Although gene sequencing in Mars Inc.'s food processing factories would provide valuable data, critics argue that better vetting of the safety standards of vendors should be a priority.
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“We will use the microbiome as the canary in the coalmine,” Kaufman said. “If you understand the baseline normal, you can understand changes in if there is some toxin or toxic gene that has migrated in from elsewhere.”
Still, some food safety advocates note that most food-borne outbreaks are the result of sloppy or criminal management practices, such as buying from cut-rate suppliers that use spoiled food, rather than any kind of shift in the microbiome or new species of bacteria.
“It’s half a loaf,” said Jaydeen Hanson, senior analyst at the non-profit Center for Food Safety in Washington. “If Mars wants to use these techniques again to test all of its ingredients, then that is good. But it should be trying to make sure that it’s the people it purchase from have good practices themselves.”
Hanson cited the case of two executives of a Georgia peanut company who were convicted last year of shipping salmonella-laced peanuts to suppliers up the food chain in 2008. That outbreak killed nine people, sickened at least 714 others and resulted in a huge food recall of peanut butter. Hanson agreed that the new genomic sequencing project might work best to develop a faster safety test for meat and poultry, products which face a constant threat of bacterial contamination.
IBM’s Kauman says he expects the new Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain (SFSC) will add more food companies and begin testing processed human foods.