people (zoonotic). In the United Kingdom, a report on a major food fraud scandal that broke out in 2013 revealed how a highly competitive and under- regulated industry allowed firms to adulterate beef


In China, trading centers in Hunan came to a standstill when cadmium was found in rice, a legacy of cultivation in polluted soils. In a separate incident, thousands of dead pigs were reportedly dumped in rivers and reservoirs, further undermining trust in the safety and wholesomeness of pork.


with horsemeat, which although posing no threat to human health did undermine general confidence in the food system.2 Meanwhile, cholera—which is both water- and


foodborne—broke out in the Cameroon, Cuba, Ghana, and South Sudan. For Cuba, it was the first outbreak in more than a century. Te government of Ghana responded to its national outbreak by atempting to ban street food vending. In China, trading centers in Hunan came to a


standstill when cadmium was found in rice, a leg- acy of cultivation in polluted soils. In a separate incident, thousands of dead pigs were reportedly dumped in rivers and reservoirs, further under- mining trust in the safety and wholesomeness of pork. Problems were not confined to the indigenous industry. An American-owned meat factory oper- ating in China was found selling out-of-date and tainted meat to clients, including McDonald’s and Starbucks. McDonald’s expects that this will reduce the company’s global earnings by US$0.15–0.20 per share. Across the strait, a scandal in Taiwan erupted over the use of “guter oil”—recycled oil from


42 REDUCING AND MANAGING FOOD SCARES


restaurant waste and animal byproducts. Te pre- mier of Taiwan apologized and the chief execu- tive officer of the Taiwanese company responsible was arrested. As 2014 drew to an end, the largest-ever outbreak


of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in West Africa was ongo- ing. Te most likely initial source of this outbreak was exposure to bats. Other events of 2014 were more in keeping with


the overall long-term progress being made around the globe in beter managing infectious diseases— advances that have resulted from beter educa- tion, information, technology, and institutions. For instance, data from the Global Burden of Disease report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in June 2014 showed that diarrheal disease in 2012 decreased by 38 percent from the year 2000.3 In 2014 technologies to beter manage high-prior-


ity diseases continued to be developed and released. One example is the development of encapsulated fecal transplants for Clostridium difficile. Tis unpleas- ant disease has increased rapidly in the last few decades, and food is considered a potential transmis- sion route. As much as 90 percent of cases that do not respond to antibiotic treatment improve when feces from healthy people are transplanted to the victim. Going forward, this sometimes-difficult treatment process will be facilitated by encapsulating the feces to be transplanted in an easy-to-swallow pill. Food safety reform took place in several countries,


notably Taiwan, which created a food safety agency, and the United States, which began implementation of its 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act—the country’s most sweeping reform for food safety in 70 years. High-level policy coordination on food safety included an Organisation for Economic Co-oper- ation and Development meeting on the future of agriculture, which identified food safety as a major concern, and a World Trade Organization workshop on risk analysis for food safety, which summed up the progress and challenges since the previous work- shop in 2000. WHO released preliminary results of a reference group study on foodborne disease atribu- tion,4 and a book was published covering the results of a decade of CGIAR research on food safety in the informal markets of Africa.5


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