In 1963, as NASA geared up for its Gemini and Apollo missions, it realized that protecting astronauts from food poisoning was vital to successful space missions. On Earth a sick stomach might be unpleasant, but in space it could be catastrophic.

“You don’t want an astronaut with diarrhea,” said Robert Tauxe, a physician with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in an interview with Frontline about the 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak.

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To help prevent what became known as the “two-bucket problem,” NASA worked to develop a program of food protection called HACCP. This mouthful of an acronym stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points.

In essence, NASA scientists approached food safety as an engineering problem. Instead of focusing on end product inspection, they focused on the prevention of hazards. They analyzed and identified all of the possible points where germs (or other hazards) could enter the food supply, and then monitored these “critical control points” with a science-based program of microbial testing. One analysis, for example, revealed that telephones in food-processing plants were a source of potential contamination and needed to be monitored.

In addition to implementing HACCP, NASA also began, in 1972, to irradiate meat served to astronauts. Food irradiation kills bacteria, parasites, and insects by damaging DNA, which improves food safety. However, food irradiation does not kill all bacteria in foods so good food-handling practices must still be used. Any living cells in the food are killed or damaged, as well, and this can prolong shelf life for fruits and vegetables by delaying ripening or inhibiting sprouting (of potatoes, for example). The FDA has approved the irradiation of a variety of foods, including meat and poultry, fresh fruits and vegetables, and spices and seasonings.

Although irradiated foods are generally not widely available, most spices sold wholesale in the United States have been irradiated. The effect of food irradiation has been studied extensively, and it has not been found to noticeably affect the taste or texture of foods, nor does it make foods radioactive or significantly reduce their nutrient content. You can determine if foods have been irradiated by looking for the international symbol for irradiation, as well as the statement “Treated with radiation” or “Treated by irradiation” on the food label. However, individual ingredients (such as spices) in multi-ingredient foods do not need to be labeled.

What started out as a special program for astronauts soon spread to the wider civilian food supply. Beginning in the 1970s, HACCP was adopted by some companies voluntarily, since the companies had an interest in avoiding the bad publicity that can come from an outbreak. It was not until 1998, after the poisonings earlier in the decade, that HACCP became federally required for the meat industry. The system is now employed at the approximately 9,000 slaughterhouses in the United States.

Under the new HACCP system, instead of relying on USDA inspectors to test for contamination using the poke-and-sniff test, meat processing plants are required to test carcasses for invisible pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella using scientific methods. This approach helped to make the meat supply safer. But still there was the spinach problem.

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Because fruits and vegetables are not covered under USDA jurisdiction, spinach was not subject to HACCP. The FDA had been struggling for years to get the authority to enforce stronger protections on fruits and vegetables. But it was not until a major health crisis occurred, in the form of the spinach E. coli epidemic, that the political will was there.

“The thing that those 2006 outbreaks did was put the issue of on-farm food safety on the table,” says Smith DeWaal, of the CSPI, which had for years been trying to get Congress to pass a comprehensive overhaul of the country’s food safety laws.