Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
10 or more fl y eggs in a small juice glass; pizza sauce is allowed 15 or
more fl y eggs and one or more maggots in the same size glass. Ground
pepper is allowed up to 270 insect parts per ounce. An 18-ounce jar of
peanut butter may contain approximately 145 bug parts or 5 or more
rodent hairs. (Who does the counting?) The most recent edition of the
booklet states that “the defect levels do not represent an average of the
defects that occur in any of the products; the averages are actually much
lower.” That's comforting to know. Perhaps the peanut butter sandwich
I had for lunch today had only 9 bug parts and 2 rodent hairs because
I ate only a small part of the contents of the peanut butter jar. It seems
that processed foods contain extra proteins not listed on the label.
Processed foods have recently come under scrutiny for salmonella and
other pathogens. The salmonella bacterium causes more than 1 million
illnesses each year in the United States. Some of the 100 million frozen
pot pies made and sold by ConAgra Foods sickened an estimated 15,000
people in 2007.
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The company was unable to determine which of the
twenty-fi ve pie ingredients was contaminated and decided to change
previous policy and make the consumer responsible for killing the patho-
gens during the cooking process by advising on the package “food
safety” instructions that the internal temperature needs to reach 165ºF
as measured by a food thermometer in several spots. The USDA reports
that less that half the population owns a food thermometer and only 3
percent use it when cooking high-risk foods.
An increasing percentage of Americans are justifi ably concerned about
the apparent lack of safety of the food supply. A Gallup poll in 2007
revealed that the percentage of Americans expressing confi dence in the
federal government's ability to ensure the safety of our food supply
dropped to 71 percent from a high of 85 percent in 2005.
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State oversight varies greatly among states. In the scare over salmo-
nella-laced peanuts in 2008, forty-two Minnesotans were reported sick
compared with three Kentuckians. It seems doubtful that fourteen times
as many Minnesotans eat peanuts than residents of Kentucky. In 2008
forty-two Minnesotans became ill from jalapeno peppers compared to
two in Kentucky. It is unlikely that Kentuckians have better immune
systems. From 1990 to 2006, Minnesota health offi cials uncovered 548
food-related illness outbreaks, while those in Kentucky found 18. The
differences between the two states arise because health offi cials in Ken-
tucky and many other states fail to investigate many complaints of food-
related sickness, while those in Minnesota are more diligent. The public
health commissioner in Kentucky blamed tight budgets and admitted
