What Is Food Safety & Why You Need to Know About It? (Part-1)

Описание: What is Food Safety & Why you need to know about it?
Whenever a food scientist/food technologist are developing a food product, they have certain goals in mind.
First, they have to make sure that the food comply with all the standards and regulations that have been provided by a regulatory authority.
And that regulatory authority in case of India, is FSSAI.
Next, they have to make sure that the food is nutritious. If there’s no nutrition in the food, it’s probably worthless.
They have to keep in mind that the food is also delicious for the consumers cos if it doesn’t suit the tongue of the consumer, they may reject it.
They also have to keep in mind certain qualities and factors in mind like the packaging and how it looks, how it feels.
They also have to make sure that the food is reasonable for the consumers.
But, one of the most important and primary purpose for any food technologist/scientist/FBO, is to make sure that the food is safe to consume.
Now, how do we say that a food is safe to consume?
In simple language, if a food can not cause any harm/disease to the consumer, then the food is safe to consume.

The food safety is technically defined in terms of hazards and risks.

Hazard is defined as the capacity to cause harm to anyone whereas risk is the probability that a hazard will cause harm.

There can be a lot of hazards in a food product but that doesn’t mean that the food is unsafe to eat.
Safety of the food depends totally on the size of the risk. After evaluation of risks, they measure size of the risk.
If the risk of hazard is high, it is rejected and not produced and sold.

But if the risk is small, then there are a lot of statisticians, toxicologists, microbiologists involved, and they decide in a team whether it is really possible for the food product to be produced and sold off to you.

The primary goal of food safety is to reduce the size of the risk to the lowest reasonable level without affecting the food supply chain.

Access to safe and nutritious food is crucial for promoting good health and fitness among the consumers.

If the food is unsafe, it can lead to diseases, food poisoning, infections and in the worst-case scenario, it can even lead to death!

Almost every year, 1 in 10 people fall ill cos of foodborne illness.
Food-borne illness can be deadly especially to children who are below 5 years of age.
420,000 children die every year globally because of food-borne diseases.

To avoid loss of life, and to promote good health among the consumers, it is absolutely important for the food safety to be implemented throughout the food chain.

Unsafe food not only affects the consumers, but it also hampers the brand image of an organisation.

Being a student of food sci. & tech it is really important for you and me to study/understand food safety and how to implement it.

Cos tomorrow we’ll be joining a food factory and we’ll be doing a job in quality department/RnD/Production department or any kind of department that you can imagine in a food factory, you’ll have to deal with one domain, one subject everywhere and that subject is Food Safety.

So, this is why food safety is important not just for consumers but for a food technologist as well.