Is our food safe?

A spate of illnesses directly related to unhygienic food has galvanised the medical community both here and abroad into taking a closer look at how safe the food we eat is. This is a far cry from the turn of the 20th century. Then, food safety was not an issue that worried our health officials, since the food most people ate was farm fresh and grown under eco friendly conditions.

This was possible due to smaller numbers of people living in both towns and villages, and the fact that food production was limited to a much smaller scale than it is today.

The food one ate was generally grown and consumed locally in the village or town near where it was also harvested and sold by the village mudalalis at the ‘gamey kades.'

The only exceptions which called for mass production was in the event of a wedding or festival. Grown under traditional agricultural practices which had existed in our country for thousands of years, the food which people ate at the time was also healthy and free of contaminants, preservatives, pesticides and fertilisers. Vegetables and rice were grown on small village plots using eco friendly farming methods, habits.

Other than insects and worms which invariably attacked them and were usually driven away by scarecrows that dotted every village farm, the food that reached the consumer from the farm to their plates posed no health risks to them and caused no indigestion, diarrhoea or dysentery even when eaten raw.

Food Safety tips

So how can the ordinary consumer identify and protect himself from such contaminants? The WHO Representative, Dr. Mathur's food safety tips, offer some useful food for thought in relation to this question. He says: Buy quality food from reliable suppliers with clean premises.

Avoid damaged, dented, puffed or leaking cans and tetra packs.Make sure your cutting boards are clean and not cracked where germs can hide.

Keep the fridge clean and dry and don't over-stuff it. Good airflow inside the fridge is important for effective cooling and food safety. Keep fridge temperature at or below 5 degrees C. Separate raw meat, poultry, sea food and eggs from other food. Separate raw food from cooked food in the fridge. Refrigerate or freeze meat, poultry, sea food and other perishables within two hours of cooking or purchasing on hot days. Never thaw food at noon temperature.

Defrost food in fridge, cold water or microwave. Cook immediately after thawing. Wash hands with warm water and soap for at least 20 seconds before and after handling food. Wear disposable gloves if you have a cut or sore in your fingers. Don't cook if you have a respiratory disease.

Shared responsibility

So whose responsibility is Food Safety anyway? “It is a shared responsibility, since we are what we eat. The scope and concept of food safety is constantly evolving. Hence in addition to supporting the WHO campaign, the Health Ministry has developed its own strategies to promote food safety awareness and practices among cultivators, vendors, and the consumers. We are also teaching school children and teachers about consumer rights and how they should check labels, expired dates, the ingredients used and quantityefore purchasing any food product. Director Health Education Bureau, Dr. Neelamani Rajapaksha Wewageegana said.

The manner in which these foods were cooked also helped to keep tummy bugs at bay, as most households used plenty of herbs plucked from home gardens as spices to give flavour and taste to their food, and cooked their food and curries on slow fires serving them, steaming hot straight onto the freshly picked kehel kola plucked off a banana tree growing in their home gardens.

New dimension

Then came the dawn of the 21st century and all this changed as the population expanded and the demand for food began exceeding its supply. Internal migration from the village to towns and cities led to rapid urbanisation resulting in food production taking on a new dimension. Almost overnight it became a fully blown commercialised undertaking, leaving the small scale farmer and even the middle scale farmer languishing in its shadow.

New food related words soon entered our everyday jargon: Food processing, food preservatives, foodcolouring, food taste enhancers, words we had never heard before. The end result was the entry of a host of new illnesses which albeit common in the western world, was a rarity in South East Asian countries such as Sri Lanka.

Food contamination

“The outcome was that food safety now became a major issue for health officials. It took the whole question of food safety to a new level of concern.

Changes in food production such as intensive agriculture and the growing use of antibiotics in animal husbandry further compounded matters.

These changes have the potential to increase the risk of food contamination with elements harmful to human health”, WHO Representative for Sri Lanka, Dr. Arvind Mathur observed at a discussion on food safety Tuesday, held a week ahead of the 67th anniversary of the WHO and World Health Day, at the Health Education Bureau.

Laws

Speaking on food safety regulations in Sri Lanka, Deputy Director/Environmental and Occupational Health, Ministry of Health Dr. H.D. B Herath said that while several laws and acts were in place to assure food safety in the country under the provisions of the Food Act, the biggest challenge was in implementing these laws due to the unlimited staff as well as public apathy with regard to the laws. Colombo Municipal Council Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ruwan Wijeyamuni agreed.

He said customers were often to blame for the unsafe food they ate as they were indifferent to their surroundings and conditions under which their food was served. “We need to change their mindset as well as that of the people running these establishments”, he noted.

So will Sri Lankans be finally assured of being able to eat a meal that is safe and healthy?

Only time will show.

This is why the WHO's motto for 2015 is ‘From farm to plate, make food safe’, he said reiterating that food safety was no longer a matter of concern for a few but for everybody. As he pointed out, "It is rare to find anyone who has not encountered an unpleasant moment of food borne illness at least once in the past year.

''The chances are, that such illnesses may have been the result of consuming food contaminated by microbiaol pathogens, toxic chemicals or radio active materials. Such illnesses may last only a few days in some cases. But they can also lead to very serious and even fatal results. Ensuring food safety is thus the need of the hour, especially in the context of changing food habits, the growth of mass catering establishments and the globalisation of our food supply. Hence it's time to take a closer look at the way food is produced, stored and our own food habits”,he concluded.

“Yes”, he repeats, “People need to re-think their ideas about food production today as many of our growing methods are now increasingly unsafe with the disappearance of home gardens.

“Today, lifestyles have changed so much that the vast majority of people now eat from patronising restaurants and way side cafes and anywhere they can but some fast food at a low price.

So they are bound to be more exposed to contaminated food. Eating adulterated food with toxic elements, drinking unsafe polluted water with foreign elements, and food ripened artificially with carbide can expose people to long term dangerous diseases like liver failure and cancer,” he warned.