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Viruses the New Condiment
Lip writes to tell us that a new bacteria killing virus has been deemed safe by the FDA as a food additive for ready-to-eat meats. These bacteriophages are designed to kill a common microbe (Listeria monocytogenes bacteria) to which hundreds of
deaths every year have been attributed. From the article: "The viruses are grown in a preparation of the very bacteria they kill, and then purified. The FDA had concerns that the virus preparation potentially could contain toxic residues associated with the bacteria. However, testing did not reveal the presence of such residues, which in small quantities likely wouldn't cause health problems anyway, the FDA said."
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The federal government classified them as vegetables along with ketchup.
"They're putting bird flu in our food!"
The press coverage has been woefully bad with respect to explaining that these are not your average run-of-the-mill viruses, but rather are bacteriophages that can only infect bacteria. Expect some mild hysteria over this and some nuts demanding labelling.
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If it does, we'll just come out with some virus-eating bacteria. It's the ciiiiiiircle of liiiife!
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Is it possible for a bacteriophage to mutate and infect human cells?
Anything is 'possible'. However, the odds of this are quite small. Bacteriophages are highly adapted to their hosts - bacteria. This would make it far less likely to occur than for a virus adapted to, say, a mammal to cross over to humans (which happens, but rarely). Furthermore, as TFA states, humans already come into contact with these particular bacteriophages all the time.
However, there is a risk factor, obviously. We would be creating much more interaction between human beings and these bacteriophages (if these sprays become commonplace), which would give them more time to adapt to us.
This is very cool. I remember the Russians were working on killing bacterial infections in people (Tuberculosis, Leprosy, even Flesh eating disease) with Phages. That was in the 70s. It's about time someone came up with something successful.
By the way these are completely harmless to humans, in fact to all plants and animals. The phage is a very simple virus with a small genome that gets injected into the bacterium and does the standard virus things (hijacks the host's systems to replicate itself a billion times). The cell explodes, releasing billions more phages. These phages have been our tools for a long time in biology, we use them to move genes around, for making libraries of genes, all sorts of neato stuff. There's little we don't know about them, so they're a good candidate for this task. There is no way these can make the leap from infecting bacteria to infecting higher organisms, any more than a plant could suddenly start walking around.
I could think of a few things that are possible, for example if it mutated enough to find our host bacteria a good target then that might cause problems, but again, very doubtful.
Whether histerical or not, whether dangerous or not, I am for TRUTH in labelling. It does not matter whether biotest found out that it is innocuous. It does not matter that FDA thinks genetically modified soja is ok for consumption, or hormone in beef, what matters is that *I* "the consumer" need to know to make a choice. Whether I inform myself to make a correct decision is my choice. But if you take out stuff from the label beause no consummer would buy it out of fear, then you REMOVE the choice, even if it is a dumb choice. And I as a consumer find it a really bad idea. Next you will claim putting a label with a list of ingredient with % is a dumb idea too.
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I'm rather ticked off that once again (like with irradiated meat) the food industry thinks that consumers have no right to know what is in what they are eating. (and I think treating meat with radiation and bacteriophages is a good thing. I just think people have a right to know.)
The problem is the food industry and USDA wants the benefits of science without taking any responsibility for educating a population woefully ignorant about science.
The other side of it of course is that treating meat so it can sit on a shelf longer has no real benefit for the consumer (other than not getting sick from spoiled meat) - the meat packers benefit greatly with lower costs, but why shouldn't consumers get some of the benefit in the form of lower prices? Hiding whether it is treated is a way to capture all the benefit for the producers.
Bacteriophages are VERY specialized. They can't penetrate into animal (or plant) cells because they are too large for it, and they can't use their injection system because animal cell walls are dense as bacterial cell walls.
Actually, bacteriophages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage) are the smallest syringes in nature, and they actually have proteins that store the energy needed for injection of genetic material through the cellular wall!
Phage therapy is a very real alternative to antibiotics. In fact it is already used with much success: my cousin was treated with phage therapy after a chemical burn complicated by kidney infection (strong antibiotics would have destroyed his kidneys).
Yes, but why do we need this in the first place? If meat is fresh and cleanly prepared it doesn't have any risks of bacteria. So, basically this is a measure to conteract the bacteria that you would find on meat that has being lying around for a while. While that might make the food cheaper to produce, I would prefer the fresh product, rather than gambling with the unknown effects of having a virus in my food.