What is Food Safety

What is Food Safety
The term food safety has no universally accepted definition. In fact it is sometimes used , wrongly, in relation to defects in food commodities that are much more to do with food quality than with safety.

For example, microbial spoilage of food may make it unattractive, or even inedible, but if neither the microorganisms concerned, nor the by products of their growth and metabolism have any adverse effect on health, then it is not strictly a food safety issue, but of acceptability.

Food safety can usefully be defined as the practice of ensuring that foods cause no harm to the consumer.

This simple definition covers a broad range of topics, from basic domestic and personal hygiene, to highly complex technical procedures designed to remove contaminants from sophisticated processed foods and ingredients.

Essentially, the practice of food safety can be distilled down to three basic operations:
• Protection of the food supply from harmful contamination
• Prevention of the development and spread of harmful contamination
• Effective removal of contamination and contaminants

Most food safety procedures fall into one, or more than one, of these categories. For examples, good food hygiene practice is concerned with the protection of food against contamination, effective temperature control is designed to prevent the development and spread of contamination and pasteurization is a measure developed to remove contaminants.

What is Food Safety