Food Hazards
Overview of hazards and risks
- Factors affecting food safety
o Ingredients
▪ Supply chain
▪ Organic: definitely not more safe, as many consumers think
▪ Climate: where do you grow something, what risks can be there
o Product properties
▪ Natural toxins: directly from the plant, or can get it from nature
o Contamination
▪ Microbial
▪ Chemical
▪ Physical
o Processing
▪ Maillard reactions
▪ Blackening
o Packaging
▪ Direct: when something is tightly packed no microorganism, but plastic particles may migrate into your
food
▪ Indirect
o Storage
o Transport: e.g. temperature during transport
o Analysis
▪ Pesticides
o Adulterations: adding things to food on purpose (food fraud)
o Communication
▪ Internal: inside the factory, e.g. between process operators
▪ External: e.g. press
- Food safety
o Risk assessment
o Risk management
o Risk communication
o Food law (not for this course)
- Food safety = Assurance that food will not cause harm to the consumer when it is prepared and/or eaten according to its
intended use.
- Hazard = A biological, chemical or physical agent in food (or condition of food) with the potential to cause an adverse health
effect.
o Cooked pieces of insect in principle are safe, so quality issue and not safety issue
,- Potential hazards and risks in food
o Control of individual vulnerable chemical
hazards is more difficult.
o Additional hazards: Heat and hot →
burning yourself, or eating extremely hot
peppers
- Risk communication and perception
o Perceived risks
▪ Pesticides
▪ GMO
▪ Plastic
▪ Additives
o Real risks
▪ Bacteria
▪ Mycotoxins
▪ Process chemicals
- Real risks and risk perception:
o Hospitalized patients: lot of physical because of bones that get stuck
o Acute cases in EU: microbial, not so high for hospital because people often don’t go to hospital for it
o Mortality in EU: microbial small, because people don’t often die of it, chemical very large because long term
- Mould on bread not dangerous (same fungus as in blue cheese), so actually quality issue.
Meat that is partly burned consists as many carcinogenic compounds as two packets of cigarettes. Barbecuing is quite
dangerous.
o Both are not expected, because people don’t eat mould on bread but they do eat meat form barbecue
- Pesticides
o Many people think that most fruits and vegetables have loads of pesticides (glycophosate discussion). They think of
pesticides in % level.
▪ Results give that most food is safe.
▪ Concentrations of pesticides are in ppb to ppm level. No acute risk, but may accumulate in body.
▪ Organic apples are much more toxic than non-organic (because have patulin).
- GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms): Micro-organisms and plants
o Change in DNA
o Approval procedure (EU) very strict and difficult
o No food safety risk for any of the approved products
o Are hardly used in EU. When an GMO ingredient is >0.9% of the total product, it should be specifically mentioned
on the label.
Warning label doesn’t sell so its hardly on the market. People are afraid of something that is not even sold.
o Microbial GMO products are often used in food supplements..
,- Fraud
o Potentially very dangerous
▪ Melamin
▪ ‘Gammelfleisch’: relabeling old meat
▪ Re-labelling
▪ Methanol
o ‘Economic fraud’ should/does not make people sick and last long time
▪ Polish street salt
▪ Organic/halal/local
▪ Horsemeat
▪ Olive oil
▪ Honey
- Recall: notification by producer
o In NL one product per week, is very little
o Recall is quite hard, because production chain is from A to B and recall from B to A. Very logistically expensive.
o In newspaper, on internet, on shelves, on radio and TV → safety
▪ Depending on urgency and spread of product
▪ People also get scared for similar products
More often ‘silent recall’ → quality
▪ Product taken from storage and/or shelves
▪ No publicity to public
▪ In case of quality problem, not safety
E.g. off-color, product broken, not good structure
- Other food safety issues
o Accidental hazards → unavoidable
▪ E.g. handgranate in the potatoes
o Mixed-up ingredients → in HACCP
▪ E.g. mixed up herbs
o Overdosing → in HACCP
▪ E.g. with vitamins, also rarely in human food
o Missing ingredients → in HACCP
▪ Happens very rarely
o Translation issues → QC
, 1) Introduction to toxicology
History and principles
- Toxicology = Study of the adverse toxic effects of chemicals on living organisms.
o This knowledge is essential for safe use of chemicals including drugs, additives, novel food ingredients, etc.
- Historical perspective
o Hunting, fishing and gathering
▪ Knowledge on acute toxic properties of plants, mushrooms and some minerals
▪ Probably less knowledge of chronic effects
→ Death cap (Amanita phalloides)
→Aconitum sp. (Monkshood): aconitin very potent poison 3-6 mg fatal
→Ancient Europe and Asia used to poison hunting spears and enemy water supplies during war. Cardiac
arrythmias (slowing heart rate) and hypotension (lowering blood pressure) were the result.
o Agricultural development (begins 5000-3000 B.C.)
▪ Cooking allowed cultivation of new plants containing natural toxins as crop.
▪ Storage and transport introduced new toxic compounds such as moulds (mycotoxins).
o Middle ages
▪ Paracelsus (1943-1541): founding father of toxicology
(Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim)
• Notion of dose
• ‘Alle Ding’ sind Gift, und nichts ohn’ Gift; allein die Dosis mach, das sein Ding kein Gift ist’.
• Dose response relationship: effect vs. dose/concentration
o Establishes causality that the chemical has in fact induced the observed effects.
o Determines the rate at which injury builds up: slope of dose-response curve (steep or
gentle)
o Industrial development
▪ Distance between food sources and consumer increases
▪ New preservation methods such as canning
▪ Addition of chemical additives for preservation or coloring
▪ Legal steps to guarantee good quality of food (end 19 th century)
▪ Percivall Pott
• Chimney sweeps had very high incidence of scrotal cancer, related to their constant exposure to
soot. Because it contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
• First one to link specific form of exposure to specific form of disease.
o 20th century toxicology
▪ Industrial revolution and WWII: alarm phase
▪ Many pesticides: chlorinated hydrocarbon insectides: DDT
▪ War gasses, munition: sarin, soman, uranium, agent orange (dioxins)
▪ Drugs: softenon (thalidomide), diethylstilbestrol (DES)
▪ Industrial chemicals
▪ Synthetic fibers
- Explanations
o DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and other organohalides (dieldrin, aldrin)
▪ To kill mosquitoes (malaria)
▪ Quite harmless for humans, but very persistant chemical
▪ Eggs of birds that had taken it up very fragile, reproduction problems
▪ Due to chemicals exposure: Rachel Carson ‘Silent spring’ 1962. Challenged the notion that man was
destined to control nature. Specifically to control pests.
