Letter: Improve food safety measures

I am writing to comment on your article, "Crab inspection policy slammed," which appeared on Sept. 20 on page 2. From that article, I can see that your staff writer is not well versed in microbiology.

I would like to point out that cholera in humans is caused by a bacterium belonging to the genus Vibrio. There is a great difference between bacteria and viruses.

In your article, that pathogen was repeatedly referred to as "cholera virus," which is a totally non-existent organism.

However, "hog cholera," also known as "classical swine fever," is a disease in pigs that is caused by a virus.

This virus is not known to infect humans. On the other hand, there is also a bacterium called Salmonella enteriditis serotype cholerasuis, that infects pigs.

Food safety inspection should be carried out routinely to ensure the maintenance of public health.

However, it is pathetic to learn from the aforementioned article, which quotes Department of Health (DOH) specialist Hsieh Ting-hung (謝定宏) that "given public concern, moves would be made to reintroduce cholera inspection for imported seafood from China."

The question is, if there was no "public concern" or "public uproar" on a certain issue, would the officials still take the initiative to carry out those checks?

The public should also be made aware that freshwater crabs could be infected with the larvae (metacercaria) of the lung fluke belonging to the genus Paragonimus. These lung fluke parasites are transmitted to humans through the ingestion of improperly cooked freshwater crab. One would thus presume that the DOH would be very much concerned with this parasitic disease.

I was therefore surprised to learn that the DOH's primary concern is with the outbreak of a disease, and that it shuns the prevention of food-borne parasitic diseases.

Among the parasitic diseases infecting humans, the DOH official focused only on malaria and amebiasis because these two diseases are required by law to be reported to the authorities.

It is a common attitude of government officials: anything which is not mentioned in the law is out of their scope of interest.

In the case of crab inspections, the buck is typically passed to the DOH Food Safety Bureau.

Since food safety and inspection is everybody's concern, I think this issue should not be left for a single government bureau to tackle.

I suggest that the government set up a "Food Safety Commission," modeled after the one in Japan, which would report directly to the president or the prime minister.

The members of the commission must have specialized backgrounds and can be selected from academic circles. They should also be non-partisan.

Ooi Hong-Kean
Department of Veterinary Medicine,
National Chung Hsing University, Taichung