Consumers have heightened concerns about the safety of food yet frequently ignore advice on product labels, according to a leading US food scientist.
Speaking at a conference in University College Cork, Prof Mike Doyle of the University of Georgia cited a new US survey of 20,000 people which found many did not handle food properly, and only 45 per cent had seen warning labels on meat and poultry packaging.
Among those who read the label, only 36 per cent changed their approach to comply with advice, which meant a mere 17 per cent had responded to the label, he noted.
"Yet consumer activists, particularly those against GM foods, say we must label everything. We don't believe it will be the `cureall'," he told the conference, staged under the US-Ireland Co-operation Programme in Agricultural Science and Technology.
Equally, people were not recognising risky foods. Some 50 per cent were still eating undercooked eggs; 20 per cent were eating undercooked beef; 8 per cent consumed raw oysters; and 1.4 per cent drank unpasteurised milk.
In addition, public education was not as easy as many experts thought, Prof Doyle said. This was shown after a recent salmonella outbreak where the US Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about an ice-cream product.
An estimated 11,000 people in Georgia were infected, 2,000 of them after the warning. "They decided to eat the ice cream anyway. People say we have go to educate the consumer. Sounds good, but it's not an easy fix."
There was "a lot of hysteria" about foodborne pathogens, said Dr John Luchansky of the US Department of Agriculture, so much so that he wished to spread the message: "E.coli is not Ebola (the flesh-eating microbe)."
If good storage, proper cooking and thorough hygiene practices were in place, it was possible to control foodborne illness effectively. He agreed, nonetheless, with the view that "pathogens are a lot like babies. Until you know where they come from, they just keep coming".
In the case of E.coli O157, DNA fingerprinting studies in Wisconsin had shown its source was not largely confined to the gut of cattle. It was traced to animal feed, flies and birds although it had originated from livestock.
But, he added, water seemed to be a significant medium for maintaining and disseminating the bacteria, a finding with implications in the Irish context as so many rural water-supplies are contaminated with faecal matter.
Having a good, freshwater supply for cattle was shown to reduce, if not eliminate, E.coli levels; it was simply an issue of good husbandry, he said.
