Global
food trade is a big and risky business.
About one trillion dollars worth of food is
traded every year around the world, but only a tiny portion gets tested for
contaminants - ranging from about one percent of imports in the United States
to about 10 percent in Japan.
And yet, at least 1.8 million people die from
diarrheal disease caused by contaminated food or water annually, and
"developing countries bear the brunt of the problem," according to
the World Health Organization.
Considering the high costs of an outbreak -
both in human lives and in money lost - world governments are searching for
ways to improve food safety without actually boosting their surveillance of
what enters their borders.
A new approach to the dilemma was unveiled
this week at a university campus on the outskirts of the US capital, at a
facility called the International Food Safety Training Laboratory.
The IFSTL is based in a handful of rooms on
the campus of the University of Maryland where US government regulators and
teachers equipped with advanced testing technologies train international
scientists in the US food safety.
Lab manager Janie DuBois said it is the first
lab of its kind in the world to tackle a variety of techniques year round,
ranging from pesticide residue to microtoxins and bacterial pathogens like
salmonella and E.coli.
"Everybody wants to know what the
regulation is and understand how they are supposed to carry out their
scientific programme to meet that regulation," DuBois said.
"The United States is not imposing its
methods on other countries," she added. "There is really a grander
goal of harmonisation of techniques."
Such practices are needed because food imports
into the United States have nearly doubled in the past decade, up from $41
billion annually in 1998 to $78 billion in 2007, according to US Department of
Agriculture figures.
While deadly outbreaks - such as the recent
spread of E.coli in Germany and France that was traced to contaminated Egyptian
fenugreek - grab headlines and rattle consumers, the IFSTL was not created in
response to any particular scare.
Instead, it was a change to US law, known as
the Food Safety and Modernisation Act, signed by President Barack Obama.
The law requires the US government to
"expand the technical, scientific and regulatory food safety of foreign
governments, and their respective food industries, from which foods are
exported to the United States."
So now, for a cost of about $2,500 per week
per student, governments and private businesses can send their food safety
scientists to the US lab for hands-on training.
"We learned many things here we didn't
know before," said Jackie Han, a Chinese food additives testing supervisor
at Qingdao Hr-Qau Inspection Limited, who donned a white lab coat and spoke to
AFP during a break in between sessions this week.
"There is not much information in China
so we come out here to get the real thing," said Han, who was among about
a dozen visiting students from China and Indonesia making up the lab's
first-ever class.
"Our goal is to be the bridge between
China and the foreign countries, between the food exporters and
importers."
It may be good business for China, which is
rapidly increasing its US exports, to show its interest in keeping food safe,
but it is also economical for the United States, which in turn can limit the
burden on US inspectors.
To act otherwise when up to 60 percent of
produce and 80 percent of seafood consumed in the United States comes from
other countries, would be too expensive, said Paul Young, director of chemical
analysis operations at Waters Corporation.
"Testing at import, while it is important
for sure, is not the solution. The solution needs to be built into the
production systems in the country of origin."
Waters provided equipment to the new lab,
including a state of the art mass spectrometer.
The sophisticated machine enables scientists
to test for "very large numbers of potential contaminants in a very short
period of time and also to be able to detect them at exquisitely low concentrations,"
said Young.
Lab planning for the rest of this year is
still under way, but organisers are aiming for 15-20 courses annually, with an
eye to eventually replicating the model in other countries.
"The next step is building a global
network of interconnected laboratories so they can share curricula and best
practices," said Young. -By Kerry Sheridan
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