Food safety

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Food safety

Answer 1

Foodborne illness

Food safety

Foodborne illness (also foodborne disease and colloquially referred to as food poisoning) is any illness resulting from the food spoilage of contaminated food, pathogenic bacteria, viruses, or parasites that contaminate food, as well as chemical or natural toxins such as poisonous mushrooms and various species of beans that have not been boiled for at least 10 minutes.

Symptoms vary depending on the cause, and are described below in this article. A few broad generalizations can be made, e.g.: The incubation period ranges from hours to days, depending on the cause and on how much was consumed. The incubation period tends to cause sufferers to not associate the symptoms with the item consumed, and so to cause sufferers to attribute the symptoms to gastroenteritis for example. Symptoms often include vomiting, fever, and aches, and may include diarrhea. Bouts of vomiting can be repeated with an extended delay in between, because even if infected food was eliminated from the stomach in the first bout, microbes (if applicable) can pass through the stomach into the intestine via cells lining the intestinal walls and begin to multiply. Some types of microbes stay in the intestine, some produce a toxin that is absorbed into the bloodstream, and some can directly invade deeper body tissues.

Foodborne illness usually arises from improper handling, preparation, or food storage. Good hygiene practices before, during, and after food preparation can reduce the chances of contracting an illness. There is a consensus in the public health community that regular hand-washing is one of the most effective defenses against the spread of foodborne illness. The action of monitoring food to ensure that it will not cause foodborne illness is known as food safety. Foodborne disease can also be caused by a large variety of toxins that affect the environment.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 2

Generally recognized as safe

Food safety

Generally recognized as safe (GRAS) is an American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designation that a chemical or substance added to food is considered safe by experts, and so is exempted from the usual Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) food additive tolerance requirements. The concept of food additives being "generally recognized as safe" was first described in the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, and all additives introduced after this time had to be evaluated by new standards.

On January 1, 1958, the FDA established the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, with a list of 700 food substances that were exempt from the then new requirement that manufacturers test food additives before putting them on the market. On August 31, 1960, William W. Goodrich, assistant general counsel of the FDA, addressed the annual meeting (16 Bus. Law. 107 -1960-1961) of the FFDCA. The purpose of the meeting was the forthcoming March 6, 1961, effective date of the enforcement provisions of the "Food Additives Amendment of 1958", referred to as GRAS.

A GRAS determination can be self-affirmed or the FDA can be notified of a determination of GRAS by qualified non-governmental experts:

As of June 2015 (beginning in 1998), 572 ingredient or food substances have been filed with the FDA. These petitions, submitted by sponsors or manufacturers, are reviewed for the safety evidence contained in the document. FDA posts status of the review as either without further questions or the petition is withdrawn by the applicant.

For substances used in food prior to January 1, 1958, a grandfather clause allows experience based on common use in food to be used in asserting they are safe under the conditions of their intended use.

The FDA can also explicitly withdraw the GRAS classification, as it did for trans fat in 2015.

The Code of Federal Regulations, Revised as of April 1, 2010, includes (CFR) title 21 170.30(b) that provides general recognition of safety through scientific procedures requires the same quantity and quality of scientific evidence as is required to obtain approval of the substance as a food additive and ordinarily is based upon published studies, which may be corroborated by unpublished studies and other data and information.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 3

Global Food Safety Initiative

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is a private organization, established and managed by the international trade association, the Consumer Goods Forum under Belgian law in May 2000. The GFSI maintains a scheme to benchmark food safety standards for manufacturers as well as farm assurance standards.

The Global Food Safety Initiative is a business-driven initiative for the continuous improvement of food safety management systems to ensure confidence in the delivery of safe food to consumers worldwide. GFSI provides a platform for collaboration between some of the world’s leading food safety experts from retailer, manufacturer and food service companies, service providers associated with the food supply chain, international organizations, academia and government.

The initiative was launched in 2000 following a number of food safety crises when consumer confidence was at an all-time low. Since then, experts from all over the world have been collaborating in numerous Technical Working Groups to tackle current food safety issues defined by GFSI stakeholders.

Key activities within GFSI include the definition of food safety requirements for food safety schemes through a benchmarking process. This process is thought to lead to recognition of existing food safety schemes and enhances confidence, acceptance and implementation of third party certification along the entire food supply chain.

GFSI’s current focus is on extending the requirements to cover all scopes of the global food supply chain from farm to fork. Other important current activities include the development of a capacity building programme for small and/or less developed businesses to facilitate their access to local markets and a continuous focus on food safety auditor competence to bring industry experts in collaboration with key stakeholders to a common consensus on the skills, knowledge and attributes that a competent auditor should possess.

Within GFSI, benchmarking is a “procedure by which a food safety-related scheme is compared to the GFSI Guidance Document.”

Back in 2000, food safety was a top of mind issue for companies due to several high-profile recalls, quarantines and negative publicity about the food industry. There was also extensive audit fatigue through the industry, as retailers performed inspections or audits themselves or asked a third party to do this on their behalf. These were often carried out against food safety schemes that lacked international certification and accreditation, resulting in incomparable auditing results.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 4

Good manufacturing practice

Good manufacturing practices (GMP) are the practices required in order to conform to the guidelines recommended by agencies that control authorization and licensing for manufacture and sale of food, drug products, and active pharmaceutical products. These guidelines provide minimum requirements that a pharmaceutical or a food product manufacturer must meet to assure that the products are of high quality and do not pose any risk to the consumer or public.

Good manufacturing practices, along with good agricultural practices, good laboratory practices and good clinical practices, are overseen by regulatory agencies in the United States, Canada, Europe, China, and other countries.

Good manufacturing practice guidelines provide guidance for manufacturing, testing, and quality assurance in order to ensure that a food or drug product is safe for human consumption. Many countries have legislated that food and pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers follow GMP procedures and create their own GMP guidelines that correspond with their legislation.

All guidelines follow a few basic principles:

Practices are recommended with the goal of safeguarding the health of consumers and patients as well as producing good quality food, medicine, medical devices, or active pharmaceutical products. In the United States, a food or drug may be deemed "adulterated" if it has passed all of the specifications tests, but is found to be manufactured in a facility or condition which violates or does not comply with current good manufacturing guideline. Therefore, complying with GMP is mandatory in all pharmaceutical manufacturing, and most food processing.

GMP guidelines are not prescriptive instructions on how to manufacture products. They are a series of general principles that must be observed during manufacturing. When a company is setting up its quality program and manufacturing process, there may be many ways it can fulfil GMP requirements. It is the company's responsibility to determine the most effective and efficient quality process.

The quality is built into the product and GMP is the most essential part of ensuring this product quality.

GMPs are enforced in the United States by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), under Title 21 CFR. The regulations use the phrase "current good manufacturing practices" (cGMP) to describe these guidelines. Courts may theoretically hold that a product is adulterated even if there is no specific regulatory requirement that was violated as long as the process was not performed according to industry standards. Since June 2010, a different set of cGMP requirements have applied to all manufacturers of dietary supplements.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 5

Hand washing

Food safety

Hand washing or hand hygiene is the act of cleaning one's hands with or without the use of water or another liquid, or with the use of soap for the purpose of removing soil, dirt, and/or microorganisms. The spelling "handwashing" in one word is also common.

Medical hand hygiene pertains to the hygiene practices related to the administration of medicine and medical care that prevents or minimizes disease and the spreading of disease. The main medical purpose of washing hands is to cleanse the hands of pathogens (including bacteria or viruses) and chemicals which can cause personal harm or disease. This is especially important for people who handle food or work in the medical field, but it is also an important practice for the general public.

People can become infected with respiratory illnesses such as influenza or the common cold, for example, if they do not wash their hands before touching their eyes, nose, or mouth. As a general rule, hand washing protects people poorly or not at all from droplet and airborne diseases, such as measles, chickenpox, influenza, and tuberculosis. It protects best against diseases transmitted through fecal-oral routes (such as many forms of gastroenteritis) and direct physical contact (such as impetigo).

Symbolic hand washing, using water only to wash hands, is a part of ritual hand washing featured in many religions, including Bahá'í Faith, Hinduism, and tevilah and netilat yadayim in Judaism. Similar to these are the practices of Lavabo in Christianity, Wudu in Islam and Misogi in Shintō.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 6

Hazard analysis and critical control points

Food safety

Hazard analysis and critical control points or HACCP (/ˈhæsʌp/) is a systematic preventive approach to food safety from biological, chemical, and physical hazards in production processes that can cause the finished product to be unsafe, and designs measurements to reduce these risks to a safe level. In this manner, HACCP is referred as the prevention of hazards rather than finished product inspection. The HACCP system can be used at all stages of a food chain, from food production and preparation processes including packaging, distribution, etc. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) require mandatory HACCP programs for juice and meat as an effective approach to food safety and protecting public health. Meat HACCP systems are regulated by the USDA, while seafood and juice are regulated by the FDA. All other food companies in the United States that are required to register with the FDA under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, as well as firms outside the US that export food to the US, are transitioning to mandatory Hazard Analysis and Risk-based Preventive Controls (HARPC) plans.

HACCP is believed to stem from a production process monitoring used during World War II because traditional "end of the pipe" testing on artillery shell's firing mechanisms could not be performed, and a large percentage of the artillery shells made at the time were either duds or misfiring. HACCP itself was conceived in the 1960s when the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) asked Pillsbury to design and manufacture the first foods for space flights. Since then, HACCP has been recognized internationally as a logical tool for adapting traditional inspection methods to a modern, science-based, food safety system. Based on risk-assessment, HACCP plans allow both industry and government to allocate their resources efficiently in establishing and auditing safe food production practices. In 1994, the organization of International HACCP Alliance was established initially for the US meat and poultry industries to assist them with implementing HACCP and now its membership has been spread over other professional/industrial areas.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 7

Hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls

Food safety

Hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls or HARPC is a successor to the Hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) food safety system. It is mandated by the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2010. As the name implies, Preventive Controls systems emphasize prevention of hazards before they occur rather than their detection after they occur. The FDA is releasing the rules in the Federal Registry beginning in September 2015. The first release of rules addressed Preventive Controls for Human Food and Preventive Controls for Foods for Animals. The Produce Safety Final Rule, the Foreign Supplier Verification Programs (FSVP) Final Rule and the Accredited Third-Party Certification Final Rule were issued on November 13, 2015. The Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food final rule was issued on April 6, 2016, and the Mitigation Strategies To Protect Food Against Intentional Adulteration (Food Defense) final rule was issued on May 27, 2016.

All food companies in the United States that are required to register with the FDA under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, as well as firms outside the US that export food to the US, must have a written FSMA-compliant Food Safety Plan in place by the deadlines listed below:

Additionally, for the first time food safety is being extended to pet food and animal feed, with firms being given an extra year to implement Current Good Manufacturing Practices before a Preventive Controls system the following year:

The FDA estimates that 73,000 businesses currently fall under these definitions.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 8

Health claim

Health claims on food labels and in food marketing are claims by manufacturers of food products that their food will reduce the risk of developing a disease or condition. For example, it is claimed by the manufacturers of oat cereals that oat bran can reduce cholesterol, which will lower the chances of developing serious heart conditions.

In the United States, these claims, usually referred to as "qualified health claims", are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the public interest.

The rule in place before 2003 required "significant scientific consensus" before a claim could be made, applying characterization of a hierarchy of degrees of certainty:

In the United Kingdom, the law requires that any health claim on food labels must be true and not misleading. Food producers may optionally use the (Discontinued in 2010) Joint Health Claims Initiative to determine whether their claims are likely to be legally sustainable.

In early 2005 the European PASSCLAIM project (Process for the Assessment of Scientific Support for Claims on Foods), sponsored by the European Union and coordinated by ILSI-Europe (http://europe.ilsi.org/), ended. The aim of this project was to develop criteria for the scientific substantiation of claims on foods. Several hundreds of scientists from academia, research institutes, government and industry have contributed to the project. All the resulting papers can be downloaded for free from http://www.ilsi.org/Europe/Pages/PASSCLAIM_Pubs.aspx. The final consensus paper, comprising the final set of criteria, has been published in June 2005 in the European Journal of Nutrition.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 9

Heterocyclic amine formation in meat

Heterocyclic amines are a group of chemical compounds, many of which can be formed during cooking. They are found in meats that are cooked to the "well done" stage, in pan drippings and in meat surfaces that show a brown or black crust. Epidemiological studies show associations between intakes of heterocyclic amines and cancers of the colon, rectum, breast, prostate, pancreas, lung, stomach/esophagus and animal feeding experiments support a causal relationship. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service labeled several heterocyclic amines as likely carcinogens in its 13th Report on Carcinogens. Changes in cooking techniques reduce the level of heterocyclic amines.

A total of 20 compounds fall into the category of heterocyclic amines, often abbreviated HCAs. Table 1 shows the chemical name and abbreviation of those most commonly studied.

All four of these compounds are included in the 13th Report on Carcinogens.

The compounds found in food are formed when creatine (a non-protein amino acid found in muscle tissue), other amino acids and monosaccharides are heated together at high temperatures (125-300^o C or 275-572^o F) or cooked for long periods. HCAs form at the lower end of this range when the cooking time is long; at the higher end of the range, HCAs are formed within minutes.

A review of 14 studies of HCA content in ground beef cooked under home conditions found in northern Europe and the U.S. found a range of values (Table 2). Because a standard U.S. serving of meat is 3 ounces, Table 2 includes a projection of the maximum amount of HCAs that could be found in a ground beef patty.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 10

Home-stored product entomology

Home stored product entomology is the study of insects which infest foodstuffs stored in the home. It deals with the prevention, detection and eradication of the pests. The five major categories of insects considered in this article are flour beetles, the drugstore beetle, the sawtoothed grain beetle, the Indian meal moth and fruit flies.

This is an important branch of forensic entomology because consumers who find contaminated products may choose to take legal action against the producers. Suitably qualified entomologists are likely to be able to determine the identity of contaminant species, even when no insects are found and the only evidence of infestation is the resulting damage. They should also be able to determine whether the foodstuff was contaminated before or after purchase.

In the United States, companies are required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have no more than a certain number of larvae, insects or insect fragments in their products; when this defect action level is exceeded, a consumer can pursue legal remedies.

Two different types of beetles are classified as flour beetles: the red flour beetle and the confused flour beetle. Both are similar in physical characteristics. They are flat and oval in shape and usually range around 1/8 inch long. Their exoskeletons are reddish brown with a shiny and smooth texture. The eggs, larvae, and pupae resemble each other closely in physical features, as well. The eggs usually tend to be a white color, or at times even colorless. They are very small in size and have a sticky outer covering that causes certain food particles to stick to them. The larvae have six legs, with two pointy projections toward the caudal end. Finally, the pupal stage (a cocoon-like form) is usually a white or brownish color. The beetle life cycle lasts about three years or more, with the larval stage ranging anywhere from 20 to over 100 days, and the pupal stage around eight days. Beetles usually breed in damaged grain, grain dust, high-moisture wheat kernels and flour. The female flour beetle can lay between 300 and 400 eggs during her lifetime [a period of 5 to 8 months]. The flour beetles mainly infest grains, including, but not limited to: cereal, corn meal oats, rice, flour, and crackers. This type of beetle is the most abundant insect pest of flour mills across the United States. Their small size allows them to maneuver through cracks and crevices and get into the home and other areas. Once they are present in areas with potential food sources, they can infest material such as flour, resulting in a sharp odor or moldy flavor. The red flour beetle is able to fly short distances and the confused flour beetle is unable to fly. While the confused flour beetle is more commonly found in the northern United States, the red flour beetles are more predominant in the southern United States in areas with warmer climates.

...

Wikipedia