News
Worldwide food safety alert system
11 March 2010
Countries producing food containing harmful bacteria and toxins
could be named and shamed more quickly using a worldwide alert system
devised by a team of scientists from Kingston University in South West
London.
The team, led by Professor Declan Naughton, says the easy to use
computer tool can be used to monitor contaminated products, helping to
prevent them reaching shop shelves and ensuring that food is safe to
eat.
Thousands of alerts about contaminated food are produced each year,
particularly by developed countries, but there is no single
international system for monitoring food safety. This prompted Professor
Naughton and his colleagues, from the School of Life Sciences, to
develop a program to analyse alerts and produce a global picture of the
countries that trade and detect contaminated food that can be deadly or
cause health problems from food poisoning to long term degenerative
diseases.
Professor Naughton recently presented a summary of the team’s
findings to a conference organised by the European Food Security
Authority, the EU’s food safety and security watchdog. The findings are
also published in the online journal Plos One [1].
Professor Naughton said the program was the most sophisticated
available, providing more detailed information more quickly than its
rivals. “No other system can reflect the complexity of this information
in a snapshot form,” he said. "It can be particularly helpful to
developing countries new to food testing because information is easy to
access and available in minutes.” The program could also be applied to
other global health hazards such as pest control or illegal animal or
plant imports.
China, Iran, Turkey, the United States and Spain were the top five
offenders when it came to producing contaminated food, according to an
analysis of data from 2003-2008. Over the same five-year period, Italy,
Germany, the UK, Spain and the Netherlands were the countries that
reported the largest number of contaminated products from other
countries. Toxins in pistachio nuts from Iran, food recalled by major
supermarket chains and imported products stopped by border agencies were
among the alerts included in the analysis.
Professor Naughton said the program could provide profiles of
individual countries that had problems with food safety as well as
identifying particular contaminants that needed investigating, such as
high levels of mercury in fish. He said: “We’d like to develop the tool
to create an international alert system that will provide real time
information about emerging patterns and problems.” The program could
also be used to help prepare for malicious or terrorist attempts to
contaminate food, he added.
Reference
1. Tamás Nepusz, Andrea Petróczi, Declan P. Naughton. Network
Analytical Tool for Monitoring Global Food Safety Highlights China.
Published online in Plos One:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006680
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