I just recently came across a disturbing example of this. A few years ago, I had the pleasure of eating at a restaurant that had a large tuna salad buffet. The restaurant had about 500 different items on the buffet, all freshly prepared, all being served at the same time. This was a small restaurant and I was not prepared for this. I was mortified and began to wonder about the safety of the food I was consuming.
Well, that’s just because it was a large buffet. If there were 20,000 different things on the buffet, each one would need to be inspected individually by two people. If they are not, then they are unsafe and must be thrown out. I think that is a pretty severe issue.
But if you think about it, there would be no way for the Food and Drug Administration to inspect each individual item of food.
The Food and Drug Administration is the part of the government that regulates food and drugs. They would have to inspect every item of food at once. So there would be no way for the FDA to tell if something was safe or not. And even if they do say, “This food is safe according to FDA regulations,” it would still be impossible for them to make a determination.
So what would happen is that these food items would become contaminated. And since they wouldn’t know if something was contaminated, they wouldn’t know whether or not to eat it. So there would be no way for them to know for sure if something was safe or not. As a result, they simply wouldn’t eat it and people would die. But no, we’re not talking about a few people dying on the street or some other weird foodborne disease.
We are talking about people who have been eating tuna for months and have recently developed a severe case of “tuna salmonella”, meaning they have a sudden intestinal illness that develops into blood poisoning. The FDA does not recognize this as an issue. So while we might see a few cases of sick people on the street, most would be gone within two or three days.
One of the most frustrating things about the news is the lack of transparency. While there is an ongoing investigation into the death of one of the people sickened in the outbreak, the public has no idea what they might have eaten or the source of the problem. To make matters worse, the FDA has a policy of not even sharing information that is potentially relevant to the investigation. The main reason is because most people assume that every incident of food poisoning is linked to one specific product or ingredient.
The reason we don’t know what we ate last night is because the FDA has a policy of not disclosing the source of any food that might be linked to a potential outbreak. It is just one of the reasons why the situation is not as transparent as it should be.
The more we learn about the real reasons behind outbreaks, the more common sense it becomes. The most common reason for outbreaks is that the product was contaminated with something that is known to be toxic. The food was contaminated with a strain of a common cold virus that has a very short shelf life. The FDA wants to get this out in the open so that everyone can better prepare for the possibility of another outbreak.
Foodborne illness is still difficult to prevent. Our food is so frequently contaminated with bacteria and other pathogens that it’s probably impossible to really know what is in it. We can buy a bunch of products that are safe, and if the ingredients are the same as what is on the packaging, it just might be safe for you. But if a food that is supposed to be totally safe is contaminated, then the FDA is going to want you to be aware of this.