In light of the recent food licking craze, 3BP Inc’s CEO Auguste Jacques stated, “No problem. We have a solution for that!”
Jacques was completely appalled but not totally surprised by the recent food contamination issues. “All food is at risk due to packaging and transporting issues. I just didn’t expect people to publicly lick the food and put it back on camera and inadvertently starting a viral campaign.” Fortunately, 3BP Inc. has a solution that will alert consumers, food distributors, and retailers of contamination.
Despite all the conversation around food contamination, a high risk still remains due to lax regulations and easy to infiltrate packaging. There isn’t any real mechanism for knowing whether the food we buy has been contaminated aside from what can be determined visually. At present, the “use by” dates are the only direction a consumer receives for protection. All we know is that $161 billion each year is wasted in food spoilage. Statistics aren’t readily available on the damage caused by purposeful contamination and vandalism such as food licking, though it appears the numbers are growing.
Other statistics are compelling, however. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), 48 million people get sick, 128,000 people are hospitalized, 3,000 people die, and $3.7 billion dollars in hospital costs are spent each year as a result of contaminated food in the United States alone. Loss of life, loss of wages, and other losses for which there currently is no accounting provide extra burdens to families, employees, and others. All are avoidable.
Determining the sources of foodborne illnesses is the first step in prevention. The CDC has identified two groups of problems, pathogens and unspecified agents. Pathogens are bacteria, fungus, or parasite that require a host. Unspecified agents are related to anything else and result in 38.4 million of the cases noted.
The World Health Organization published these key global findings in June of this year:
- Access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health.
- Unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances, causes more than 200 diseases – ranging from diarrhea to cancers.
- An estimated 600 million – almost 1 in 10 people in the world – fall ill after eating contaminated food and 420 000 die every year, resulting in the loss of 33 million healthy life years (DALYs).
- Children under 5 years of age carry 40% of the foodborne disease burden, with 125 000 deaths every year.
- Diarrheal diseases are the most common illnesses resulting from the consumption of contaminated food, causing 550 million people to fall ill and 230 000 deaths every year.
- Food safety, nutrition and food security are inextricably linked. Unsafe food creates a vicious cycle of disease and malnutrition, particularly affecting infants, young children, elderly and the sick.
- Foodborne diseases impede socioeconomic development by straining health care systems, and harming national economies, tourism and trade.
- Food supply chains now cross multiple national borders. Good collaboration between governments, producers and consumers helps ensure food safety.
3BPinc has a solution and can help. 3BP’s patented Damage-Indicating Packaging provides automatic alerts when packaged food products are contaminated, exposed, and/or tainted. The patented Baby Blue active and intelligent color changing technology addresses several areas for preventative measures. First, the agent identifies there is an issue of concern along the supply chain and calls for immediate action. Second, it allows for a base for identification of where in the supply chain the issue has occurred. Third, the alert provides useful information for crime intelligence. Fourth, it provides more accurate accounting of the food supply situation. Finally, it sets standards for compliance.
With its new technology, 3BP provides the food industry with a more sophisticated way to determine whether food products are safe to consume, resulting in better safety and security measures that lower serious risks and costs, decreasing food waste by pinpointing where new measures and improvements need to be made along the supply chain, and increasing socioeconomic security for all.
Please DON’T LICK THE FOOD and feel free to comment and share your feedback on this issue!
