Introduction
As the demand by consumers for safe and suitable food increases, food safety has become critical as it results in significant sickness and economic costs to society and countries. Concerns regarding food safety have grown because of dramatic occurrences of foodborne infections, accidents, and outbreaks, as well as the use of contemporary biotechnology, pesticides, food additives, and other toxins (Oplatowska-Stachowiak & Elliott, 2017). There is rising concern regarding the safety of certain regularly used legal food colorants, as they have been substituting natural materials with artificial synthetic ones.
Additionally, various colors known or suspected of having carcinogenic, mutagenic, and genotoxic qualities are added illegally to meals (Oplatowska-Stachowiak & Elliott, 2017). Because of the increasing concerns about the food safety outbreak of foodborne diseases and other food contamination in the United States, sophisticated inspection-based procedures based on accurate detection technologies are necessary to ensure that food is free of hazardous colors. This paper will argue how the Food Safety and Modernization Act has helped to prevent food supply contamination.
Food Safety Modernization Act and its Historical Importance
The Food Safety Modernization Act significantly overhauled the United States’ existing food safety legislation. It entails a change in emphasis from reactionary controls to preventive controls for food manufacturing, harvesting, processing, packaging, and storage. According to current statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 48 million individuals (1 in 6 Americans) get ill each year from foodborne infections, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die (CDC, 2017a). This illness is a substantial cost to public health that is generally avoidable.
The FDA dramatically reduces the public health burden by reforming the Food Safety Modernization Act. For example, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) empowers the agency to safeguard public health by upgrading the food safety system (Zhang & Seale, 2017). It allows the FDA to emphasize avoiding food safety concerns rather than resolving them after they arise. Additionally, the bill empowers the FDA with additional enforcement capabilities to increase compliance with prevention- and risk-based food safety standards and to react more effectively and control food safety concerns when they arise (Zhang & Seale, 2017). The bill provides the FDA with critical new powers to hold imported goods to the same standards as domestic foods and urges the FDA to collaborate with state and local authorities to develop an integrated national food safety system (Zhang & Seale, 2017). These are some of the ways the FSMA act increases food safety for American citizens.
Developing a new food safety system centered on prevention will take time. The FDA is developing a method for implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) across the nation. Exporters from developing countries must grasp the Act’s principles and apply them to avoid having their items denied at US ports of entry (Adalja & Lichtenberg, 2018). As a result, food-exporting enterprises and regulators are urged to transform their food production, handling, and export operations to comply with the Act’s standards. Similarly, the FSMA refocuses the FDA’s efforts on assuring food safety via proactive microbial contamination prevention rather than reactively responding to a problem that has already happened (Adalja & Lichtenberg, 2018). The food sector faces significant compliance issues with recent modifications to food safety laws. Thus, Growers, producers, harvesters, and processors must thoroughly understand the requirements to overcome the FSMA’s obstacles. These mechanisms demonstrate the FDA’s commitment to executing the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) standards in an open and participatory manner.
Food Poisoning (Foodborne Illness)
Food poisoning is one of the leading causes of disease and death in the United States. Food poisoning is caused by infectious organisms such as bacteria, viruses, parasites, or toxins. These pathogenic organisms or their toxins may contaminate food at any phase of processing or manufacturing due to various environmental contaminants, including water, soil, or air pollution, as well as hazardous food storage and processing (Mostafa et al., 2018). Foodborne infections may cause various disorders, including diarrhea, cancer, and gastrointestinal problems, but they can also cause neurological, gynecological, and immunological symptoms. Diarrhea is a widespread disease in all nations, while it is disproportionately burdened in low- and middle-income countries and among children under the age of five (Melese et al., 2019). Thus, foodborne sickness or food poisoning is caused by the intake of contaminated food, pathogenic bacteria, viruses, parasites, and chemical or natural poisons such as deadly mushrooms.
Causes of Food Poisoning
The most obvious is the presence of pathogenic microbes in food. Raw foods are unsanitary. Contamination may occur during the cultivation, harvesting, processing, storage, shipping, and final preparation. Contamination may come from various sources, including food preparation at a restaurant or a person’s home kitchen (Watari et al., 2021). Observation of the food does not necessarily indicate its potential for causing foodborne disease. Consumption of the food does not offer information regarding the degree and kind of contamination. Rather than that, it is the result of food illness that determines the meal’s microbiologic risk potential.
Microbiologic dangers include viruses, bacteria, and parasites, the most common causes of food poisoning. Microbes may contaminate food throughout the growing, harvesting, slaughtering, processing, storage, transporting, or preparation processes (Watari et al., 2021). Certain harmful germs may already be present in foods purchased. Microbes are present in a wide range of meals, including freshly prepared veggies. Likewise, if raw meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs are not kept apart from other foods, bacteria from natural foods may be transferred to other meals. Additionally, microbes may be transported from raw foods to the hands, kitchen utensils, cutting boards, and other kitchen surfaces (Melese et al., 2019). Finally, hands, utensils, cutting boards, and other elements may carry bacteria to other foods after contacting raw foods.
Mechanism of Food Contamination
Food contamination occurs due to the chemicals that arise in food or food components due to numerous chemical reactions. Restaurants, supermarkets, vending machines, and cafeterias, for example, are principal breeding grounds for food contamination (Greenberg, 2016). Food is transported from the farm or fishery to the dinner table via various processes. The food manufacturing chain comprises these phases, where contamination may occur at any step along the supply chain, including manufacturing, processing, distribution, and preparation (Garvey, 2019). The following are the numerous ways in which food becomes contaminated.
Production includes cultivating plants for harvest and raising livestock to consume them. The bulk of the food is produced on farms or ranches using domesticated animals and crops. Certain foods, such as fish, mushrooms, and animals, are captured or harvested in the wild. Consequently, if a hen’s reproductive organs get unwell, the yolk of an egg may become contaminated prior to laying, or vice versa. If polluted water is used to irrigate fields, fruits and vegetables may become infected prior to harvest (Garvey, 2019). Another alternative is transforming plants or animals into a product, such as milk or cheese, and selling them as food.
Processing varies according to the kind of food. Processing food may vary from the simple Act of washing and sorting to the more involved process of trimming, slicing, or shredding (CDC, 2017b). Milk is often pasteurized; sometimes, it is converted into cheese with the addition of roasted, chopped, or crushed nuts (such as peanut butter). Slaughter is the first stage in the processing of animals. Following that, cut or grind the meat and poultry. Additionally, they may be smoked, boiled, or frozen and combined with other ingredients to create sausages or entrées such as potpies (CDC, 2017b). Thus, if infected water or ice is used to wash, pack, or freeze fruits and vegetables, contamination may spread, or germs on the hide of an animal during the slaughter process may permeate the final meat product.
Contamination of food may also occur during distribution. The process of conveying food from a farm or processing facility to a client or a food service institution such as a cafe, canteen, or institutional kitchen is distributed (CDC, 2017b). This step may involve one-time transportation of commodities, such as transporting vegetables from a farm to a neighborhood farmers’ market. Alternatively, it might be a staged procedure. For instance, frozen burger patties may be trucked from a meat factory to a famous supplier, then kept in the supplier’s warehouse for a few days before being trucked again to a restaurant chain’s local distribution hub and ultimately delivered to an individual restaurant (CDC, 2017b). Thus, if chilled food is left on a docking station in hot weather for a lengthy period, it may reach temperatures suitable for bacteria development, or if fresh produce is put in a vehicle that has not been washed after carrying animals or animal products, it may get contaminated.
Preparation is the last process through which food may get contaminated. The term “preparation” refers to transforming food into a consumable form. This step may occur in a restaurant’s kitchen, a private house, or an organization (CDC, 2017b). It could involve following a complicated recipe with multiple components, simply heating and arranging food on a casserole, or simply opening a bundle and eating the meal; thus, whether a food worker remains on the job while ill and does not thoroughly rinse their hands after using the restroom, they can transmit the disease by coming into contact while cooking. Similarly, if a chef cuts raw chicken on a chopping board or knife and then uses the same board or knife to slice vegetables for a salad without cleaning it, the vegetables might get infected with chicken germs.
FSMA will make our Food Safe
Despite it all coming down to our hygiene and sanitation, FSMA has made the extra step to ensure it is safe before the food reaches the citizen. Based on the analysis of the FSMA, what are food poisoning, and the various mechanism of food contamination, the following are ways how FSMA guarantees food safety:
The FSMA requires the Food and Drug Administration to guarantee that importers adhere to US regulatory standards and that the food is safe for human consumption. This adherence entails enforcing policies like importer accountability, which require importers to check that their suppliers have sufficient safeguards to ensure the safety of the food they produce (Hamburg, 2011). Additionally, the FDA is required to implement a procedure requiring qualified third parties to verify that their food complies with US-set criteria and is safe for human consumption, where the third parties who certify high-risk goods provide a certificate of assurance of compliance (Zhang & Seale, 2017). Similarly, the voluntary qualified importer’s program requires the FDA to implement thorough food screening and entry and reject entrance to food that has been denied FDA access at their facilities or by the nation in which the facilities are situated (Acheson, 2015). These rules have aided the FSMA and FDA in ensuring the safety of American society’s food.
Apart from implementing policies to ensure food safety, the Food Safety Modernization Act requires the FDA to have the tools necessary to react effectively to any concerns. The Act dramatically strengthens the FDA’s capacity to regulate the millions of food items imported to the United States each year (Hamburg, 2011). These include mandatory recalls, which need the FDA to remove tainted food from the market if the manufacturer fails to do so freely. Similarly, the FSMA has the jurisdiction to seize items that breach the law and even suspend a facility’s registration if the food produced results in significant sickness or death. FSMA protects American citizens’ food safety by requiring firms that handle high-risk foods to maintain records of when a particular product was created, processed, and packaged. Maintaining records enables the FDA to investigate and identify the guilty party after an occurrence (Rock et al., 2019). The Food Safety Modernization Act’s provisions have guaranteed that Americans have access to safe foods.
In the United States, the Food Safety Modernization Act has lowered the cost of treating food poisoning infections. For example, it places a premium on prevention rather than treatment; as a result, the majority of food poisonings are discovered sooner and treated before wreaking havoc on human lives (Kaylegian, 2021). Similarly, the FSMA has increased public awareness of food contamination in general, making many people learn how to handle food to avoid illness properly. This initiative has been accomplished via training programs offered at the federal and state levels of government. Additionally, the FSMA guarantees that fruits and vegetables are gathered correctly and that the use of specific machinery and chemical fertilizers that are harmful to certain plants and animals is restricted (Zhang & Seale, 2017). As a result of FSMA, companies responsible for growing, producing, packing, storing, importing, and transporting our food are now taking actual actions to limit the risk of contamination daily (Yiannas, 2021). Thus, this helps to prevent food poisoning by raising the grade of food items and eliminating low-quality foods that cause food poisoning and diseases such as cancer. Through FSMA, substandard food items are now clearly detectable during the inspection, requiring manufacturers to maintain a high standard of cleanliness.
Conclusion
The adoption of sophisticated inspection-based procedures based on accurate detection technologies by the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Food and Drug Administration has changed the lives of many Americans. These inspections apply to US citizens and many countries where, through the law’s implementation, food processed within the state and foreign countries has been inspected, which has prevented unnecessary life loss. It has also created partnerships at the federal and state levels that have geared the health sector toward achieving its goals through food inspection. Similarly, food facilities have increased the standards of their products and minimized the chances of massive life loss. As a result, the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Food and Drug Administration have helped reduce the supply of contaminated food and, hence, make American citizens’ food safer.
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