Fast food outlets going healthy but farmers must take up slack

FAST FOOD outlets are becoming health conscious as they try to meet the increasing demand for safe and healthy foods, said CEO of the National Agricultural Marketing and Development Company (NAMDEVCO), Samaroo Dowlath. Dowlath said  that the advertising practices of the fast food chains have changed in an attempt to appeal to the increasing number of health conscious consumers. McDonald’s, for instance,  has launched an anti-obesity campaign in the US. He was addressing a one-day workshop on “Eating Safe, Eating Healthy” organised by the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Marine Resources in collaboration with NAMDEVCO held at the Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) in Macoya. Dowlath explained that Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) did not only extend to growth and production but included reaping, packaging and  transportation.

“If a farmer practiced GAP during the cultivation of his property and the production of his crop and then uses unclean water to wash his produce, then he defeats the purpose of GAP in the first place.” Making the connection between the farm and the fast food outlets, Dowlath explai-ned that almost everything we buy at the fast food outlets are produced by someone in the agricultural industry. The chicken at the chicken outlets come from a chicken farm, the potatoes used to fry chips come from a farm, he said. These products go from the farm to the wholesalers, then to the fast food outlet, and if GAP is bypassed,  the fast food market is liable to be opened up to food borne diseases. Dowlath explained that while NAMDEVCO encouraged its farmers to be innovative, they also had to be aware of consumers’ health. “We owe it to our customers to provide them with safe and healthy foods.”

NAMDEVCO’s Quality Assurance Officer, Ganesh Gangapersad, said that the food borne illnesses have been on the increase, and this is due to the continued complexities of the food system that exits. He said that outbreaks for food borne disease in the US for the 1990-1998 period showed that fruits showed the largest percentage of outbreak for food borne diseases, with a 20.8%. Other figures include lettuce, 16.7%, sprouts, 9.4%, tomatoes 2.1% and cabbage, 5.2% and unknown sources 7.3%. All these vegetable are used in fast food outlets on a daily basis, he said. Every year over 76 million food borne cases are reported and about 325,000 people are hospitalised as a result of food borne illnesses, 5,200 deaths occur and the agricultural sector faces billions in losses. One of the most dangerous things that a person can eat is a fruit salad, said Gangapersad. He noted that fruit/ salad bars are one of the major contributor to the continued spread of food borne diseases.

He said that one head of lettuce carries one bacteria and given the right environment that one bacteria will replicate every 20 minutes. He noted that prevention is the key to reducing microbial contamination of fresh fruits and vegetables, and increased focus on risk reduction, not risk elimination would definitely go a long way to deal with this problem. “Current technologies cannot eliminate all potential food safety hazards associated with fresh produce that will be eaten raw,” explained Gangapersad, noting that  “people need to be a bit more conscious about what they eat.”

Gangapersad explained that NAMDEVCO has launched both the GAP programme and another programme called HACCP or the Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Point as a way to ensure food products are of a certain standard. The principles of HACCP are applicable to all stages of food production, from the farm to the table and includes agricultural production, food preparation and handling, food processing, food service, distribution systems and consumer handling and use.