. Food Additives Amendment of 1958, the FDA doesn't even have the authority to require testing if it has questions about a chemical. Also, industry can self-determine if its chemical food-additives are Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS), and therefore free from the usual regulatory requirements for food additives. If the industry makes a GRAS determination, it is not even required to notify FDA that it has put the new GRAS additive on the market. Allowing industry to determine the safety of the chemicals it creates is a textbook example of the fox guarding the chicken coop. Last week, many of the same Pew researchers published a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine showing that "financial conflicts of interest are ubiquitous" in the industry-driven process leading to determining that a chemical is GRAS. In that article, Pew reports that all — that's 100 percent — of the members of expert panels that review food additives to make GRAS determinations have financial relationships with companies that manufacture the food additives being reviewed".

If whatever has been said in the above critique is true, is humanity hurtling towards calamity in a few decades from now with all people suffering from one or the other health disorders lowering the quality of life dramatically compared to what they were about 100 years ago? One can only pity for the future generations to come as they are being consigned to a life of ignominy by the reckless actions of those who live to day! Of course there are a few people who are still aware of these contradictions and thanks are due to them for spawning the organic food industry which does not use chemicals in raising any crop or processing it into edible preparations. Unfortunately such people are far and few at present to make any impact but there is the promise that organic food consumption is growing albeit slowly which will leave at least a few people with normal health to carry forward the torch of human civilization! 

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

BIOFILMS-A SERIOUS CHALLENGE TO SANITATION SCIENTISTS

Man has been striving ever since his advent on this planet to keep the harmful microorganisms at bay and this endeavor is still continuing even to day. An array of technology to destroy pathogenic microorganisms is available for the industry that has been able to ensure safety of foods manufacture by them to a reaosnable extent. Traditional technologies like salt steeping, sugar infusion, sun drying, fermentation etc are supplemented by modern ones involving high temperature treatment, water removal at controlled temperatures, low and very low temperature preservation, high pressure processing, aseptic packing, vacuum packing etc. Still there is nothing absolutely safe in the light of continuous modification in the behavior of microbes to overcome all the hurdles created by man. Latest finding that bacteria  like Listeria and others can form highly impenetrable biofilms within which they survive under severely adverse environmental conditions is startling to say the least. Here is a commentary on this new phenomenon which will keep the industry on its toes when it comes to ensuring food safety.

"The slimy film that forms in damp areas, typically around drains and in trunk lines, is known as biofilm. Harboring pathogens such as Listeria, Salmonella and E. coli, biofilm creates a protective environment for illness-causing microorganisms to thrive.Eliminating biofilm and the pathogens it breeds has proven to be difficult for the food processing and retail sanitation industry. It tends to persist in damp areas and is resistant to traditional cleaners and sanitizers. Typical drain cleaners such as enzymatic cleaners, drain openers, and hard surface sanitizers don't have EPA approval to remove biofilm and are ineffective against the pathogens found in it." 

If claims by some of the manufacturers of sanitation aids are to be believed, specially formulated preparations are required which can only penetrate biofilms and destroy the bacteria residing within. As most of these products are patented and branded, very little is known regarding the scientific basis of such claims. Most difficult task in a food processing facility is to access remote nooks and crevices where there may be dampness, ideal for harboring biofilm clusters and which can infect the food during contact with the surface when processing is going on. Still efficient preparations containing active chlorine does a decent job with minimum risk of contamination. If biofilms pose real danger to the food processing sector as being claimed, it is time that safety authorities revisit the range of sanitizing agents approved and include more efficient ones for tackling dangers posed by the biofilms of pathogenic bacteria.    

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

THE "TOXIC" SOCIETY!-POTENTIAL POISONS THAT LURK AROUND!

Does any one think as to how toxic is the environment where modern mankind live? Probably not! There is a fatalistic perception among the people that because of a "vigilant" government which is supposed protect its citizens from likely dangers faced by them from time to time, they need not be apprehensive about their well being. Unfortunately this very government can be an impediment in providing clean and safe foods and a safe environment. A classical example is the use of over 85000 industrial chemicals reported to be currently in use for one or the other purpose by the manufacturing sector with suspect safety credentials. This is in sharp contrast to rigorous testing regimes imposed on synthetic chemicals permitted to be used in food and drug by the respective industry. It is beyond one's comprehension as to how such a dangerous situation has arisen and why safety agencies, national as well as international, have not bothered to do any thing to alleviate the situation. Here is a take on the sorry situation that prevails in this field in spite of enormous data being generated by science on the safety of many of the industrial chemicals

In its history, the E.P.A. has mandated safety testing for only a small percentage of the 85,000 industrial chemicals available for use today. And once chemicals are in use, the burden on the E.P.A. is so high that it has succeeded in banning or restricting only five substances, and often only in specific applications: polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, hexavalent chromium, asbestos and chlorofluorocarbons. Part of the growing pressure to update federal rules on chemical safety comes from advances in the science of biomonitoring, which tells us more about the chemicals to which we are exposed daily, like the bisphenol A (BPA) in can linings and hard plastics, the flame retardants in couches, the stain-resistant coatings on textiles and the nonylphenols in detergents, shampoos and paints. Hazardous chemicals have become so ubiquitous that scientists now talk about babies being born pre-polluted, sometimes with hundreds of synthetic chemicals showing up in their blood. It often takes a crisis to draw attention to how little the government knows about industrial chemicals in circulation. After the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, at least two million gallons of chemical dispersants were spread to break up the slick. But federal officials could not say they were safe because minimal testing had been done. The current presumption that chemicals are "safe until proven dangerous" stands in marked contrast to how pharmaceuticals and pesticide companies are handled. Companies making these products have to generate extensive data demonstrating the safety of pharmaceuticals or pesticides before they are sold. This was not always the case. Pharmaceutical companies used to be able to sell drugs with minimal prior testing, but that changed after a drug called Thalidomide, given in the 1950s to pregnant women for morning sickness, was found to cause severe birth defects the public outcry helped push the medical field to take a precautionary approach to introducing new drugs.s.   

The specious argument by the chemical industry that such testing if made mandatory will cast a great onus on them to spend billions of dollars in scientific studies and naturally this will have adverse impact on the price front making these chemicals exorbitantly costly. To some extent their plea is understandable but such considerations ought not to come in the way of ensuring the safety of the society. Of course there are plenty of data available readily in the literature and government can always consider them provided those who use them collate the same and submit the same to safety agencies. There can be joint study teams which can vet these data to come to any meaningful conclusion. But it is inevitable that mankind has to face this challenge collectively without further obfuscation.      

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com