What Is Food Safety?
Food Safety basically refers to the precautionary measures taken to ensure that the food product at every stage of production, from the farm to the table, is safe from foodborne diseases. This is to offer safety to consumers of every age group.
Food products are prone to encounter a number of health hazards along the cycle of production and distribution. Therefore, the safe handling of food products will provide assurance that hazardous diseases are curbed.
Why is Food Safety Important?
As per Food Safety Management System – ISO 22000 Certification – Food Safety is very important keeping the health of the population in prime focus. Foodborne illnesses are avoidable problems but most of the time are underreported.
Food-associated health risks and problems must be treated with utmost seriousness as they can lead to death, especially for those with fragile health or of fragile age. For example, children younger than the age of 4 and adults older than the age of 50.
These illnesses are also a great burden on the general public health and contribute significantly to the cost of health care.
Food products have to be safe to consume and if not so, then you cannot consume them. Thousands if not millions of people get sick from the food products that they consume. Bacteria, viruses, and germs can cause food poisoning.
Food safety practices contribute to reducing germs and ensuring that it does not reach dangerous levels that can result in dangerous health complications.
Food safety helps to keep healthy individuals stay fit and healthy and protects those associated with fragility. It also helps to reduce the additional finances that go into medical occurrences. Thousands of companies lose millions due to staff downtime yearly.
What are the Basic Principles of Food Safety?
The basic principles of food safety are as follows:
1) Cleansing and Sanitizing
This principle forms the very first step in creating an efficient system of the food safety system. Cleansing and sanitizing are considered to be the ways through which bacteria can be prevented from getting into food products.
2) Personal hygiene
Clean and properly washed hands are very important to eliminate the problem of cross-contamination. Therefore, this principle is very important in regard to cross-infection.
3) Food Storage
This principle can be categorized into areas, i.e. Perishable Goods (Cold Storage) and Dry Goods. This is also a fundamental principle that can prevent cross-contamination.
4) Temperature Control
Temperature control is also one of the principles of food safety. High temperatures can kill bacteria and cold temperatures can slow down the growth of bacteria. Therefore, it helps to kill bacteria contamination and preserve the overall quality of the food product.
5) Food Handling
The final principle is associated with how the food products are handled during the periods of storage and preparation. Food handling must be carried out efficiently as it carries the highest risk of cross-infection.
These principles of food safety must be carried out diligently whether be it at home, farms, food trucks, or food factories.
The organization involved in the food supply chain business (i.e Framing / Storage / Processing / Packing / Distribution/ Export / Import etc so on. ). It is advised to adopt a Food Safety Management system requirements and further gets ISO 22000 Certification or at least HACCP Certification for assurance of Food Safety Compliance.