Colorado State University Extension
SafeFood Rapid Response Network
SAFEFOOD NEWS - Winter 2000 - Vol 4 / No. 2
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Celebrating a Century of Safer Foods
Typhoid fever, botulism, tuberculosis, rickets, scurvy, pellagra. Luckily, these diseases are rare today. Such was not the case at the turn of the century.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Safer and Healthier Food" is one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. Others include the discovery and use of vaccines, improvements in motor-vehicle safety, and safer workplaces. The dawn of a new millennium is a good time to celebrate the advances we've made in food safety. It's also a time to look ahead at the public health challenges we'll face in the 21st century.
At the turn of the 20th century, we kept our food fresh by placing it on blocks of ice or, in cold weather, burying it in the yard or storing it on a window sill outside. It wasn't until the 1920s that refrigerators with freezer compartments became available for household use.
In 1906, Upton Sinclair described the unsanitary conditions under which food was produced and meat was processed in his novel, The Jungle. Public awareness increased and Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act.
The early 1900s also brought us pasteurization. Although the process was first applied in wine preservation, when milk producers adopted the process, diseases associated with raw milk plummeted.
The early 40s brought us DDT and many other pesticides. DDT was hailed as a miracle product. Not only did cases of malaria and typhus decline worldwide following the introduction of DDT and the fungicide carbamate, but crop yields increased dramatically. The scientist who discovered DDT, Swiss chemist Paul Meuller, was awarded the Nobel prize.
The 1950s and '60s brought disillusionment with pesticides. Evidence was mounting that pesticides might not be as safe as originally thought-pesticides were killing off wildlife and beneficial insects and some pests were becoming resistant to the chemicals intended to control them. Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, helped publicize these concerns. Several laws were enacted and the Environmental Protection Agency was created. DDT was banned in 1970, 30 years after its introduction. In 1996, the Food Quality Protection Act set even stricter safety standards for pesticides, along with the requirement that all older pesticides be re-evaluated against these standards.
Despite all the strides we've made in improving the safety of the food supply, foodborne illness continues to be a major challenge. Bacteria, viruses and parasites that weren't even on our radar screen 15 years ago, like E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes and Cyclospora cayetanensis, are major issues today. Contributing factors include changes in agricultural and eating practices, globalization of the food supply, and the ability of microbes to adapt to and thrive in about any condition thrown their way.
What's in store for the 21st century? Improved surveillance, better capability of tracing seemingly unrelated cases of foodborne illness through DNA fingerprinting techniques, more education on safe food handling practices in food service operations and applied research focussing on the development and monitoring of integrated systems that consider food safety as a whole-from farm to table.
Source: Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Safer & Healthier Foods, MMWR Weekly, Oct. 15, 1999; 8(40); 907-913.
Updated Monday, August 29, 2011
