ITCA Update


As everyone in the industry knows, this is often


the case. Passengers who become ill may well blame the last meal they consumed, that is on the plane, when in fact it was something eaten prior to flying that caused the illness. Even so, ‘experts’ perpetuate the myth by suggesting that airline meal food poisoning is under-reported. So for instance, the 2010 FDA Report was an item on the ABC News on June 28 2010 and a food safety expert was interviewed about it. The newscaster made the point that despite apparently unsafe conditions there were very few incidences of food poisoning reported, to which the expert responded by identifying and listing three reasons for this: passengers disperse widely; delay in the onset of illness; very little testing by doctors.


“Passengers who become ill may well blame the last meal they consumed, that is, on the plane, when in fact it was something eaten prior to flying that caused the illness”


All of which sounds reasonable. Except a highly authoritative 2007 article in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease (McMullan et al) was only able to find 43 authenticated incidents of airline food poisoning between 1947 and 2007, the last being in 1998. This is less than one incident a year over the last sixty years. A total of 8,485 passengers and crew were infected, an average of 197 per outbreak. So it does seem that airline incidents are officially reported. Moreover as every airline and caterer knows, passengers write to airlines reporting such incidents, although this information is rarely put into the public domain. In this regard, I have recently seen a report that showed one international airline had 219 ‘food poisoning complaint letters’ in an eight-month period. In this same period the airline flew eight


million passengers. All of these complaints were investigated and followed up. In many cases, passengers themselves acknowledged that their symptoms were not related to food poisoning, or that if they were subject to infection this could have been due to food consumed before the flight in their country of origin. Perhaps of more importance was the fact that


each complaint letter was unique to a specific flight on a specific day. Since all food prepared for onboard consumption is produced and handled in batches, pathogenic contamination is extremely unlikely to occur specifically, affecting only a single individual. As we have seen from the study above, known cases of food poisoning affect an average of 197 passengers. Hence individual reports of airline meal contamination seem extremely unlikely. Finally, it is worth reporting on the food safety record of other sectors of the tourism industry. A 2004 article (Rooney et al) in Public Health Reports reviews food-borne disease on cruise ships between 1970 and 2003. It identifies 50 outbreaks affecting 9,861 passengers and crew, an average of 197 per outbreak. So it seems the scale of infection is the same whether it be on a plane or a ship. But the risk of infection is considerably higher on a cruise ship than when flying, with twice as many cases per year. Much more importantly, worldwide about 15 million people take a cruise each year, whereas nearly two billion fly. This means that an individual passenger is 100 times more likely to be infected whilst cruising than flying. But even at sea the risk is 500,000 to one – which is higher than the risk of dying in an airplane crash (400,000 to one). To put it simply, the risk of contracting food poisoning from an airline is for all intents and purposes - zero. You can quote me if you want:


“Probably the safest place for the average human being to consume food is on a plane”.


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www.onboardhospitality.com 109


WELCOME TO NEW ITCA MEMBERS


Alison Price On Air Ltd Norfolk House, 5a Cranmer Road London SW9 6EJ, UNITED KINGDOM Tel: 020 7840 7640 Mr Daniel Hulme Business type: Alison Price On Air supplies catering to private and business aircraft leaving the UK.


Jiangyin Uta Tech Company Ltd., RM 901, 276 Chengjiang Road (M), Jiangyin, Jiangsu, CHINA 214430 Tel: Mrs Bai Zhou Tel: 86-510-86692831 Business type: Producer of disposable and rotable paper and plastic for inflight.


Whitehouse Travel Retail LLP, Wilson House, Bentalls, Pipps Hill, Basildon, SS14 3BX UNITED KINGDOM Tel: 01268 274284 Mr Geoff Nutley Business type: Supplier of consumables to airlines in over 40 countries


Air Chefs (PTY) Ltd., 20 Jones Road, Boksburg, Johannesburg 1459, SOUTH AFRICA Mr Jabulani Khumalo


Tel: +27 11 578 0900 Business type : Airline catering


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