Food Safety Info
Food safety refers to food preparation, handling, and storage procedures designed to avoid foodborne sickness and harm. Food items may experience a variety of health dangers as they travel through the supply chain, from farm to factory to fork. To reduce these hazards and protect customers, safe food handling methods and procedures are applied at every step of the food production life cycle.
As of currently, the bulk of food safety rules are based on HACCP and GMP.
HACCP – Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points is a risk-based systematic strategy to preventing biological, chemical, and physical contamination of food in manufacturing, packing, and distribution settings. The HACCP approach is intended to mitigate health risks by identifying possible food safety issues before they occur, rather than inspecting food items for hazards after they have occurred.
GMP – Good Manufacturing Practices are internationally recognized quality assurance guidelines for the production of food, beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, and medical devices. These standards outline the methods that producers must follow in order to ensure that their goods are consistently high-quality from batch to batch and safe for human consumption, including mandated product inspection at important control points.
Authority that enforcing food safety regulations
While the above-mentioned international regulatory agencies provide advice, certification, and auditing services to global food processors, they are not responsible for actively enforcing food safety rules.
Every country defines and develops its own laws and enforcement techniques for food safety control, and these policies may differ from different and from region to area within a country. Introducing a food product into a foreign market necessitates adherence to that country’s food safety and consumer protection rules, as well as those of its regional governmental bodies.
In general, international food safety standards are intended to make it easier to comply with food safety legislation in large markets by streamlining the process of getting permission from foreign governmental authorities.
Food Safety in Malaysia
As in Malaysia, you must be curious about the main enforcers and regulators in food safety, hence, there are some examples such as Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Customs, local Authorities and more. There are some strategies that you can enforce and improve the food safety if you are currently working or owning a food industry company such as:
- Legislation should be reviewed and updated, and infrastructure should be strengthened.
- Increase collaborations among government agencies, consumer organizations, academia, industry, and international organizations.
- Develop and train human resources
- Raise customer knowledge of food safety problems by educating
Importance of food safety
Food safety is essential, both commercially and ethically. The effects of failing to meet food safety regulations are numerous. In addition to being extremely expensive for businesses that must recall their goods, revamp their procedures, and manage the public relations disaster, insufficient food safety in manufacturing has a substantial human cost.
Inadequate food safety protocols can result in tainted items entering the food chain. When a faulty product is detected, food companies face significant interruptions in their operations as they need to handle and bear the expense of product recalls.
