Eat, drink and be . . . wary

Food, glorious food. What is there more handsome?' sang the starved orphans in the musical based on Oliver Twist. Yet, as increasingly seems to be the case, what is there more dangerous? Chickens may carry flu that can kill you. Even if they do not, there is a three-in-four chance that the meat has salmonella or E coli bugs.

Vegetables and fruit may be coated in pesticides. Beef can give you mad cow's disease. Beef in burger or minced form contaminated with a deadly E coli strain has killed dozens in the United States, Japan and Scotland; meat in Hong Kong was found to contain the bacteria earlier this year but none reached shops.

Lamb is now suspect because it carries scrapie and may either carry mad cow's disease or be capable of producing a similar tragedy. Fish are full of heavy metals and often cholera.

Dairy products or meat may carry growth hormones or antibiotics that, absorbed by your system, add to the resistance of bugs to antibiotic treatments. Ironically, a move by the European Union to ban imports of meat treated with growth hormones was judged illegal by the World Trade Organisation.

So we can always take refuge in organic foods, right? Sadly, wrong. Some firms try to pass off their intensively-farmed animals and veggies as wild and freely raised, to cash in on the higher price such produce can command. The US has just introduced standards that organically-farmed goods should reach.

Consider how familiar we have become with names and numbers of bugs: E coli 0157:H7, H5N1. From ice-cream in Hong Kong to strawberries in the US, withdrawals of food from shop shelves due to some danger they carry seems to be a standard occurrence these days.