What is globalisation with relevant to food safety and standards?
Answers
In the last year, there has been an international outbreak of E. coli poisoning from fresh cut spinach and a major pet food recall due to the deaths of numerous cats and dogs. Unfortunately, these food scares are not new. In 1999, the industrial chemical dioxin was found in Belgian animal feed that had contaminated meat and poultry products distributed around the world. Each of these cases has illuminated the global dimensions of the food supply chain and the ensuing difficulties in ensuring safety and standards. What is particularly significant about these food recalls is the breadth of the affected population in each case.
In the spinach case during the fall of 2006, more than 200 people in the United States and Canada were sickened after they ate fresh cut spinach from a single producer.1 As of April 27, 2007, there have been upwards of 4,100 cat and dog deaths due to contaminated pet food distributed across the United States, Canada, and Mexico and there may be many more.2 Dioxin-tainted products, ranging from eggs to pork were distributed from Belgium to Europe and North America, as well as to Australia and New Zealand. These events have been precipitated by the rapid growth of trade in ingredients as well as the development of a food supply chain that delivers foodstuffs around the world in record time.