FOOD SAFETY: FAO highlights ‘often neglected’ foodborne parasites.

 Officials have published a document highlighting ways to avoid the risks from foodborne parasites transmitted by pork, freshwater fish and crustaceans.

Foodborne parasitic diseases are often neglected in food safety control systems even though they can cause severe human health problems, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

One challenge is that affected animals might not show signs of disease, making it difficult for farmers and authorities to detect a problem. Also, if there are no production or financial losses associated with the parasite in animals, there is no incentive to control them.

The FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific publication reports different types of parasitic diseases can be transmitted to humans from pork, fish, freshwater crustaceans, vegetables, eggs of tapeworms, and protozoa.

Preventing human exposure to foodborne parasites can be the responsibility of a veterinary or food safety authority in some countries, while in others, there are no controls for parasites.

    Parasites from plants and meat

Fascioliasis is caused by two species of flatworms called Fasciola hepatica and Fasciola gigantica. It is acquired by eating raw plants such as watercress and other freshwater cultivated or wild plants, or by drinking contaminated water. It is mainly an animal disease but does occasionally affect people.

Young parasites can cause abdominal pain, fever and diarrhea. Once they reach the lungs, symptoms can include a chronic productive cough, chest pain, and sometimes fever. Signs can be similar to those of tuberculosis or lung cancer. Humans can be treated for adult flukes with triclabendazole.

Eating raw aquatic vegetable harvested from or near grazing lands should be avoided. Rinsing them is not enough and freezing is not recommended, according to the FAO. The parasite can be killed by cooking vegetables at 60 degrees C (140 degrees F) for several minutes. continue

MEAT SAFETY.

A simple, rapid test to help ensure safer meat. Scientists now report a simple method that uses nanotubes to quickly detect spoilage. It could help make sure meats are safe when they hit store shelves. Transporting meats and seafood from the farm or sea to the market while they're still fresh is a high priority. But telling whether a product has gone bad isn't a simple process. 

Current strategies for measuring freshness can be highly sensitive to spoilage but require bulky, slow equipment, which prevents real-time analysis. Some newer methods designed to speed up the testing process have fallen short in sensitivity.

 Yanke Che and colleagues wanted to develop one simple test that could deliver both rapid and sensitive results. The researchers turned to highly fluorescent, hollow nanotubes that grow dim when they react with compounds given off by meat as it decomposes.

 To test the nanotubes, the team sealed commercial samples -- 1 gram each -- of pork, beef, chicken, fish and shrimp in containers for up to four days. When they exposed the portable system to a teaspoon of vapor emitted by the samples, it reacted in under an hour, fast enough to serve as a real-time measure of freshness. The researchers also found that if the tubes' glow dulled by more than 10 percent, this meant a sample was spoiled. Story source;American Chemical Society.