Food safety is now one of the hottest topics receiving serious attention from the safety agencies, paradoxically in developed countries where foods are supposed to be handled/processed, distributed, stored and tested at laboratories with most modern and sophisticated instruments. Still episodes of food poisoning from pathogens that infect foods are much more in these countries than that reported in undeveloped and under developed countries. Why? Is it because of the extra susceptibility of the population there with low immunity and resistance? How can that be when they have access to best foods that can be purchased in their countries, churned out by their modern food industry? Here is an interesting story coming out from the US which highlights the paradox.
Would you chop your vegetables on your toilet seat? I think pretty much all of us would say No. But maybe we should think again. Dr Chuck Gerba, professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona, studies how diseases are transferred through the environment. This involves swabbing household items and measuring how many bacteria - and what sort - develop. He particularly looks for faecal bacteria such as E.coli and Staphylococcus aureus. His studies have found that on the average in the toilet seat there are 50 bacteria per square inch. "It's one of the cleanest things you'll run across in terms of micro-organisms," he says. "It's our gold standard - there are not many things cleaner than a toilet seat when it comes to germs." We should be more worried about other household items, it seems. "Usually there are about 200 times more faecal bacteria on the average cutting board than on a toilet seat," he says. In the kitchen it doesn't necessarily get there through actual contact with faeces. It comes via raw meat products or the viscera from inside of the animal, where a lot of the faecal bacteria originate.
The research studies which claim that the toilet seat used every day in these households is microbiologically much superior to the kitchen cutting board probably can be believed because every house wife considers toilet as the dirtiest place at home. Naturally that makes them use some of the most powerful germ killer chemicals known with plenty of water, giving no chance for the microbes to proliferate, though theoretically toilet is the most concentrated source of E.coli! The fact is that same attention is not given to wash thoroughly utensils, cutting boards and other paraphernalia in the kitchen, raising the chance for microbes to survive and proliferate. The problem becomes more acute for those house holds cooking both animal foods and plant derived ones regularly. While such reports may ring alarm bells among many families, there may not be really a dangerous situation as almost all foods are cooked at temperatures above 100C causing a 100% kill of these vectors. Of course salad vegetables and other cold foods may be vulnerable to cross contamination and it is advisable that separate boards and knives are kept for them as far as possible.
V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com
