All in Good Taste

Scientists are attempting to lick food contamination with cutting-edge technology. Say hello to the e-tongue.

- Anne-Frances Hutchinson

Contaminated food poisons 600 million people every year.

The symptoms – which, unfortunately, many of us are much too familiar with – range from mild discomfort to crippling pain. Asking “Does this taste funny to you?” doesn’t just dare the respondent to play palace taster; foodborne illness is deadly, killing about 420,000 of the world’s people annually.

One in six Americans get sick from foodborne illness each year, resulting in about 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.

Tainted food takes a vicious bite out of corporations and brands, too. Depending on severity, a single outbreak can cost companies anywhere from a few thousand dollars to several millions in lost revenue, lawsuits, fines, higher insurance premiums, and reputational repair, just for starters.

And that doesn't take food fraud into consideration. Food Safety Net Services defines that "as the act of purposely altering, misrepresenting, mislabeling, substituting, or tampering with any food product at any point along the farm-to-table food supply chain. Fraud can occur in the raw material, in an ingredient, in the final product, or in the food's packaging."

Fraudsters mess with food to make money, either by boosting its apparent value or cutting production costs. It's nothing new, reaching back centuries, but it's currently on the upswing. Bloomberg estimated that from the first half of 2019 to the same period in 2020, cases rose by 37%.