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Food safety, a consumer's right
Dr Unesu Ushewokunze-Obatolu , The Herald (Zimbabwe)
February 15, 2008

http://allafrica.com/stories/200802150074.html

While in situations of supply constraints we often give up on our expectations on quality and safety, as consumers we need to remain reminded that food is a fundamental component of our health and well-being.

The onus for ensuring that the food that we purchase gives us value for our money, will be of the highest quality and will promote our health, remains with us as consumers.

At the same time, however, supply chains in the food industry have grown to become so complicated that public policy has to be in place to safeguard consumers from hazardous practices, some of which could be fraudulent or, at worst, can result in health hazards. It is also quite common for a manufactured food product to comprise of local and imported components from distant, often culturally alien locations.

Some foods by their nature deteriorate easily, while others are more prone to causing food-borne illness. Food-borne health risks are often higher with fresh animal products such as milk, meats and their products which usually have shorter shelf-life if improperly stored or which may carry zoonotic (transmissible between man and animals) disease.

Food can also be contaminated at production or elsewhere in the food supply chain. Within this interest, consumers should in particular be wary of the health risks that foods may present.

This is in the context of the rising frequency of emergence of new diseases, re-emergence of older diseases such as TB among others, in new forms, with grave implications in terms of the social cost of health care.

Currently, a number of products, especially fresh milk and meats, are being presented on the market without evidence of adherence to the food control rules, thereby potentially endangering unsuspecting consumers. The Government, through a number of statutes, employs mandatory sanitary measures and monitoring systems for food safety for the promotion of public health and fair trade.

These services can only improve with public support. For these food control regimes to work, the systems need to be fully integrated involving all those participating in the food supply chain, beginning with producers (farmers), to transporters, processors, distributors (wholesalers), storage agents, marketers to consumers, in what is commonly referred to as the "farm-to-fork" approach to food safety.

In this chain, therefore, the three main players in food control systems are the Government or local authorities as official control agents, the food business industry and the consumer.

In this triad of a commercialised food industry, food safety is the primary responsibility of the food business industry who must ensure that they demonstrably employ standards that include the hygienic handling of foods, maintain on the business premises fully traceable systematic records of the sources of food and incorporated ingredients, and can present evidence of process controls and infrastructure that promotes hygiene and safety to provide product of highest quality and safety.

Official food control agencies check on these parameters towards consumer protection.

The purpose of food controls is mainly to promote public health, but it also benefits food security by reducing unnecessary wastage through spoilage as well as to regulate imports.

These controls complement advice and training given to producers by public agricultural, health and veterinary extension agencies, in the form of good hygienic (sanitary) and good agricultural practices to minimise the risk of zoonotic disease, environmental contaminants and other toxic inputs that are invariably necessary in the production phases.

The standards used in these preventive and monitoring services are science-based. These science-based aspects of quality and safety must be further guaranteed by clearly evidenced abilities by a food business to identify their product at the consumer end. It is, therefore, important that consumers adopt a culture of purchasing manufactured food products that are identifiable to source or manufacturer, and packaged in approved containers that are date-labelled with production and expiry dates.

All this is done to assure that the industry is working to public safety interests. Adopting such practices also helps in gaining consumer confidence and is, therefore, beneficial to the economy. In addition, meeting these requirements makes it easier for industry to gain access to foreign markets.

As a regulatory authority, we are concerned with the increasing appearance of fresh milk in bulk containers and soured milk in literally open vats in urban supermarkets. Whether or not this milk is pasteurised, consumers are not in a position to be protected because it is largely not possible to apply recall measures should there be a problem because of identification problems at the consumer end. There is, therefore, an inherent risk in the marketing of such milk. The list of diseases that may present risks is long. Some of them from milk include Enterotoxigenic E. Coli, Listeriosis, Q fever, cattle and human tuberculosis, and Undulant fever.

The same goes for the informal marketing of fresh meats (including street vending of fresh fish) which is often not inspected and, therefore, not certified. From meats there is human tapeworm infestation, anthrax, botulism and salmonellosis. The intention of this article is not to decry the public access to animal protein but to warn people of the hazards that present with such indulgence. Our responsibility is to ensure consumer protection. As a veterinary department we also uphold ethics in animal health care.

Leading, reputable industries involved in animal products for human consumption should also be concerned about the non-application of food safety standards as this compromises their market penetration.

* Dr Unesu Ushewokunze-Obatolu, BVM, MSc, MPVM, PhD, is with the Department of Veterinary Public Health and Animal Health Diagnostics. The department, which falls under the Ministry of Agriculture, is a regulatory one with a focus on the safety and quality of foods of animal origin.

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