What is tainted food?

Answer 1

Food with bacteria, fungi, or other pathogens. It comes from cross-contamination, poor handling, and poor storage. In some cases, someone deliberately taints the food.

An example of cross-contamination would be if you have spoiling meat on the top shelf that is dripping blood or other liquids onto vegetables or a cake on the second shelf. Then you would get just as sick from eating the food from the second shelf as you would from the spoiled meat. Another common example is if you had spoiled food touching the counter top or a cutting board and then use that same surface to chop vegetables.

Poor handling would include things like placing vegetables in a truck which was contaminated with corpses, body waste, rotten meat, sick animals, or whatever, or irrigating crops with contaminated water.

Poor storage would include things like refreezing meat. That will certainly cause the meat to spoil. Once it is thawed, you had better cook it immediately, and not put it back in the freezer.