Food poisoning becoming a major problem

The three-day forum, entitled "EU-Southeast Asia Expert Meeting on Food Quality, Safety and Traceability", was held by the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (Cirad). About 35 scientists and food experts attended the summit, which was also supported by the European Commission.

"We are working together to find how key issues can be highlighted to tackle food-safety problems," said Prof Sudip K Rakshit, vice-president for research at the AIT. He also co-chaired the forum.

Rakshit said experts from both regions were working together to find new ways to tackle food contamination such as developing new detection methods, traceability, technologies and tools for risk assessment as well as enhancing the understanding of risk perception.

In Southeast Asia, the factor of food quality has become a public-health issue for rural and urban populations, he added. Protein-energy malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, food-borne pathogens and diarrhoea remain major causes of mortality in Southeast Asia.

He explained that the most common source of food poisoning were insufficiently cooked meats, particularly poultry, as well as unpasteurised milk and drinking water.

Apart from resistant bacterial strains, the mycotoxin fungus can contaminate foodstuff like cereal, nuts, coffee, cocoa, grapes, beer, wine, spices and animal feed. Mycotoxin usually develops on plants, either in the field or in storage. The most common complaint from ingesting this toxin is diarrhoea.

The consumption of contaminated food causes roughly three million deaths a year worldwide, and is responsible for 1.5 billion episodes of diarrhoea per year, he said.

Food health problems are also aggravated by rapidly increasing urban populations in most Southeast Asian countries, which is leading to an unprecedented demand for food products. This dramatic rise in demand means an intensification of food production in rural areas, which means farmers are using highly-contaminant chemicals in the form of pesticides, fertilisers and hormones etc.

Then there is the transportation, usually in the form of open vans and motorbikes, that further expose food to contamination. Food is then further exposed to microbial and viral contamination while storage.

Street vendors and food service premises are becoming an essential part of the food-supply system in nearly all Southeast Asian countries, but without strict controls with regards to food preparation, storage and display, these may become another major source of food-borne disease.