Verified: No toxins, or Secret of healthy food

On the sixtieth anniversary of the WHO/FAO Commission on Food Standards (Codex Alimentarius) On 7 June, the Federal Research Centre for Nutrition and Biotechnology hosted a scientific symposium on “Global challenges and New Risks in Food Safety”. Earlier, TASS held a press conference dedicated to the World Food Safety Day 2023, which this year was held under the slogan “Food standards save life.”

“Food safety is not only an integral part of food security, but also a prerequisite for the prevention of foodborne diseases. Children and people with low income are the most affected,” Victoria Kladieva, leading specialist of the TASS press centre and moderator, noted in her opening remarks.

“In recent years, the situation with food safety in the country has been quite stable”, stated Irina Shevkun, Head of the Department of Sanitary Welfare of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor). “Now, we are noticing a steady trend towards greater food safety in terms of chemical contamination. This figure does not exceed 1%.” “In addition, the share of samples that do not meet the standards for sanitary and chemical indicators also does not exceed 1%. This indicator has improved by a factor of two in recent years. The share of products that do not comply with microbiological indicators has also decreased by 1.5 times” Irina Shevkun continued. “We are now working on the formation of a national food quality management system. We have developed an appropriate strategy together with other federal executive authorities and amended the law on food quality and safety. One of the priority areas of our work is cooperation with FAO and the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission. Rospotrebnadzor takes an active part in the work of the Code committees. So, at the 45th session of the Code, Rospotrebnadzor expressed its firm stance against expanding the list of veterinary drugs used as growth simulators in supplements and feed.”

“Food and foodstuffs are the most important factor in maintaining life. They represent one of the human rights that governments must ensure and guarantee,” Dr Melita Vujnovic, Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Russian Federation, said. “WHO, together with our partners, primarily FAO, has adopted the Global Strategy for Food Safety 2022-2030 based on the requirements of our 194 member countries. One of the priorities in this strategy is to strengthen national food control systems.”

“I hear very often that there is no need to interfere with business, there is no need for administrative inspections,” Dr Vujnovic continued. “However, business can both bring huge benefits to the population and, on the contrary, cause huge harm. Businesses need to be involved in the food safety control system, including all actors in the food chain – from farm to table. The UN estimates that some 600 million foodborne illnesses are reported each year, causing more than 420 000 deaths. At the same time, the scale of this problem may be much larger, since a food disease is not always the cause of death. Meanwhile, more than 200 human diseases are directly related to food, ranging from diarrhea or intoxication to severe diseases, including tumors.”

“Ensuring food safety is a process that begins in the field and on the farm, and ends on the consumer’s table,” Oleg Kobiakov, Director of the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation said in his opening remarks. “FAO and WHO are the relevant agencies that, on behalf of their member countries, supervise all links in the food chain, implementing a comprehensive concept of food safety, including the One Health approach. This year we celebrate the sixtieth anniversary, since WHO and FAO established the International Commission on Food Standards, on the basis of which thousands of standards for food and materials that come into contact with it, such as containers, tableware, packaging, etc., have been developed on the basis of empirical data and the results of scientific research and risk analysis.

We have been working on this track uninterruptedly and have always been supported by Russia. By the way, national standards in Russia in this area are sometimes tougher than the Code’s recommendations, the problems lie in enforcing them. The FAO Moscow Office intends to continue to promote increased coordination and intra-Russian dialogue on the full range of food safety issues as well as such areas of the One Health initiative such as antimicrobial resistance, water-borne diseases, anthropozoonoses, including the eradication of dog-borne rabies by 2030.

This is what we are doing together with our partners – Rospotrebnadzor, Rosselkhoznadzor and the Ministry of Health of Russia. It is also necessary to step up communication activities,” the head of the FAO Moscow Office said in conclusion, “because it is not only up to the regulatory authorities to solve these problems, but also to all of us, since we are all food consumers. Each of us is responsible for our own health and the health of our family members.”

“To make proper use of international and national experience in improving food safety, it must be made ‘accessible to the masses’,” Viktor Tutelyan, Scientific Director of the “Federal Research Centre of Nutrition and Biotechnology”, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “The most important element of health care through proper nutrition is, firstly, safe and nutritious food that contains all the 170 chemical compounds we need for life, and secondly, sufficient knowledge about healthy food. Already at the beginning of life during pregnancy, a deficiency of just one vitamin, such as folic acid, can lead to fetal death, low birth weight babies and other health problems for the unborn child.”

“At all stages of the development of society, the establishment of a food safety system has been the key to human survival, the foundation of any nation’s prosperity,” the academician continued.

“Millions of people get sick and tens of thousands die every year because of the consequences of eating food contaminated with microorganisms or chemicals, which leads to an increase in premature mortality and a reduction in the life expectancy of the population. The main priorities in the development of the scientific field of ‘food hygiene’ are to improve the methodology of risk assessment, substantiate hygienic regulations for the content of contaminants of chemical and biological nature in food, and to develop methods for detecting and quantifying them”, the academician concluded.

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Hilde Kruse, Leading Expert, FAO Committee on Food Standards (CJW) of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, spoke via video link at the scientific symposium on “Global challenges and new risks in food safety”. “Codex Alimentarius includes more than 11 000 different standards, codes of practice and guidelines, most of which are in digital form,” Dr Krause said. Among the proposed new tests, she cited Guidelines for the Control of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia Coli in Raw Beef, Fresh Leafy Vegetables, Raw Milk and Raw Milk Cheeses and Sprouts; Guidelines for the Safe Use and Reuse of Water in Food Production and Processing; ML for lead for ready-to-eat meals for infants and young children, and others. “Most foodborne illnesses,” Dr Kruse noted, “can be prevented through proper food handling, hygiene measures and awareness raising.”

“Food security is one of the key areas for ensuring the security of the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union, a factor in maintaining their statehood and sovereignty, the most important component of demographic policy, a necessary condition for the implementation of the strategic national priority,” said Saliya Karymbaeva, Deputy Director of the Department of Sanitary, Phytosanitary and Veterinary Measures of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). The expert noted in particular that the regulations for some veterinary medicinal products (e.g. the tetracycline group) set by the Eurasian Economic Union are more stringent than those set in the international standards.

Peter Sousa Hoejskov, Food Safety Technical Officer, WHO Regional Office for Europe, presented an overview of the WHO Global Food Safety Strategy 2022–2030 adopted by the 75th World Health Assembly. The Strategy provides for five priority areas aimed at reducing the burden of foodborne diseases. First, strengthening national food control systems. Second: identifying and responding to food safety challenges. Third, the widespread use of food chain information, scientific evidence and risk assessments. Fourth: more active engagement with stakeholders. Fifth: promoting food safety as an essential component of domestic, regional and international trade. In conclusion, the representative of the WHO European Office noted the contribution of this strategy to the achievement of a number of SDGs, including the elimination of hunger and poverty, ensuring good health and well-being, responsible consumption and production.

Academician Viktor Tutelyan, in turn, in the course of his report, developed the topics he touched upon at the press conference: “New challenges and issues relating to the control and regulation of chemical contaminants in food products, firstly, are associated with the identification of previously unrecognized chemical factors harmful to human health, and secondly, are due to technology advances, accompanied by the emergence of new sources of nutrients and methods of technological processing of food products, which, along with many benefits and advantages, creates potential risks for the health of consumers.

Priority chemical contaminants that require improved regulation and control methods currently include toxic elements (organic and inorganic forms of arsenic, mercury, nickel), veterinary products, phycotoxins, phytotoxins, new mycotoxins, various forms of polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, biologically active substances of plant origin, concentrated when extracts are being obtained, as well as the so-called technological contaminants, food additives, residual amounts of technological processing aids.

The assessment of risks from nanoparticles and nanomaterials used in the production of food products, as well as enzyme preparations and food ingredients produced with the help of genetically modified microorganisms is a separate issue. The current system of toxicological and hygienic assessment and control of food chemical contaminants in Russia is constantly being improved on the basis of new scientific data to substantiate the permissible levels of their content in products and new methods of analysis.

The results obtained in this way are reflected in the regulatory documents of the Russian Federation and the Eurasian Economic Union. Microbial contamination of food is one of the major public health and economic issues. More than 200 diseases of a bacterial, viral, parasitic nature are transmitted through food. In terms of the number of victims, the rate of disease development, and the ability to turn benign products into those unsuitable for consumption if storage conditions are violated and thereby create a threat to the food supply for the population, this biological hazard factor surpasses many others. Equally important is the presence of technological microorganisms and their metabolites in terms of their safety and effectiveness.

Improving the food biosafety system is aimed at obtaining knowledge about the nature of pathogens and the response of the human body to them based on new technologies of multilocus and whole genome sequencing, at the development of highly specific methods of analysis, including multiplex, microbial contaminants and biotechnological microorganisms, as well as at the introduction of predictive microbiology in the evaluation of food stability.

New food sources, as well as food obtained with the help of new technologies, need more stringent regulation of the safety assessment process due to the potential for the emergence of products that, differing from traditional ones in nutritional value, toxicological and allergenic indicators, may pose a threat to health. The reason for this possibility lies both in the properties of macro- and micronutrients and their metabolites, and in the possibility of the presence of unknown minor components. The expansion of the bioresource base for the food industry requires continuous improvement of approaches to assessing the safety of new food sources, while remaining an urgent scientific food hygiene issue, Academician Tutelyan concluded.

The principles of the rational use of antibiotics were outlined by Dmitry Makarov, Senior Researcher, Feed and Feed Additives Safety Department, All-Russian State Centre for Quality and Standardization of Veterinary Drugs and Feeds (FSBI “VGNKI”). “The general rule for the use of antibiotics in veterinary medicine is to use them as little as possible, but no less than necessary. The principles are as follows:

• Reducing the need for antibiotics (hygiene, population density, alternative means – vaccines, bacteriophages, probiotics, feed additives that inhibit the growth of pathogens, antibodies).
• Using only in case of proven or suspected presence of an infectious agent, strictly according to the instructions, for food-producing animals – no longer than 14 days.
• Selecting an antibiotic based on an accurate clinical, preferably microbiological, diagnosis, taking into account sensitivity analysis.
• Avoiding routine prophylaxis (only for sick animals or animals with a direct risk of getting sick).
• Special conditions for using critically important drugs (in clinical conditions that are poorly responsive or expected to be poorly responsive to other classes of antimicrobials).

“The Department of Food Safety at the Russian Biotechnological University (formerly the Moscow State University of Food Production) has trained more than 1500 specialists for 15 years who work in the departments of quality, standardization and certification of food industry enterprises, certification bodies, testing centres and laboratories of the Rosstandart and Rospotrebnadzor system, departments of environmental control and labour protection of enterprises,” said Irina Tyutkova, Professor of the Department of Social and Humanitarian Disciplines, Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education ROSBIOTECH. – The department is equipped with such educational and scientific laboratories as “Methods of control”, “Organoleptic analysis of food products”, “Sanitary and hygiene and environmental control” and “Health and Safety”.

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The forum was also attended by Vasily Akimkin, Director of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor – the FAO reference centre for antibiotic resistance, Alexey Gulyukin, Director of the Federal Scientific Centre – RAS All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Veterinary Medicine named after K.I. Skryabin and Ya.R. Kovalenko”, Sergey Khotimchenko, 1st Deputy Director of the Federal Research Centre, Corresponding Member, RAS, Svetlana Sheveleva, Head of the Laboratory of Biosafety and Nutrimicrobiome Analysis, Natalya Efimochkina, Leading Researcher of the Biosafety Research Laboratory of the Federal Research Centre for Nutrition and Biotechnology, and a number of other prominent experts in this field.  You can watch the full video recording of the symposium here.