COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scientists are working on
ways to keep all foods, ranging from peanut butter to
spinach, safer, 10TV's Andrea Cambern reported.
Hundreds
of illnesses have been reported recently, including E. coli
in spinach that left three people dead and 200 people sick.
The same bacteria were found in lettuce that caused 100
others to get sick. About 400 people became sick after
salmonella was found in peanut butter.
"I threw up the second I got home," said Evan Woosley,
who was stricken with E. coli. "They didn't know what was
the matter with me."
Food poisoning is nothing new. In 1980, doctors found a
new strain of E. coli.
"It was known as hamburger disease because that's where
it was discovered," said Dr. Ken Lee, the director of food
safety at The Ohio State University.
Nine years later, salmonella in eggs killed 13 people and
made 1,600 others sick. The food industry lost millions.
For the American public, there was a bigger loss - of
confidence in our food supply, Cambern reported.
"Nobody should fear eating and nobody should die as a
consequence of eating food," Lee said.
According to Lee, our kitchen tools are too basic.
"Your primary food safety technology is a refrigerator
and a stove," Lee said.
That's about to change. Dr. Ahmed Yousef's team is
achieving success with a process that kills salmonella in
eggs.
"Ozone is the most powerful sanitizer that the food
industry can use," Yousef said.
The process lightly heats eggs, and then puts them in a
vacuum chamber. It sucks out air and moisture and replaces
it with ozone to kill salmonella. Unlike other germ
killers, ozone is safe, Yousef said.
"It is environmentally friendly," Yousef said. "It
doesn't produce hazardous waste after it reacts with the
microorganisms."
According to Yousef, the process does not affect the
quality of the eggs. By December, the process will be in
use for hospital and nursing home patients. Within three
years, Yousef said he expects it will be available to the
public.
At the same time, we might get home testing devices to
check bacteria in food, Cambern reported.
University of South Carolina Dr. John LaVigne created a
dipstick test. A device is swiped on produce, or inserted
in raw fish or meat. Within five minutes, it turns color.
"The purple color would say it's good to eat," LaVigne
said. "The yellow color would say, 'Don't eat it.' I guess
the red color would depend on how hungry you are."
At the Ohio State Agriculture Research laboratories in
Wooster, scientists are trying to stop bacteria from
entering the food supply.
"Every piece of produce that's on the supermarket shelf
cannot be tested because if you tested everything, then
there would be nothing to eat," said Dr. Jeff LeJeune, an
Ohio State food animal health researcher.
LeJeune said contamination can come from water, manure,
tools and handling. He and his colleagues want to know how
it affects produce while it's growing. They inoculate
plants with a special material and snip off pieces, before
putting them in a machine that peers inside the plant to
track what happens.
"But using special bacteria that glow, we can contaminate
the produce and then go back and look at it to see whether
its glowing or whether we've adequately washed it off, and
to see how long those bacteria survive," LeJeune said.
He said that in a few years that farmers may have some
new tools to keep their produce from developing dangerous
bacteria.
"The responsibility for safe food cannot be laid entirely
upon the consumer," Lee said. "We need to set up a system
that's truly fail-safe."
Ohio State is also testing ways to kill bacteria in food
with high pressure and by electrocution, Cambern reported.
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