The ready availability of safe, wholesome food is often taken for granted by citizens of modern societies. However, maintaining the safety of a large, diverse food supply is a challenging undertaking that requires coordinated effort at many levels. In this chapter, the principles of food safety are discussed first with regard to traditional foods and then again as they concern novel foods developed through genetic modification.

Definitions and Priorities

The term “food safety,” as used today, encompasses many diverse areas, including protection against food poisoning and assurance that food does not contain additives or contaminants that would render it unsafe to eat. The term evolved mainly in the context of preventing intoxication by microbial poisons that act quickly (within hours to a day or two of exposure) and often induce such serious symptoms as convulsive vomiting and severe diarrhea, or respiratory failure and death (Cliver 1990). An example of the former is staphylococcal food poisoning, caused by the proteinaceous enterotoxins of the pathogenic bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (Cliver 1990). Botulism is an example of the latter, caused by the neurotoxins synthesized by Clostridium botulinum (Cliver 1990).

Both staphylococcal food poisoning and botulism result from ingesting toxins that are preformed in the implicated foods. For illness to ensue, it is necessary only to ingest the toxin, not the microbe itself. Food poisoning may also follow the ingestion of certain pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella, which produce gastrointestinal (GI) infections, and Escherichia coli 0157:H7, which produces an infection and a potent toxin within the GI tract (Cliver 1990). The infection results in bloody diarrhea, while the toxin enters the bloodstream and induces kidney damage.