Food Safety Standards are designed by the government, industries, and international organizations to ensure the quality and safety of food. These standards help to eliminate the contamination source, decrease factors that cause foodborne illnesses, protect workers, and ensure safe human consumption.
It includes all the steps in production, from receiving the raw material to processing, monitoring, packaging, and distribution of the end product. Implementing this standards in all steps helps to protect the workers who are interacting with the process and the safety of customers. These standards vary by location, such as local, national, or international. The international standards are the World Health Organization (WHO) and Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). It is essential to know information about the standards according to their location.
1. Importance of Safe Food Handling
Food safety standards help protect customers and workers while processing the product. This is because there are many hazards at all processing steps, and any contamination or hazard can harm workers and customers. The problem of contamination is a foodborne illness that food organizations should prevent.
Critical operations such as traceability, accountability, and transparency are essential for the smooth implementation of these standards in your organization. If you are responsible for food industry operations, you should have a complete knowledge and implement them strictly. That’s how to eliminate the issues caused by poor implementation of safety standards.
These standards provide significant benefits like:
- Prevent the foodborne illness
- Reduce food safety violation
- More profit
- Consumer trust and confidence
- Quality of food
Personal hygiene is significant in preventing hazards and contamination. Effectively implementing laws and standards can be done by increasing awareness and providing employees with training before production.
It is the supervisor’s duty to implement a food safety management system and promote it to protect consumers. The system also depends on religious concerns.
2. Different Countries and their Food Safety Concern
According to the global food safety index evaluation, top countries were listed based on product availability, affordability, safety, and quality.
10 Best-Performing countries are:
- Finland
- Canada
- Japan
- France
- Netherland
- Portugal
- Norway
- Ireland
- Sweden
- United Kingdom
Canada and Denmark were ranked first based on Food Safety and Quality. In 2022, a GFSI assessment found that growing threats to the poor food environment are significantly affecting food security. So, each country assesses food hazards differently and addresses the current problems.
3. Standards of Food Safety
Food must be high-quality and safe in the international and national food supply chain. Internationally recognized standards, such as Codex alimentarius and the GFSI global food safety initiative, set food safety standards to promote food quality and hygiene and prevent foodborne illness. These organizations help industries deal with food safety problems.
Government institutes and international organizations establish the standards to audit food companies and ensure regulatory compliance. Each country implements food standards through federal regulations and laws. For example, In the 2000s, the US established the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). United States Department of Agriculture monitors food, nutrition, and agriculture and issues rules and regulations on food safety and quality. It ensures safe consumption and accurate labeling.
The US FDA established a management system that is recognized as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) to analyze the hazard and suggest control and preventive measures.
The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) aims to educate people about proper food handling. It provides rules and measures for adequately cooking food, accurately maintaining a temperature, and handling food to avoid food poisoning for public health.
The United States has established food codes that have standards for the preparation, processing, and packaging of food. The National International Organization for Standardization is a food management system that establishes national standards for food production. This organization helps evaluate the risks in the food supply chain.
Food standards involve the following points to prevent foodborne illness:
- Proper cooking temperature sanitation
- Customers and workers
- Water drainage and sewage disposal
- Rodents and pest
- Design and premises operation prevention of contamination from processing to packaging temperature control
- Personal hygiene in food workers
4. National Food Safety Standards of Different Countries
4.1 American Food Safety Standards
Food Control Systems in America:
- FDA food and drug administration
- USDA United States department of agriculture
- FSIS food safety and inspection services
- CDC center for disease control and prevention
Main Food Law in the USA : Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 FSMA.
Allergens
- 9 Common allergic ingredients are egg milk, fish, tree nuts, shellfish, wheat, peanuts, sesame, and soybeans.
Labeling
Chemical additives in the food’s labeling and other information include an arrangement of additives with their descending order across the quantity mentioned across the full names like sodium benzoate.
If the food is treated with genetic engineering, it should be mentioned in the labeling as bioengineered or bioengineered ingredients.
4.2 UK Food Safety Standards
National Food control systems and federal agency : Food Standards Agency FSA
Primary Food Laws in the UK : Food Safety Act of 1990
Allergens
- 14 allergens include egg, milk, fish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts, soybean, salary, lupin, Sulphur dioxide, mustered, sesame, mollusks, and crustacean
Labeling
Chemical additives and other information in food labeling include approved additives list in decreasing order and function of additives with the assigned number, e.g., acidulent E330.
Labels with engineered products are labeled as products containing genetically modified organisms. GMO
4.3 Canadian Food Safety Standards
National food control systems and federal agencies : Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), Health Canada
Main Food Law in Canada : Safe Food for Canadian Act Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act Food and Drugs Act
Allergens
11 common allergens include:
- Egg
- Milk
- Fish
- Crustacean
- Mollusks
- Tree nuts
- Wheat
- Mustard
- Peanuts
- Soybean
- Sesame
Labeling
Chemical additives and other information on the labeling include the additives with their common name in descending order. Food treated with genetic engineering is not subject to a particular law on labeling GMO products.
4.4 Australian Food Safety Standards
National food control systems and federal agency : Food standards Australia New Zealand FSANZ
Main Food Law : Australia New Zealand Food Standards code
Allergens
- Nine common allergens include fish, milk, egg, shellfish, tree nuts, and soybean, the same with peanuts. Chemical additives in the food labeling and other information additives are labeled in descending order with their weight and food number, e.g., 150a
Labeling
Foods that have undergone genetic engineering ingredients in the food products must be labeled as genetically modified.
5. Types of food standards
Types of food standards are categorized into four level:
- National Standard
- Company standard
- Regional standard
- International standard
6. Conclusion
Poor implementation and non-compliance with food safety standards result in food contamination, which causes sickness in consumers and health risks. If the traceability system traces the sources of contamination to your industry, you will face its consequences. Then, you will be supposed to pay for the consumer’s medical expenditures.
Non-compliance with regulatory requirements and food safety standards will cause consumers to distrust your organization. Consumers will not buy from this company and will be hesitant to consume products that have a negative effect on the company’s image and sales. Click here to learn more about food and food-related topics.