Food quality regulation

Definition: Legally enforceable standards and procedures aimed at controlling the safety of food products

Laws regulating food quality for public health purposes often promote agricultural methods that are beneficial to the environment in that they protect soil, water, and the atmosphere from toxins and support conservation and sustainability.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, legislators have passed laws regulating food quality to address specific safety concerns and to remove from the marketplace foods identified as hazardous to public health. In 1906 the U.S. Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and created the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate food quality by establishing standards and procedures for food producers to implement in fields and factories. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service evaluates meats and poultry products. The National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and public health departments also regulate aspects of U.S. food supplies. Food manufacturers worldwide have adopted the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system to aid them in detecting contamination hazards and to enhance the quality of the foods they produce.

Legislation and Concerns

Significant U.S. legislation of the twentieth century concerning food quality includes the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), passed in 1938, and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), approved in 1947. In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) after legislators concerned about the dangers of pesticides in foods evaluated existing food regulations and determined that FFDCA and FIFRA did not provide adequate protection for the public. Worried that food products that had been exposed to chemical pesticides in fields and other agricultural sites could contain enough toxic residues to harm children’s development and exacerbate existing health conditions, including allergies, the legislators created FQPA. The new law implemented more rigorous limitations and controls on the use of certain chemicals in food-producing agriculture than had FIFRA and FFDCA and delegated enforcement of FQPA provisions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Some U.S. regulations address the risks to food quality presented by chemicals, hormones, and antibiotics in the food consumed by livestock raised for meat or dairy products. Aware that chemical threats could decrease supplies of safe food, government officials have urged farmers to explore ways in which they can combat insects and weeds without using pesticides and herbicides. They have also suggested that farmers use fertilizers with minimal chemical content. In response to such suggestions and to their own concerns about the environment, many farmers have adopted natural methods of fighting insects and weeds, often combining several methods in what is known as integrated pest management.

Some regulations concerning food quality in the United States are based in the standards for water quality established by the Safe Drinking Water Act. Food quality regulations include procedures that food producers must follow when food supplies and agricultural lands come into contact with contaminated water, such as that produced by flooding.

The FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) issues compliance documentation, revised every three years, to guide the inspectors who evaluate various foods, ranging from dairy products to canned items, for conformity to regulations regarding the presence in food products of pesticides and other chemicals and toxins harmful to the environment. CFSAN also distributes food quality guidelines and guidelines regarding food labeling requirements, another element of food quality regulation. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 sets requirements for the proper, truthful labeling of food products, including the nutrition labels that must appear on packaged foods; this act also limits the health claims that manufacturers can make for products based on the products’ ingredients. Other regulations address the use of dyes, flavorings, preservatives, and other additives in foods.

Developments in the field of genetic engineering have complicated food quality regulation efforts and have offered both positive and negative possibilities in food production involving both plants and animals. Bioengineering methods can alter environments; for example, some pests (insects, weeds, or pathogens) develop resistance to traits bred into plants or livestock to repel those pests, and this results in the use of ever-increasing amounts of chemicals to kill the pests. The creation of the Flavr Savr tomato through genetic engineering in the 1990’s resulted in a ruling by the FDA that bioengineered fruits and vegetables are not hazardous; the FDA simultaneously announced a food additive regulation permitting the insertion of the kanamycin resistance gene in plants.

Concerns with food quality and regulations to ensure food safety vary among the world’s nations. The European Union has enacted food quality laws that address the use of pesticides, the use of hormones, food irradiation, food additives, and the presence in foods of such substances as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals. In 2010 China’s Ministry of Health established stricter regulations concerning food additives after several incidents involving Chinese food products led to deaths. U.S. laws require the monitoring of all imported food products and the rejection of items determined to be unsafe or otherwise unacceptable. Among the types of foods that inspectors must reject are any made from endangered animal or plant resources and any made using manufacturing practices that are damaging to the environment.

Security and Environmental Protection Measures

The Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (also known as the Bioterrorism Act) requires food product manufacturers in the United States to document where they acquire the agricultural resources they process into foods and the locations where they ship those foods, so that officials can efficiently trace any contaminants that may be found in those products. In 2007 the FDA created its Food Protection Plan, which enacted measures to ensure the security of the environmental resources used to produce food, particularly soil and water, against possible harm by terrorists.

Many food manufacturers attempt to use production methods that are compatible with environmental protection and preservation, such as by conserving energy and water and recyclingwaste products. Guidelines have been developed to encourage such practices while also protecting food quality. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System provides poultry and meat producers with guidelines for treating effluent to purge toxins without damaging the environment, and the EPA distributes the Multimedia Environmental Compliance Guide for Processors. Some manufacturers use biosensors to evaluate foods for undesirable substances or pathogens, enabling the identification of contaminated agricultural sources so that those environments can be cleansed of toxins and restored.

Environmental Changes and Food Quality

Climate changes can have impacts on food quality. Scientists have noted that global warming affects the distribution of microorganisms, including pathogens, to new ecosystems, and indigenous plants and animals utilized for food products can become contaminated because they have no immunities to the invasive microorganisms. Scientists have suggested that warmer temperatures in oceans may have contributed to oysters becoming contaminated with the bacteriaVibrio, and heat extremes are associated with the expansion of the bacteriaListeria. Insects and microbes evolve as a result of climatic changes, resulting in the need for different control methods for agricultural processes and regulations to ensure that those techniques are not detrimental to the quality of the foods produced.

Direct environmental contamination caused by human activities can also result in special needs for food quality regulation. Oil spills, for instance, can contaminate marine ecosystems to such an extent that any food animals harvested from these ecosystems can be unsuitable for human consumption. The BP Deepwater Horizonoil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 provides an example. The FDA released a statement in response to the spill, noting possible damage to the quality of shellfish living in the Gulf Coast owing to their exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are compounds found in oil. The FDA stressed that food processors accepting shellfish from gulf waters should be certain that the shellfish were harvested by licensed operators who had recorded procurement details from the areas that had been approved to remain open for fishing. The FDA also emphasized that food processors must follow established fishery products regulations in utilizing HACCP to detect contaminants detrimental to food quality. Inspectors were tasked with evaluating all varieties of Gulf Coast seafood specimens to determine whether they were of suitable quality for consumption before they were approved for distribution to food services.

Bibliography

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Jha, Veena, ed. Environmental Regulation and Food Safety: Studies of Protection and Protectionism. Ottawa, Ont.: International Development Research Centre, 2005.

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