11.7: Food and Drug Safety
Long before the CWA and SDWA, the U.S. government recognized the need to regulate food and drug safety. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. In 1906 the Pure Food and Drugs Act was passed, requiring accurate labeling of food, drug, cosmetic and liquor products. The same year, the Federal Meat Inspection Act required that meat was processed in sanitary facilities - tasking the USDA with inspecting and enforcing these requirements. In 1938, congress passed the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which gave the newly rebranded Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the responsibility of establishing food safety standards (USDA, 2018). Today, the USDA is responsible for meat and dairy products, the EPA governs pesticides and fertilizers, and the FDA takes care of the remaining food products, drugs, and cosmetics.
Food borne disease outbreaks are defined as 2 or more cases of a similar illness that results from eating a particular food. Foodborne illnesses are typically caused by pathogens like bacteria, viruses, or other parasites that have gotten into the food source - often due to water or equipment contamination, unsafe cooking or serving practices (like failing to cook food thoroughly or leaving at room temperature for too long), or behaviors (such as failure of staff to wash hands). Pasteurization of dairy products is highly protective against bacterial outbreaks in dairy, and the sale of “raw” milk is illegal for this reason (Seabert et al., 2021). Although rare, there is also the possibility for intentional poisoning or bioterrorism, as happened in 1984 when a religious cult in Oregon intentionally contaminated a local city’s salad bars and water supply with Salmonella bacteria (Oh, 2017). Local and state public health agencies are typically responsible for investigating foodborne illness outbreaks, but they work closely with the USDA and FDA inspectors (Seabert et al., 2021). While Hollywood has perpetuated an image of the ill-tempered health inspector threatening to close down a beloved restaurant, these public servants actually protect the public from a plethora of potentially deadly disease outbreaks.
Pesticides are any materials used to kill, repel, or change the behavior of a pest that could potentially harm humans. This includes herbicides (which kill unwanted plants, or weeds), insecticides (which kill insects), fungicides (which kill fungi), rodenticides (which kill rodents), and even antimicrobials (which kill bacteria and viruses) (Frumkin, 2016). Technically, a pest is any animal, insect, or plant that poses a threat to humans - everything from the mosquitos that transmit malaria, to cockroaches in a kitchen, to rats in subway stations, or dandelion weeds in a front lawn. Pesticides must often be used with other tactics (like barriers for example) in order to prevent resistance developing in the target pest.
Pesticides can be either synthetic (man-made), or naturally-derived. Some synthetic pesticides have been found to have acute and chronic neurotoxic effects, and tend to linger in the environment (like DDT, which was banned in 1972) (EPA, 1972). Just because a pesticide is naturally-derived does not make it safe - arsenic and nicotine sulfate are naturally derived but are very toxic. In agricultural practice, the USDA regulates pesticides which can be used for conventional and organic agriculture. While conventional growers can use synthetic or natural pesticides, organic producers must only use products from a list published by the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI), which are mostly natural in origin, with a few exceptions (Andrews & Rose, 2018).
Most exposure to pesticides falls into two categories: residential and occupational. Residential exposure occurs when pesticides are used to prevent insects, rodents, or weeds around the home or yard. These can cause accidental poisoning (particularly in children), and are sometimes used in intentional poisoning (suicide/homicide) attempts. Occupational risk is highest for agricultural workers who administer the pesticide, and thus have more concentrated exposure. They may also expose family members if the pesticide lingers on clothing or materials brought home (Frumkin, 2016). As with any substance, the dose makes the poison, so amount and duration of exposure are important variables in identifying the toxicity of a substance. The EPA has categories of pesticides based on their toxicity levels with the following labels:
- Caution = relatively low toxicity.
- Warning = moderate toxicity.
- Danger = high toxicity (Frumkin, 2016, Andrews & Rose, 2018).