How NASA Testing Changed US Food Inspection Forever
The US food safety inspection system underwent a major transformation in the 1990s by adopting NASA-developed safety protocols known as HACCP. This shift moved the industry away from visual inspection toward a risk-based approach to prevent invisible pathogens like E. coli.
Why it matters
This historical shift illustrates how aerospace engineering standards can be adapted to solve critical public health challenges in the food supply chain.
But by the end of the 20th century, as American taste for beef mushroomed, the system was clearly and woefully inadequate. The gotta-catch-’em-all approach was no match for plants butchering hundreds of animals an hour. The bigger problem was that testing had once more fallen behind in the arms race. Decades of poking at hearts, bile ducts, spleens, lungs, lymph nodes, livers, and kidneys had effectively rid the country’s meat supply of diseases that could be spotted or sniffed out. But humans can’t see, smell, or feel Escherichia coli.
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