Food+Science

By: Catherine Cochran and Price Nagler
 * Food Science**

Facts about Food Science- __What is Food Science? __   Food Science is the study of all aspects of food and its creation. Food science can determine whether a steak tastes good or vomit- inducing. Food scientists create new foods and ways to package them more efficiently. Food science incorporates many different sciences including microbiology, chemical engineering, biochemistry, and more. Food Science studies the food quality, health, and safety of foods chemically, microbiologically, and physically. __Schooling required- __  Bachelor Degree __History- __  First of all, click [|here] to go to a timeline showing different foods created over time. Obviously spanning from ancient times, there was no concrete "founder" of Food Science. Instead, slowly throughout human history, people developed new ideas for food preparation and preservation. For example, in 1810, Nicolas Appert invented the airtight preservation known as "canning". He also invented pasteurization, the act of heating up milk or other liquids to destroy food spoilage and kill bacteria. __Typical Salary- __ A typical Food scientist's salary is around $52,261. <span style="font-size: 15.5pt; color: red; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Impact','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">

News about food science-<span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: red; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak News- __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> Almost all of Americans have heard of the salmonella in peanut butter outbreak. This has become big news. This is an ingredient-driven outbreak. Salmonella causes severe illnesses in human beings in may even cause death. This recent recall was found in common foods. For example crackers, cookies, dog food, cereal, candy, and ice cream. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have suggested that all Americans discard any products in their house containing peanut butter. The peanut butter was made by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) in Blakely, Georgia. Grocery store name brand peanut butter has not been linked to the outbreak. This has caused at least 600 cases of illnesses and nine deaths. Some officials believe that this is the biggest recall in US history. PCA is going to have to file for bankruptcy because officials do not think they will be able to recover from this. There has also been a criminal investigation launched seeing if PCA sent out peanut butter products knowing that their products were contaminated with salmonella. There have also been many federal lawsuits filed against PCA, from victims of the salmonella outbreak. __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: red; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Outbreak at Texas Plant- __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> The plant closed down voluntarily, and then the state tested peanut meal and found that it was contaminated with salmonella. This plant was also operated by Peanut Corporation of America. This is the second plant that has been operated by PCA that has tested positive for salmonella. Texas officials have now recalled all products made in the Plainview plant. They found dead rodents and bird feathers in a crawl space above a production area. Officials are not sure if this case of salmonella has caused any deaths or illnesses.

Video about salmonella outbreak: [] __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: red; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">How the contaminated peanut butter was not caught earlier- __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> Eugene Hatfield went to go and insect Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). Hatfield is one of many private inspectors, who make sure big corporations do not have any contaminated food in their plant. In the PCA plant, he had less than one day to check over the whole plant. PCA processes several million peanuts a month, so that is a lot to check in less than one day. Hatfield is an expert on fresh produce but did not know peanuts can be contaminated by salmonella. He was not supposed to test for salmonella in the peanuts so that was not needed knowledge for inspection. PCA was paying Hatfield to inspect their building. Hatfield gave PCA a superior rating with the food safety level. When the federal investigators later investigated the plant, they found salmonella everywhere. PCA had been shipping out contaminated peanut butter for at least nine months. Once they found the salmonella it was already too late. It was one of the America's worst outbreaks in food-borne diseases in recent years. Nine people have died and 22,400 became sick. This job has now become one for private auditors. Government inspectors have now had to turn their full attention to guarding the U.S.'s food supply. There have been many recalls in the past years. This shows how the auditors have failed to do their job, from the spinach to pet food recalls. Hatfield asked for more time from PCA, because he felt he did not have enough time to fully inspect the plant. PCA only would allow extra time with future inspections, not with Hatfield. He apparently did check to make sure PCA had a place to test and check if the peanut butter was contaminated, but he did not ask to see the test results. If he would have looked at the test results, he would have found bacteria was tested positive in the plant. The U.S. needs to find a new solution for inspecting plants. The audits need to have more knowledge on this because Hatfield was not very well educated, because it shows in this letter. He states, "I never thought that this bacteria would survive in the peanut butter-type environment." He said this when the deadly outbreak was made public. __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: red; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Plant's missing license- __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> There had been at least three inspections of a peanut butter plant in Plainview Texas. Not one of those visits found that there was no license for this specific plant. The inspector said that the Plainview plant had a license when it really did not. This outbreak could have been caught at a much earlier time, but the inspector failed to report the missing license which is required. This inspector was fired. When Texas health officials went into the plant to inspect they found dead rodents, rodent excrement, and bird feathers. This was all in a crawl space above the production area. This lead to the recall of all the products they had shipped from 2005. Ground peanuts were contaminated with the same salmonella strain from the Peanut Corporation of America outbreak. Since there was no license for the plant the Texas Department of Agriculture would have denied its organic certificate, but they did not know. Gaylon Amonett was the inspector of this plant and was fired on February 13, 2009. He was a 22-year employee of the Texas Department of Agriculture. He admits that he did check yes that this plant had a correct license for inspections in 2005, 2006, and 2008. The reason he chose yes was because he was told in 2005 from the plant manager that an application for a license was complete and was at the company's headquarters. He then went on assuming in 2006 and 2008 that this plant had a license. <span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> __<span style="font-size: 12pt; color: red; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">How RFID could have helped this recall- __<span style="font-size: 12pt; color: red; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', cursive;">This was one of the greatest recalls in America's history, many products were wasted and a lot of money was lost. There is a solution to this problem. The solution is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). These are tags that can be put into a label and has a unique 24 digits serial number. This can make identification much easier. There are many manufacturing and distribution benefits. RFID tags can be used for shipping documentation, inventory control, and can track work in process. In an RFID tag there is a integrated circuit and an antenna. The integrated circuit contains the serial number, while the antenna identifies with any three of the identification devices. If an integrated shipping document was stuck on to every palette with peanut butter containing food then they would have been able to identify the peanut butter. Someone could have been able to track the peanut butter by using an identification tag and a hand held reader, a portal, or a reader with an antenna. They could have gone out into a warehouse and used the reader to see when and where this product was produced. RFID reduces time and waste. This is a very important element of technology that needs to be used so that a recall will never become as bad as this past recall.

Bibliography Major: Food Technology and Processing. 3/2/09. [] <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Food Science. 3/2/09 [] Typical Salary. 3/4/09 [] Update on FDA’s Investigationion. 3/3/09 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/Salmonellatyph.html#updat e Hitti, Miranda. FDA, CDC: Don't Eat Peanut Butter Products. 3/3/09. [] The Associated Press. Test confirm salmonella at Texas peanut plant. 3/5/09. [] Food Shortage in South Africa. 3/5/09. [] "RFID Benifits." Telephone interview. Moss, Michael, and Andrew Martin. "Industry relies on private auditors." __The Dallas Morning News__ 6 Mar. 2009: 8A. Robbins, Danny. "Plant's missing license unnoted." __The Dallas Morning News__ 6 Mar. 2009: 8A. Picture of Ice Cream []