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Food Safety & Nutrition

    Child eating at feeding center, Ethiopia
    (A hungry child eats at a feeding
    center in Ethiopia, 2003.
    CDC/Liesel Talley)

    “Last year, the World Health Organization released a report ranking the major threats to life and health worldwide. What was the leading threat? Was it heart disease, cancer, violence? No— the biggest threat is just what it was a hundred years ago and a thousand years ago—it is hunger.” - James T. Morris, Executive Director, World Food Programme (2003)

    Worldwide, about 1 in 7 people suffer from hunger or malnutrition. Nearly two billion people have micronutrient deficiencies in their diets. And each year, malnutrition contributes to the deaths of approximately 10 million children under the age of five. The typical causes of acute hunger are famine, conflict, and natural disasters. Protein and micronutrient deficiencies are often related to chronically inadequate or poor-quality diet. Such deficiencies can result in reduced mental and physical development among children, poor pregnancy outcomes, decreased work capacity of adults, increased illness, and premature death. Developing nations often lack strategies, technologies, and resources to assess micronutrient status and plan nutritional interventions.

    Food safety is another major public health issue. Food contamination may be of biological or chemical origin, and new strains of disease-causing bacteria continue to emerge. More than 250 foodborne diseases have been described. In many areas, no infrastructure exists to track or investigate foodborne disease outbreaks, and individual cases of foodborne illness are typically not recorded by public health authorities. Thus, the global amount of food contamination and foodborne disease is unknown.

    NCEH/ATSDR EXPERTISE AND EXPERIENCE

    CDC sends epidemiologists, nutritionists, and food security experts to developing countries to improve nutrition and food access through capacity building, training, and assistance programs. CDC and academic partners also teach nutrition and food security courses in developing countries.

    To help eliminate micronutrient malnutrition, NCEH established the Global Micronutrient Laboratory Program. The program seeks to build laboratory capacity through technical support, training, and technology transfer; to support the development of “field-friendly” technologies; and to develop reference methods and materials. The laboratory also provides quality assurance services for measurements of nutritional indicators including urinary iodine, serum vitamin A, and serum B vitamins.

    Domestically, CDC provides expert epidemiologic and microbiologic consultation to health departments and other federal agencies dealing with foodborne disease. CDC researchers develop new methods for identifying, characterizing, and fingerprinting the microbes/chemicals that cause disease. And both domestically and internationally, CDC sends emergency teams into the field to investigate outbreaks that are large or unusual. CDC’s epidemiological and lab experience is crucial to identifying physical and microbial sources of food contamination and appropriate remedial measures.

    Click here for a list of current NCEH/ATSDR projects related to this topic.

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