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<< back to the 2004 archive listing << Food Protection Trends President's Perspective “It's not our personal ecosphere!” Laurie Garrett in her 1994 book, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, warned us that “Rapid globalization of human niches requires that human beings everywhere on the planet go beyond viewing their neighborhoods, provinces, countries, or hemispheres as the sum total of their personal ecospheres.” That same year, the Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg reminded us “The world really is just one village. Our tolerance of disease in any place in the world is at our peril.” Although ten years have passed since these words were written, they nevertheless, ring true today as ever before. In 2003, according to the US Bureau of Census Trade, the total agricultural and fish product imports into the United States, excluding forestry products, was over $56 billion. This represents a 12% increase over 2002 levels and a 24% increase over 1999 levels. In 2003, agricultural imports from South America, Central America, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa accounted for over 34% of the US total imports and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. We live in a global economy and the way food is grown, processed, and handled can impact any of us in other parts of the world. One just has to look at several recent examples to recognize the global nature of our food supply. These include the global emergence of BSE, recent issues with chlorophenicol in honey and high levels of lead in powdered garlic — both commodities sourced from China, cases of cyclosporiasis linked to Guatemalan raspberries, cases of Salmonellosis linked to imported cantaloupe, and an outbreak of hepatitis A among schoolchildren linked to strawberries sourced from Mexico, to name a few. Global sourcing of foods and food ingredients makes eminent economic sense and provides us with a wide variety of foods we otherwise would not enjoy. However, from a food safety perspective, it often provides unique challenges to the food safety professional. Overlay these issues with the complexity of protecting the food supply from a food security perspective, the challenges seem even more daunting. In my opinion, it is the responsibility of all of us, as food safety professionals, to work together to address the global food safety issues we collectively face. Your Association is working hard to address this critically important area in a number of ways. For example, we have a number of inter-national affiliates including Brazil, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, and the United Kingdom that are active in promoting scientific exchange and education in the area of food safety in their part of the world. IAFP has sponsored produce safety workshops in Mexico and Guatemala and we are co-sponsoring a conference in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the International Centre for HACCP Innovation at the University of Salford in England. This workshop entitled “Food Safety and HACCP in the 21st Century, From Theory to Practice” will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, September 1–3, 2004. Anyone interested in this conference should contact our Executive Director, David Tharp, at www. foodprotection.org. Of course, every year we address food safety issues of a global nature at our Annual Meeting and virtually every month we publish excellent peer-reviewed scientific papers from international authors in the Journal of Food Protection and Food Protection Trends. While these are all positive developments, there is still so much that needs to be done in assuring the safety of our global food supply. Innovative and cost-effective controls that can be implemented in developing countries are desperately needed. Consensus needs to be achieved on microbiological criteria and standards for various food commodities in international commerce and dialogue and edu-cation need to be an on-going activity. I urge all IAFP Members to contemplate this issue and take action in some form, if you’re not already helping to address the issue of global food safety. Your involvement could range from helping to sponsor travel for deserving scientists from developing countries to our Annual Meeting to participating in international workshops, to starting an IAFP affiliate in your home country if one doesn’t exist. I truly believe that it is our responsibility and duty as food safety professionals to take a global perspective on this issue. After all, the world is not just exclusively our personal ecosphere as Garrett warned us, rather, it is one village, as Lederberg reminded us. How we shepherd our village says a lot about us as a global society. As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments at phall@kraft.com. Until next month… |