READING COMPREHENSION Foodborne illness or food poisoning is caused by consuming foodcontaminated with pathogenic bacteria, toxins, viruses, prions or parasites. Such contamination usually arises from improper handling, preparation or storage of food. Foodborne illness can also be causes by adding pesticides or medicines to food, or by accidentally consuming naturally poisonous substances like poisonous mushrooms or reef fish. Contact between food andpests, especially flies, rodents and cockroaches, is a further cause of contamination of food.
Some common disease are occasionally foodborne mainly through the water vector, even though they are usually transmitted by other routes. These include inflections caused by Shigella, Hepatitis A, and the parasites Giardia lamblia and Cryptosporidium parvum.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION DEFINITION
Foodborne illness are defined by the World Health Organization as diseases, usually either inflectious or toxic in nature, caused by agents that enter the body through the ingestion of food. Every person is at risk of foodborne illness.
PREVENTING BACTERAL FOOD POISONING
The prevention is mainly the role of the state, through the definition of strict rules of hygiene and a public service of veterinary survey of the food chain, from farming to the transformation industry and the delivery (shops and restaurants). This regulation includes:
-traceability: in a final product, it must be possible to know the origin of the ingredients (originating farm, identification of the harvesting or of the animal) and where and when it was processed; the origin of the illness can thus be tracked and solved ( and possibly penalized), and the final products can be removed from the sale if a problem is detected;
-respect of hygiene procedures like HACCP and the “cold chain”;
-Power of control and of law enforcement of the veterinarians.
At home, the prevention mainly consist of:
-The respect of the food storage and food preservation methods (especially refrigeration), and checking the expiration date;
-Washing the hands before preparing the meal and before eating;
-Washing the fresh vegetables with clear water, especially when not cooked (e.g. fruits, salads);
-Washing the dishes after use;
-Keeping the kitchen clean.
Bacteria need warmth, moisture, food and time to grow. The presence, or absence, of oxygen, salt, sugar and acidity are also important factors for growth. In the right conditions, one bacterium can multiply using binary fission to become four million in eight hours. Since bacteria can be neither smelled nor seen, the best way to ensure that food is safe is to follow principles of good food hygiene. This includes not allowing raw or partiially cooked food to touch dishes, utensils, hands or work suefaces previously used to handle even properly cooked or ready to eat food.
High salt, high sugar or high acid levels keep bacteria from growing, which is why salted meats, jam, and picked vegetables are traditional preserved foods. The most frequent causes of bacterial foodborne illness are crosscontamination and inadequate temperature control. Therefore control of these two matters is especially important.
Throughly cooking food untill it is piping hot, i.e. above 70 C will quickly kill virtually all bacteria, parasites or viruses, except for Clostridium botulinum and Clostridium perfrigens, which produces aheat-resistant spore that survives temperatures up to 100 C. Once cooked, hot foods should be kept- above 63 C stops microbial growth. Cold foods should be kept cold, below 5 C (41 F). However, Listeria monocytogenes and Yersinia enterocolitica ca both grow at refrigerator temperatures.