Medically Important Foodborne Parasites: A Consequential Challenge for Food Safety Assurance
Foodborne parasitic diseases are often overlooked in food safety control schemes, even though they are known to pose a severe threat to human health
Of the numerous foodborne biological agents that threaten public health, foodborne parasites, it would appear, are a lower order of concern than are bacteria, viruses, and fungi. In some communities and for certain classes of food products, this risk assessment may indeed be a risky one. The list is long, and the illnesses and deaths caused by foodborne parasites are very consequential. More often than not, the reporting on biological hazards in human food are focused on bacterial pathogens. Almost on a daily basis, we are inundated with reports of products recalled due to Listeria contamination. By comparison, contemporary food safety literature on the subject of foodborne parasites is nearly mute.