From farm-to-table: Finding the missing link

Food retailers and producers keep assuring consumers that current food safety standards are the highest ever. Though this may be true, hardly a week goes by without a breaking food scandal making headlines. The farm-to-table approach obviously contains some weak links. But how best can these be traced and - most importantly - eliminated?
Elsevier Food International, Vol. 4, Number 1, February 2001
Vincent Hentzepeter

In a food production chain that is continuously upsizing its scale, slight errors can have serious consequences. Of course extensive measurements are being taken to ensure that current food safety standards are met. In many cases producers go beyond that, building in even more control steps. In spite of that, some things have gone seriously wrong in the recent past, and continue to do so today.
There is no reason to assume that advanced technological solutions will be able to eliminate food safety problems in the near future. It is even possible that the incidence of real problems will decrease, but that those problems themselves will eventually affect more individuals. Is that the price we have to pay for our upscaled production system? It means that unforeseen side-effects may have a greater impact than ever. The BSE crisis in the UK painfully illustrates what can happen when a worst-case scenario becomes reality. Feeding cows concentrates containing bonemeal from prion-infected sheep led to the transfer of the BSE-related disease Scrapie from sheep to cows. The problem got completely out of hand, once the so-called 'mad cows' were recycled for the production of new cow-feed concentrate. This resulted in an epidemic of incredible dimensions. Over 170,000 animals were diagnosed with the disease. Many more were actually infected, veterinarians believe, but failed to show symptoms of the disease.

Brain disorder
The BSE problem in the UK has been under control for some time now. The EU stop on the export of British beef has been released. But the consequences of the crisis are still with us. To make matters worse, the consumption of BSE-contaminated meat (in the past regarded as perfectly safe) has lead to a new type of the brain disorder – Creutzfeld-Jacob's disease - in humans. Some experts fear that this terminal disease, which mainly affects young people, may reach epidemic proportions. If this happens, thousands of people - and some sources even suggest ten thousand to six hundred thousand - may be affected. By November 2000, 74 people in the UK had died from this new type of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease. The British BSE disaster clearly shows the possible impact of weaknesses in the modern food chain. It also shows the importance of traceability. Without the ability to trace food back to its source, there can be no prevention of incidents and no food safety.
Governments have implemented a range of measurements to minimise the chances of transfer of the infectious prions from cattle feed to animals. This has not prevented new BSE cases in Europe. In the second half of 2000, cows in several countries were diagnosed with BSE. In some EU-member states, beef consumption temporarily dropped by tens of per cents. In France especially, news of the BSE problem hit the headlines last year: on October 20th, Carrefour withdrew batches of contaminated meat in 39 of its stores. Three hours after the warning and tracking system had been implemented, all remaining batches of beef were taken out of the food chain. All this was because a cow showing BSE symptoms had been brought to the slaughterhouse on October 10th. Even though the suspect animal had been excluded from the marketing circuit prior to slaughtering, Carrefour wasn't prepared to take any risks. The cow was part of a herd of 13 animals from the same farm and the meat of 11 other animals had already reached Carrefour's stores.

How could it happen?

A Italian Butcher shows a piece of beef that is labelled as checked and traced.

So how could a cow showing the symptoms of BSE make it all the way to the slaughterhouse without being properly diagnosed? Last November, in a bid to provide a better safeguard for human health, the European Commission launched a proposal for the establishment of a European Food Agency (EFA). Evaluating food safety in a scientific and independent way is one of the tasks of EFA. The agency will give supra-national advice in order to get EU-member states to act uniformly. This should put an end to the current situation, in which conflicting food safety guidelines are more the rule than the exception. With regard to BSE, the EFA will develop a 'Rapid Alert System' for food and feed. This includes the documentation of recalls and restrictions that have been raised with producers and suppliers. The EU ministers have decided to take even more stringent measures to prevent new BSE cases in the future. These include the implementation of new feed regulations, a proposal to slaughter cows above a certain age and consequently destroy them, as well as extra analysis of slaughtered animals regarding the possibility of BSE.

The GMO issue
Of course it's not just BSE that fuels the food safety discussion. The controversy about either using or banning genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food products has made traceability of ingredients a major issue for food producers. At the moment, European consumers tend to reject GMO-containing foodstuffs, whereas Americans seemed until recently hardly troubled by their presence in foodstuffs. For this reason European countries currently ban specific American products. At the same time, they demand guarantees as to the genetic content of imported ingredients and products. One of the problems related to GMOs is that the ingredients-flow of genetically engineered crops is not transparent.
On the contrary, soya beans of GMO and GMO-free origin are partly mixed. Increasingly, this practice causes problem with export of ingredients and foodstuffs from the US to Europe. To deal with this, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) intends to implement new federal regulations to define organic produce.
As this is not genetically engineered, it is easier to meet European food safety guidelines. The USDA regulations, which should have become law by December 2000, also affect beef exports in a positive way because they eliminate the use of synthetic growth hormones for cattle raising.

Listeria alert
On the microbiology front, calls are getting stronger for better control of pathogens. This has led to some extreme reactions: an import ban of several traditional French cheeses by the US caused a row between the two countries and French farmers reacted by attacking a McDonald's restaurant. All this is a sign of governments' and retailers' rising concern about the potentially dangerous bacteria and other pathogens in and on food products. It is not only Salmonella and Campylobacter that pose a chronic threat. In Europe especially, over the last year Listeria contaminations have hit the headlines. This bacteria strain is particularly harmful to pregnant women. Raw-milk-containing products, such as soft cheeses, fall into the high-risk category. The bacteria can multiply rapidly, particularly when the cold chain is interrupted. In order to prevent and facilitate recall procedures, a better alert system is needed. In terms of traceability, earlier detection of contamination problems will reduce health risks and restore consumer faith. This also points to a need for monitoring HACCP-procedures in order to ensure operation are carried out as effectively as possible.

Pesticide control
The same goes for abnormal levels of pesticide levels in food. Despite intensive laboratory testing and certificated shippings, foodstuffs that are not suitable for consumption - in other words, those that contain residues of chemical that exceed the maximum daily intake by far - can end up in the supermarket. Fruit and vegetable are particularly prone to pesticide-abuse. In this area, supermarkets have to make sure that maximum levels are not exceeded. Preferably, though, they should go one step beyond this: by forcing their suppliers to convert to more sustainable production methods that require lower levels of pesticide use, for example. Implementation of this scheme would have a positive effect on the supermarket image. At least some of the consumers will consider fruits and vegetables produced in such as way as added-value products. Recently Royal Ahold's Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn announced that, in the near future, all fresh products will be produced using as few chemicals as possible. Of course, a water-tight traceability concept and adequate chain control will be crucial to this approach. This means extensive, time-consuming negotiations with the agricultural sector. That might be the reason that other chains have not yet been able to follow Albert Heijri's progressive intention.

Allergen alarm
Allergens are another area of concern. According to the Centre for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition of the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the number of food recalls due to the presence of undeclared allergens rose sharply between 1998 and 1999. For this reason, the

The European beef industry has had to implement rigorous safety and traceability measures.

FDA has pushed allergen-labelling to the top of its list of priorities. Concern about the incidence of allergic reactions after food consumption is not restricted to the US, though. In Europe, for example, a growing number of food producers have set up websites containing detailed information on the ingredients within their products. Of course, this policy is in the companies' own interest - it is partly a public relations matter. Apart from the fact that allergen-free products are increasingly popular, consumers are clearly increasingly keen to know exactly what's in the product they're buying.
For the food industry, this again indicates that the need for traceability throughout the entire food chain is more important than ever. Food retailers will have to prove to consumers over the next few years that the need to meet ever-higher food safety standards is one they take extremely seriously. Improving traceability is one way to achieve this goal - and not just by telling the public it's going to happen, but by ensuring that it actually does so.