Oh, what fun!

According to the Voedingscentrum (Food Centre), roughly 700,000 people are affected by food poisoning annually. Despite the tips and warnings, it all seems like a lost cause. 

Take King’s Day for example. This is traditionally the day for fun games, open rummage markets and people selling pancakes, satay and hamburgers on the street. Cross-contamination between raw and prepared products is too easy: there is often no place to wash your hands or refrigerate things properly. That goes for the festivals, barbecues and picnics as well. Everyone is aware of the risk, but we don’t take it seriously. 

At the end of April, the media announced three important safety warnings. My inbox was bursting at the seams. Both DekaMarkt and Dirk van den Broek were immediately removing packaged tartare from the shelve, because Listeria bacteria had been detected in the products upon inspection. Not to mention that Albert Heijn was warning customers that, due to a packaging error, several packages of AH Italian grilling sausage were accidentally filled with AH Satay grilling sausages. The greatest danger is that the packages which mistakenly contained the wrong sausages were also labelled with the wrong allergens. The sausage is not suitable for people with soya, mustard or celery allergies.

I wonder what happened in those factories. Did they panic or keep a cool head? I’m betting it was not much fun. It makes me think of the study into sausages placed in the wrong packaging: did someone fall asleep? Was it an error in the process? What about the production of the tartare? Did they wrack their brains about where the infection came from? Was it a drain? Were the bacteria able to multiply in parts of the machines that were not reached during cleaning? Danger can hide in the smallest crevice.

Did the food sellers on King’s Day know that they could also be penalised by the NVWA if they did not have their affairs in order? Did they feel responsible for the health of their clients? Were they more concerned with having fun and the cash in the till at the end of the day? What’s interesting is that many people are understanding even when the motivation was the latter. That’s quite different from the way it is for the producers whose products we buy in the supermarket: society unanimously demands absolute food safety from them. The food industry is constantly under a microscope. That’s not always so much fun. 

Judith Witte

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