Essay on Food Safety

Food and water are the fundamentals of a human being. Every part of the world has its own characterized food with distinct tastes. But there is only one major concern in common which people from all over the globe have in common, Safety. Food safety has now been considered the foremost and very important part in all of the food industries around the globe. Many different and variety of techniques have been developed upon to help food safety go to a higher level, while many of them turned out to be failures. Scientists now have discovered a special, reliable, real time, and most importantly more economic technique to check the safety of the foods in production. This is by means of technology called Nanotechnology. Every living organism is a collective matter of nanoscale objects in form of atoms and molecules. Nanoparticles are those which have a size of one tenth of human hair i.e. particles ranging within 1 to 100 nm. Nanotechnology is classified into two in terms of the size of the particles, Fine particles which has a size range of 100 – 2500 nm and Ultrafine particles which is from 1 – 100 nm. It is quite fascinating how the size, numbers, location, concentration and few other factors of the nanoscale particles control the whole system. Most protein and polysaccharide have nanoscale sizes but these are naturally occurring nanoparticles (National Nanotechnology Initiative, 2006). It is scientifically shown that if a larger particle is broken down artificially into nanoscale size, the natural properties of the particle is lost and the particle behaves as a toxic element. Hence when nanotechnology is used in any application especially when involving it in the food system or food chain; it is to be taken into consideration that the risk involving is far-reaching and severe.

Usually food safety is considered to be the most difficult and expensive part for the Food Industries as the machineries and the equipment needed for them is very expensive with moderate reliability and high cost of maintenance. Hence most of the small scale food industries tend to eliminate the food safety instruments and usually have only visual inspection of the foods which is not dependable. And for the cheap pricing from these industries, people (Consumers) buy the foods and consume them and have high risk of getting diseased. But now as technology has improved, there is a new way to have the safety of foods in control and that is not with expensive machineries but just with simple techniques with Nanotechnology. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have recognized a need for scientific advice on any food safety implications that arise from the usage of Nanotechnology techniques in the food and agriculture sectors through its horizon scanning activities.

All food Industries operate in a complex technical and commercial environment and to be successful each food business should posses the knowledge and skill to check them at the lead or at least be in the competition. And one of the best ways to get the reputation is to get well ranked among the customers. And to do that the product they deliver should be of high quality and which is all about the food safety. Food safety has become one of the most important segments in a food industry and even consumers buy foods which are safer, rather than the taste. Hence a large importance in the Industry should be directed towards the safety for the food. In olden times the food was tested for their safety by a method called End product testing, which involves a sampling of the product and then testing it. But it was not fully satisfying as safety was dependent on the sampling alone. In 1960s The Pillsbury Company along with the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) and the USA Army laboratories formed a concept called the HACCP. HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control point System. It was based on failure, mode and effect analysis, which looks on the process and identify the things could possibly go wrong and put effect to rectify it. As a result there would be safe way of producing foods. This was in fact developed for the Astronauts to ensure safe foods and minimize the risk of food poisoning outbreak in space.

Hazards, as called in food industries are explained as agent which has a tendency to cause adverse health effects to the consumer. They are of three types which are Physical, Chemical and Biological. Physical hazard is when the food contains unwanted physical presence of agents like bits of knife, nails, piece of paper etc at any stage of the food process cycle from raw materials to the packaging. A good example for this would be the presence of a nut which has fallen off in the food product from the machinery which it processes and not well maintained. These may even cause serious damage to the consumer. The reason for this could be poor maintenance of the machineries and instruments used or staffs not trained properly on safety measures. The Chemical hazard is explained as an undesirable change in the food products chemically. Here for example pasteurization of milk is to eliminate the risks of the micro organisms present in the raw milk, if the milk is not pasteurized then there is a chemical hazard. These are usually caused by improper adjustment of the temperature, Ph etc. Biological hazard is the risk of causing health effects to the consumer through the pathogenic micro organism present in foods and are considered to be one of the main dangers. Pathogenic micro-organisms exert their effect directly through growing in or contaminating food products and being ingested (Food borne infection) or causing food poisoning. In both cases the illness maybe serious, even fatal. Good example for this is the Bacillus cereus which forms heat resistant spores that can only be eliminated by severe heat treatment.

Food Intoxication is caused by the exposure of food stuffs to the microorganisms or toxins produced by them. Cases of intoxication could be either Bacterial intoxication or Non Bacterial intoxication. The former occurs when micro organisms like bacterium or their own toxin gets absorbed with the food which on consuming causes food Intoxication. The later type is caused by harmful chemicals like fertilizers, insecticides etc. A few other types of Bacterial intoxications are Salmonella food intoxication, Botulism, Staphylococcal food intoxication, Clostridium food intoxication and Bacillus cereus.