WHY FOOD SAFETY IS EXTREMELY CRITICAL?

Why Food Safety?

Consumer awareness on food safety issues and product safety requirements has probably never been as high as today in history. Significant food crises in Europe and US as well as the other part of the world during the past decade have raised doubts in the consumer’s mind while creating a lack of trust and confidence in manufacturers due to the corporate crimes and profit maximization malpractices in open market today around the world. 

These issues can be summarize as,

•  Growing consumer awareness,
• More foods prepared away from home,
• Globalization and less barriers to trade presents new food safety challenges, unfamiliar hazards or new hazards,
• International trade of food products are increasing,
• Increase in scientific knowledge about hazards associated with foods and consequent effects on health,
• Rising of incidence of food-borne illness in some countries (i.e., 70% of the approximate 1.5 billion case of diarrhoea that occur globally each year are directly caused by chemical or biological contamination of food.)

In past, product safety was supposed to be a voluntary responsibility of manufacturers but the publication of EU Directive 2001/95/EC on General Product Safety in December 2001, and EU Regulation 178/2002 on Food Safety in January 2002 brought about a significant change to the exports while restricting malpractices. Today, European legislation constitutes a set of requirements that each organization in food manufacturing, distributing, importing and/or exporting products to and from Europe must comply with. In addition, FDA regulations and various other export barriers (July 25, 1996, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a final rule (PR/HACCP) on Pathogen Reduction; Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Systems) as well as individual consumer food safety requirements (TESCO/GLOBAL GAP) are in force considering their consumers.  

Food-borne illness and food-borne injury are at best unpleasant; at worst, they can be fatal. But there are also other consequences. Outbreaks of food-borne illness can damage trade and tourism, and lead to loss of earnings, unemployment and litigation. Food spoilage is wasteful, costly and can adversely affect trade and consumer confidence. As to the definition, Food-borne illness is a preventable disease affecting all people, which has significant impact on public health and significant trade implications on economies.  To date, there are 250+ types of food borne illnesses have been identified with the effects ranging from acute to chronic illness such as mild symptoms to life threatening, i.e. Sequelae - septicemia, abortion, arthritis, hemolytic uremic syndrome, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and death.

Food-borne diseases are significantly under reported, due to the lack of awareness in community. Microbial pathogens in food cause an estimated 6.5 - 33 million cases of human illness and up to 9,000 deaths in the United States each year. Over 40 different food borne microbial pathogens including fungi, viruses, parasites, and bacteria, are believed to cause human illnesses. For six bacterial pathogens, the costs of human illness are estimated to be $9.3 - $12.9 billion annually, of these costs, $2.9 - $6.7 billion are attributed to food borne bacteria.

These estimates were basically developed to provide an analytical support for USDA’s Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system which rule for meat and poultry at the beginning that overrule entire food industry today with amalgamating in to the core of the various global food standards.

“Beyond the legal aspect, consumer safety is primarily a question of business ethics and responsibility. Good product quality and product safety contribute to build up consumer confidence and consequently strengthen the image of a company or a brand in the consumer’s mind. Failure to respect consumers’ needs and expectations may be interpreted as betraying this confidence and consequently may lead, in the long term and the worst case, to damage for a company and its brand image and in some cases for the business partners and the whole industry. This is what is at stake when quality and safety are compromised.

Fortunately, most companies already take product quality and consumer safety very seriously. A lot of good practices have been developed and implemented on a voluntary basis. These practices ensure that product safety has never been as high as it is today. Companies continuously challenge their internal quality systems and work on continuous improvement thanks to new technologies and ways of working. 

However, despite all the efforts deployed to ensure optimum product quality and all the precautions taken every day, incidents do occur where inappropriate products reach consumers. Once identified, such products must be rapidly located and removed from the market. This principle is linked to the ability of a company to trace products along the supply chain, to withdraw them from distribution channels whenever necessary and recall them from consumers whenever required.”

(Courtesy: The Traceability Blue Book /ECR – Using Traceability in the Supply Chain to meet Consumer Safety Expectations, 2004)