The Enforcement of Food Safety - Essay Example

Tom Hilberg 04/15/07 The Effects of Diverting Food Safety Resources into the Promotion of Healthier Eating The enforcement of food safety and the promotion of healthier eating are both very important for public health, but healthy eating is by far the more important of the two. Food safety enforcement plays a large role in preventing illnesses caused by pathogens in food. However, most diseases that infect people who eat unsafe or poorly prepared food are not very serious and the risk of mortality or permanent side effects from nearly all of them is extremely low if people have access to modern medical treatment. Proper nutrition and diet are necessary to avoid many health problems, such as heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and cancer. People that follow an adequate diet are also more resistant to most types of infections than people who are malnourished. An extremely poor diet can even cause various deficiency diseases such as beriberi, marasmus, rickets, scurvy, and pellagra. While deficiency diseases are uncommon in developed countries today, strokes, heart disease, and cancer are extremely common. Type II diabetes is on the rise, and a rapidly increasing number of young people become diabetic. Obesity, which increases the risk of all of the aforementioned health problems, is becoming an epidemic, with the percentage of the population that is obese rising annually in nearly all developed countries. Food borne illnesses are dangerous, and there are around two million food borne illnesses a year in the United Kingdom, but only a tiny percentage of those who become ill are even hospitalized, and almost none of the people hospitalized for the most common illnesses die or suffer permanent effects from being infected. The more dangerous infections are less common. Only around 10,000 people were diagnosed with salmonella in the U.K. in 2003, with there being 2,693 people diagnosed with one type of salmonella ( S. Enteritidis PT4 ) and 7,065 with another type( S. Enteritidis non-PT4). (The changing epidemiology of Salmonella Enteritidis infection in England & Wales, 2004) In 2003, 276,678 people were diagnosed with cancer in Great Britain.(UK Cancer Mortality Statistics, 2006) While this is much lower than the incidence of food poisoning, nearly everyone diagnosed with cancer was hospitalized or place under a system of continuous medical treatment, and a large percentage of those diagnosed with cancer died of it. Mortality rates for various types of cancers in 2004 ranged from four percent to ninety-eight percent. In that same year 153,397 people died of cancer. (UK Cancer Mortality Statistics, 2006) Cardiovascular diseases were responsible for around 238,000 fatalities in The U.K. in 2002, and around 2,700,000 people have continuous cardiovascular diseases in Britain today. Around 30,000 people die directly of diabetes annually in Great Britain, and many more die indirectly through diseases that diabetes raises the risk of. In 2005, only 41 people died of salmonella, E.Coli, campylobacter, botulism, and giardia combined. (National Statistics, 2007) If money is diverted from food safety enforcement to educational programs on proper eating and programs that increase access to healthy foods, the results would probably be positive. A better diet can greatly decrease the number of people who become diagnosed with cancer or heart disease and die directly from those two diseases. A reduction in the number of people who receive diabetes will further reduce the mortality rate from heart disease because people who are not diabetic have a much lower risk of developing it. (Food Standards Agency, 2007) Reducing obesity would also further reduce the mortality from both heart disease and cancer and cause a reduction in the number of people who develop diabetes. Because of the high mortality rates from heart disease and cancer, even a small reduction in the prevalence of these two medical conditions can have a great impact on life expectancy in the United Kingdom.(National Statistics, 2007) Better nourished people also resist nearly all other types of diseases better than those who are poorly nourished. Infection rates, hospitalization rates, and death rates for many common diseases would decline. Even a major reduction in the number of food borne illnesses would not prevent many deaths due to the fact that very few people die of food borne illnesses. It is possible that the rates of food borne illnesses will rise if less money is spent on food safety enforcement, but the death rate from these diseases will probably not rise due to the fact that the United Kingdom has a modern medical system. Any increased costs by the increasing numbers of people that are hospitalized by food borne pathogens will be more that offset by the massively reduced costs to the National Health Service caused by the lower amount of people who need to be treated for cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and many infectious diseases. People might even be less likely to become infected with food borne diseases in they have a stronger immune system. Some of the diseases caused by unsafe food cannot infect people multiple times because of antibodies. Food borne illnesses can be stopped by consumers even if there is no inspection done. Washing foods off before cooking them, cooking foods to an adequate temperature, and keeping a clean kitchen will prevent nearly all food borne diseases. Rotten food is easy for consumers to spot. Food infected with botulism is easy to identify, and accurate information about food safety is widely available. A government program to provide food safety information is therefore not necessary. There are other risks of reducing funding for food safety enforcement. Some new food borne diseases, such as avian flu, are appearing. Mad cow disease might become a problem if regular testing for it is stopped. There are also chemicals, such as pesticides and preservatives that can harm humans if there are excessive amounts in food. New pesticides, fertilizers, and chemicals that are added to processed foods would still need to be tested so that they can be confirmed as safe for people to consume. While these all seem like major dangers, they are not as troublesome as they appear. Departments responsible for food safety can respond to lower levels of funding by targeting their resources to the most important food safety programs so that the funding for them remains the same. While there can be outbreaks of food borne illness, the number of them and the number of infections and deaths that occur in each outbreak would probably not rise that much and even before there was regular food inspection, the number of deaths and severity of epidemics due to food poisoning was very low when compared to the number of deaths and severity of epidemics caused by diseases that were caused by contagious diseases, malnutrition, and poor drinking water.(National Statistics, 2007) Many techniques that are designed to increase food safety also have other side effects. Irradiation reduces the amount of vitamins and minerals in many foods, and some chemicals that are used to stop bacteria have negative side effects. If nutrition funding were reduced, the effects could be worse than those that would occur if food safety funding were reduced. There are many books and websites on nutrition, but they often give different and contradictory information. Research on nutrition could be slowed down. Poorer nutrition and diet would cause a large increase in cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity. This would offset any positive changes that would occur due to better food safety. If it is possible to vaccinate against the major diseases caused by impure food there would not be any need for food inspections at all. Although food safety is relatively important, nutrition is even more important and diverting funding from food safety inspections to proper eating programs would greatly improve the health of the British population and most likely not cause any major problems. 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