グローバル教養科目（Food Safety in Public and Environmental Health）

Food safety is a public health issue. With the aim of protecting consumer health, foods (including water) must be kept contaminant-free from farm to fork. The environment is a source of hazardous contaminants (i.e., biological, chemical, and physical) that could impair health resulting in malnutrition, morbidity, and mortality with the young (<5 years old), elderly, and immuno-compromised particularly vulnerable. Public health is, therefore, inextricably linked with environmental health. As such, programs for food safety assurance need to be holistic and transdisciplinary to be effective.
The World Health Organization (1999) identifies the health sector as having the lead role in the implementation and coordination of programs on food safety. This requires an educated workforce that can identify environmental factors affecting food that impact consumer health. In this class, we will discuss food safety-related environmental hazards, their mode of contamination, and the underlying mechanism of the risk they pose to human health. Emerging and perennial foodborne illnesses will be discussed from the concept of One Health – a transdisciplinary approach of considering not only the issue at hand, but all the other upstream factors related to it. At the end of the class, students should be able to apply a holistic approach in understanding issues on food safety.