From PETER BATEMAN
As a good biologist, Richard Weinstein will know that the fungicides
he worked with under strict conditions in a laboratory are unlikely to have
been at a similar concentration when they were subsequently used to spray
crops (Letters, 12 January). To balance the argument, some natural mycotoxins
are so potent that laboratory work on them has been abandoned on safety
grounds.
There is hardly a more toxic food additive than clostridium botulinum,
yet its distribution is also fairly indiscriminate, and those who choose
wholefood because they believe it to be free from preservatives or pesticides
must accept the inevitable additives left by pests, bacteria or moulds.
Today’s consumer apparently wants ready-to-eat meals. These involve
complex operations: cook-chill preparation, sale from refrigerated cabinets
of uncertain temperature to customers who drive them around in the sun for
a couple of hours, storage in a refrigerator of unknown calibration, and
reheating in a microwave oven for a time which may or may not heat them
adequately. If we are to use less chemistry, we must produce better education.
Peter Bateman The Society of Food Hygiene Technology Lymington, Hampshire
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