The Poisoning From the Perspective of the Health Department Essay

Introduction

The health department in the U.S sees terrorism by food as an intentional poisoning of food during cultivation, manufacture, supply or preparation by those handling. It can occur in different ways such as bacteria, physical and chemical (Friis, 2018). Terrorists poison the food through attacks such as contaminating it during preparation, supply, and retailing or when cultivating crops. For example, the food terrorism in Oregon that happened in 1984 was by poisoning the salads when preparing (Torok, Tauxe, Wise, Livengood, Sokolow, Mauvais, ... & Foster, 1997). They taint the food with biological or chemical agents before they enter the United States. Toxins can also be introduced during food manufacture in a domestic processing plant. During planting and cultivation of food crop, they can be sprayed with chemical agents that are harmful to the health of humans. Livestock can also be targeted through spray and injection of toxic chemicals. Further, terrorists may start spreading rumors of unsafe foods through the internet and mass media.

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Intervention Strategy

An intervention strategy that could prevent a similar issue in the future is by implementing a food monitoring program. This strategy will entail the surveillance of food at the farms, food industries, food stores, hotels, wholesalers, and retailers.

Justification of Recommendation and Agency

As an intervention strategy, the food monitoring program will be successful in preventing food terrorism in the U.S as it aims at establishing whether hygiene practices are maintained in food handling practices. It will be easy to find out areas that require more surveillance during food manufacture, storage, preparation and growing of food crops or when raising livestock. The agency that would administer the intervention in my home state is the Food and Drug Association as it has the entire rights to oversee food practices and enforce food safety regulation in the U.S (Friss, 2018).

A Measure for Monitoring the Success of the Recommendation

A useful measure that will assist in monitoring the success of the food monitoring program is periodic food health surveillance. This measure will entail regular oversight of food handling practices in food companies and any other institutions with the responsibility of preparing food. It will be useful in preventing terrorism by food as it will keep the industry players in watch of their food handling practices. According to Nsubuga, White, Thacker, Anderson, Blount, Broome, ... and Trostle, M. (2006), periodic surveys are efficient surveillance methods for tracking public health issues and areas that have high concentrations of diseases due to a particular cause.

References

Friis, R. (2018). Essentials of environmental health. Public Health. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Nsubuga, P., White, M., Thacker, S., Anderson, M., Blount, S., Broome, C.., . . . & Trostle, M. (2006). Chapter 53: Public health surveillance: A tool for targeting and monitoring interventions. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11770/

Torok, T., Tauxe, R., Wise, R., Livengood, J., Sokolow, R., Mauvais, S., ... & Foster, L. (1997). A large community outbreak of salmonellosis caused by intentional contamination of restaurant salad bars. JAMA, 278(5), 389-395.