How NASA Testing Changed US Food Inspection Forever
How NASA Testing Changed US Food Inspection Forever
NASA 的测试如何永远改变了美国的食品检验制度
In 1906, in response to public outcry that came after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle detailed the revolting conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants, the US government passed the Federal Meat Inspection Act. The legislation created what would become known as the Food Safety and Inspection Service, a force of federal employees who would spend their days in stockyards and packing plants, checking livestock for disease both before and after their slaughter. They did their work organoleptically—with their eyes, noses, and hands—an approach soon dubbed “poke and sniff.” This 100 percent testing method worked well enough for spotting the lesions that signaled tuberculosis and cysticercosis (a tissue infection caused by tapeworms), and the federal presence discouraged plants from using illegal preservatives and generally unsanitary practices.
1906 年，厄普顿·辛克莱（Upton Sinclair）的小说《屠场》（The Jungle）详细描述了芝加哥肉类加工厂令人作呕的状况，引发了公众的强烈抗议。作为回应，美国政府通过了《联邦肉类检验法》。该法案设立了后来被称为“食品安全与检验局”（FSIS）的机构，由联邦雇员组成，他们每天在牲畜围栏和加工厂工作，在屠宰前后检查牲畜是否患病。他们通过感官——即用眼睛看、鼻子闻、双手摸——来进行检查，这种方法很快被称为“戳一戳、闻一闻”。这种 100% 的测试方法在识别结核病和囊虫病（由绦虫引起的组织感染）的病变方面效果尚可，且联邦人员的存在也阻止了工厂使用非法防腐剂和普遍不卫生的做法。
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.
然而到了 20 世纪末，随着美国人对牛肉的需求激增，这套系统显然已变得极其落后且力不从心。这种“全数捕获”式的检查方法根本无法应对每小时屠宰数百头动物的工厂。更大的问题在于，在与病原体的“军备竞赛”中，检测手段再次落后了。几十年来，通过对心脏、胆管、脾脏、肺、淋巴结、肝脏和肾脏的检查，美国有效地清除了肉类供应中那些肉眼可见或可闻出的疾病。但人类无法看见、闻到或摸到大肠杆菌（Escherichia coli）。
In 1993, the growing danger of E. coli made itself evident when hamburgers sold by Jack in the Box fast-food restaurants sickened more than 700 people and killed four children. The public outcry rivaled the one sparked by The Jungle and triggered two moves by the Food Safety and Inspection Service. As a short-term fix, it hired 160 extra meat inspectors. More importantly, it accelerated a change in approach that had been bubbling away in the background ever since NASA decided it was time to send astronauts to space for more than a few hours at a time—long enough for them to get hungry.
1993 年，大肠杆菌带来的日益严重的威胁显现出来：杰克盒子（Jack in the Box）快餐店出售的汉堡导致 700 多人患病，并造成 4 名儿童死亡。公众的抗议声浪堪比当年《屠场》引发的舆论，这促使食品安全与检验局采取了两项行动。作为短期补救措施，该局额外聘请了 160 名肉类检验员。更重要的是，它加速了一种方法的变革，而这种方法自 NASA 决定将宇航员送入太空执行超过几小时的任务（足以让他们感到饥饿）时起，就已经在幕后酝酿了。
That happened in the early 1960s, when the Mercury program, which first put Americans into space, gave way to Gemini, which proved out the equipment and procedures necessary for the longer, moon-bound Apollo missions to follow. Sending astronauts into space for multiple days meant dealing with the various elements of sustenance in zero gravity, from swallowing to defecating. But it was the middle step, digesting, that most worried Paul Lachance, the space agency’s lead food scientist. Food poisoning on Earth is terrible. In a spacesuit or space capsule, it could be catastrophic.
这一切发生在 20 世纪 60 年代初，当时首次将美国人送入太空的“水星计划”让位于“双子座计划”，后者验证了后续更长期的登月任务（阿波罗计划）所需的设备和程序。将宇航员送入太空数日，意味着必须处理零重力下维持生命的各个环节，从吞咽到排泄。但最让 NASA 首席食品科学家保罗·拉尚斯（Paul Lachance）担心的，是中间的消化环节。在地球上食物中毒已经很糟糕了，而在宇航服或太空舱里，这可能是灾难性的。
The obvious approach would be a 100 percent testing route, screening every morsel for pathogens and taking a zero-tolerance attitude. This was unworkable, because, as with artillery shells, every bite of food that’s tested is one that can’t be eaten. This is known as “destructive testing.” Proving a given batch was absolutely safe would involve eliminating most of it. Private industry was no help; what inspection did take place in the 1960s was far from scientific or suitable for NASA’s needs. Most pathogens were “discovered” by the people who consumed them.
显而易见的方法是进行 100% 的测试，筛选每一口食物中的病原体并采取零容忍态度。但这行不通，因为就像炮弹一样，每一口被测试的食物都无法再食用。这被称为“破坏性测试”。要证明某一批次绝对安全，就意味着要消耗掉其中的大部分。私营工业也帮不上忙；20 世纪 60 年代进行的检查远非科学，也不符合 NASA 的需求。大多数病原体都是由食用者“发现”的。
Lachance and his colleagues responded by creating a new way of testing food safety. Where Walter Shewhart’s control chart was a tool for spotting manufacturing issues that could then be resolved, they conceived of an approach that went further, proactively identifying all the points where problems are most likely to start, and focusing inspection there. The core idea was to test food not after it was produced, but to so control its production that such testing was unnecessary. They called it Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, today better known as HACCP.
拉尚斯和他的同事们通过创造一种新的食品安全测试方法做出了回应。沃尔特·休哈特（Walter Shewhart）的控制图是用于发现制造问题并加以解决的工具，而他们构思的方法更进一步：主动识别所有最容易出现问题的环节，并将检查重点放在那里。其核心理念不是在食品生产出来后进行测试，而是通过控制生产过程，使得这种测试变得不再必要。他们将其称为“危害分析与关键控制点”，即今天广为人知的 HACCP。
To help digest this, think of basic acceptance sampling as the bit of wine the waiter has you taste so you know the bottle hasn’t spoiled before everyone gets a full glass. The basic Shewhart approach, then, is like the “test pancake” you make as you’re starting up breakfast. It tells you whether your production process, which requires a batter of the right consistency and a griddle at the right temperature, is on track. HACCP (pronounced hassip) is more like the way you should make a soup. Each time you add salt or broth or lemon juice or cream, you taste it to see how the flavor, saltiness, and acidity match what you’re aiming for.
为了帮助理解，可以将基本的验收抽样想象成侍者让你品尝的那一小口酒，这样在大家倒满酒杯之前，你就知道这瓶酒没有变质。那么，基本的休哈特方法就像你做早餐时先摊的那张“测试煎饼”。它告诉你你的生产过程（需要面糊稠度适中、煎锅温度合适）是否正常。而 HACCP（发音为 hassip）更像是你做汤的方式。每当你加入盐、肉汤、柠檬汁或奶油时，你都会尝一下，看看味道、咸度和酸度是否符合你的预期。
For NASA, analyzed hazards could be physical (crystallized Tang powder could break a tooth), chemical (the presence of pesticide residues), or microbiological (the pathogens that posed the most serious threat in space). A critical control point could be any moment or action in the production process, from gathering raw materials to vacuum-sealing a package. “We identified the critical steps that would make the difference between something being safe or not safe,” Lachance said. “The temperature, the pressure, whatever that criteria was, whatever that critical control point was.” A chicken headed into space would be plucked, deboned, cut into pieces small enough to freeze-dry, and cooked, at which point it would be sterile. But as various people handled it, the meat would be checked on its way to the freeze dryer, then on its way into plastic packaging, then again after being vacuum-sealed. To this day, no astronaut has gotten food poisoning while in space.
对于 NASA 来说，分析的危害可能是物理性的（结晶的果珍粉可能会崩掉牙齿）、化学性的（农药残留）或微生物性的（在太空中构成最严重威胁的病原体）。关键控制点可以是生产过程中的任何时刻或动作，从收集原材料到真空密封包装。“我们确定了决定食品安全与否的关键步骤，”拉尚斯说，“无论是温度、压力，还是任何其他标准或关键控制点。”一只送往太空的鸡会被拔毛、去骨、切成足够小的块以便冷冻干燥，然后烹饪，此时它已是无菌的。但在不同人员处理过程中，肉在进入冷冻干燥机前、进入塑料包装前，以及真空密封后，都会受到检查。时至今日，还没有宇航员在太空中发生过食物中毒。
“HACCP introduced careful design, rigorous standards, and precise measurement into the largely intuitive, loosely organized, hit-or-miss world of industrial food safety prior to the 1970s,” Timothy D. Lytton wrote in his 2019 book about foodborne illness, Outbreak. Pillsbury, which produced crumble-free food for NASA (floating crumbs were also a concern in space) and had a major hand in developing HACCP, implemented the process into its own consumer production lines after 1971, when a Connecticut woman found glass in some of its baby cereal. The approach went national in 1973, when the FDA added HACCP-based rules to its regulation of low-acid canned food.
“HACCP 将严谨的设计、严格的标准和精确的测量引入了 20 世纪 70 年代以前那个主要靠直觉、组织松散、碰运气的工业食品安全领域，”蒂莫西·D·莱顿（Timothy D. Lytton）在他 2019 年关于食源性疾病的著作《爆发》（Outbreak）中写道。皮尔斯伯里公司（Pillsbury）曾为 NASA 生产无碎屑食品（漂浮的碎屑在太空中也是个隐患），并在开发 HACCP 方面发挥了重要作用。1971 年，一名康涅狄格州妇女在其婴儿麦片中发现了玻璃碎片，此后该公司将这一流程应用到了自己的消费品生产线上。1973 年，当美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）将基于 HACCP 的规则纳入其对低酸罐装食品的监管时，这种方法开始在全国范围内推广。