What Makes Food Safe?

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As a major outbreak from a new strain of E. coli makes headlines, we ask: what makes food safe? How are food producers coping with new strains of food pathogens? And what does safe food even mean in a world where processed food is increasingly seen as the top cause of dietary ill health? Meeting over a platter of various foods from raw milk cheese to salad, Sheila Dillon and producer Nina Pullman hear from microbiologists, food safety experts and cheese makers to hear the challenges of staying ahead of the curve when it comes to food and science. They speak to a scientist testing bacteria-eating viruses that can be inserted into feed or food packaging to tackle these new E. colis, known as STECs, and they chat to a global expert in food microbiology on how climate change is making pathogens more difficult to predict.

While such pathogens can get into a variety of foods, raw or unpasteurised cheese makers are feeling the pressure more than most due to the perception of risk around their products. Cheese makers at a panel in London explain the human impact on a small family business that is linked to an outbreak, while a tour of Neals Yard Dairy reveals the number of cheesemakers considering turning to pasteurisation due to fears around the new strains of STEC E. colis.

In a conversation about food that makes us sick, Sheila also meets members of the pubilc who took part in a recent national conversation on food for their views on food safety more broadly. What does food safety mean to them and what do the public expect from food?

Produced by Nina Pullman for BBC Audio in Bristol.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the
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0:45.0	Nina, hello Sheba, can I hear you?
0:50.0	Yes, food safety tasting. What food is safe?
0:57.0	Well for this week's food program we are in my kitchen in my house in North London and I'm with producer Nina Pullman and we're sitting at a table
1:08.8	with several platters of what at first seems like an odd selection of food but it's not actually it's not a
1:17.7	random selection Nina is it? No it's not random at all so in front of us of us, we've got some bean sprouts. We've got some rocket
1:25.4	leaves washed and ready to eat. We've got some flaked almonds. We've got some chorizo. We've got two uncooked burgers we've got a selection of
1:34.8	cheeses we've got three unpasteurized raw milk cheeses and we've got one
1:39.1	pasteurized and we've got a well-known chocolate bar.
1:44.0	All of these foods at some point in the last two to ten years have been identified as the source
1:49.6	of a food-born illness.
1:52.4	So think Listeria, E. coli, salmonella, those types of things. So this isn't a
1:57.8	food scare story despite appearances. We're not out to put you off your dinner, but we have been tracking a
	...

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