Food Standards and Quality Control

Food Standard and Quality Control

Lesson 01 : Food Quality

Causes of food borne diseases

The contamination of food may occur at any stage in the process from food production to consumption (“farm to fork”) and can result from environmental contamination, including pollution of water, soil or air.

1. Chemical contamination: Chemicals which are added to the foods either intentionally or unintentionally might pose health problems. For example, pesticides used for crop protection is an unintentional addition of chemical to foods.
2. Poisonous plants and animals: Certain natural toxins like lectins in green beans, red kidney beans and white kidney beans and cynogenic glycosides in bitter apricot seed, glycoalkaloids in potatoes and muscarne in some wild mushrooms
3. Microbial contamination: They can be caused by bacteria, viruses, or parasites, Some diseases are caused by toxins from the disease-causing microbe, others by the human body’s reactions to the microbe itself. The most common bacteria that causes food borne diseases are Campylobacter, Salmonella, E. coli and Norovirus.