Experience and Science. A Brief History of Food Safety. The Role of Empirical Knowledge in the Development of Food Safety. Part II. Middle Ages and Modern Age

Abstract

The knowledge gained through observation played a decisive role in enabling mankind to avoid death by poisonous plants and other toxins, pathogenic bacteria, and viruses, which caused fatal diseases, before the development of scientific methods and tools. Empirical knowledge has played an enormous role in the development of food safety. In the course of human evolution, empirical observations first and then conscious, experiment-based findings have provided the basis for the establishment of food safety rules. However, empirical knowledge, supported by targeted scientific experiments, is still of great importance today. In the second part of our publication, after prehistory and antiquity, we look at the most important food safety events of the medieval and modern periods, based mainly on observation, up to the present day. We highlight some of the major food safety observations of the 18th century. Some contemporary empirically observed food safety phenomena are presented, demonstrating the importance of empirical observations.