Prevention measures food contamination

Chu FS Mycotoxins Food contamination, mechanism, carcinogenic potential and preventive measures. Mutat Res 1991 259 291-306. 

The ultimate goal is to understand the relationship between HCAs and human cancer and to search for various measures to reduce the risk of, or to prevent, cancer. Food contains a complex mixture of nutrients, vitamins, additives, contaminants, and phytochemicals. The simplest way to reduce risk is to reduce the intakes of HCAs where possible through modified methods of cooking and, at the same time, to encourage the consumption of fruits and vegetables, especially of the cruciferous family. The results presented here support the epidemiological evidence that dietary phytochemicals can protect against cancer [108, 109],... 

The example of application demonstrates the capability of the new approach to reproduce real scenarios, i.e. evolution of hazards, and to assess the efifectiveness of the preventive measures through the food chain. Thus, the results derived for the base case, i.e. with fiiU control of the milk chain, demonstrate the normal situation one can expect, where control of pasteurization parameters reduces contaminated milk reaching consumer s home to virtually zero. This has been revealed the most important preventive measure, as expected. In... 

In conclusion, it can be said that mercury poisoning has only occurred after illegal use of dressed seed grain or where the illegal introduction of mercurial salts into the water exposed the population to severely contaminated food. Further poisonings, especially as the result of contaminated fish, have not been observed up to now. This is most certainly to some extent the result of preventive measures. For example in Sweden and North America upper permissable limits e.g. in fish have been fixed, although this meant considerable losses for certain branches of the economy. 

Toxic food contaminants might also be formed within the food itself or within the human digestive tract by reactions of some food ingredients and additives (e.g. nitrosamines). Measures required to prevent contamination include ... 

Dust generation can lead to a number of problems for food powders. These can be summarised as follows (i) health problems, in particular allergy problems (ii) contamination and plant hygiene issues due to dust settling and sticking onto equipment and (iii) fire/explosion hazards. As a result, improvement in dust measurement, prevention and control is a major issue when dealing with food powders. 

Measures to prevent transmission include proper disposal of feces, wastewater treatment, and a filtration step before chlorination in water treatment plants that draw from surface water sources. Cooking kills the cysts in contaminated foods and boiling will make water safe for use. For backpackers who walk through the wilderness, iodine has been shown to be a better disinfectant for giardia cyst than chlorine. It should be emphasized that of all the methods of preventing contamination from the cyst, a properly designed and operated water filtration plant is the best line of defense in drinking water supplies. 

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