Overview Of Food Safety Hazards And Prevention Steps

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The HACCP (HAZARD ANALYSIS AND CRITICAL CONTROL POINT) changed food safety methodology to be science-based as different to conventional “sight, smell, and touch” inspection. HACCP’s essential principles deliver a means to analyse biological, chemical, and physical hazards along the supply chain. This avoids outbreaks before they can happen rather than responding to them after the fact, and helped to accelerate technology used to manage food safety. The HACCP is an efficient preventive approach to food safety from biological, chemical, and physical hazards in production processes that can cause the complete product to be unsafe and designs measures to decrease these risks to a safe level. In this way, HACCP efforts to avoid hazards rather than attempting to inspect finished products for the effects of those hazards. The HACCP documents can be used at stages of a food chain, from food production and preparation processes including packaging, distribution, etc. The Food and Drug Administration and the United States Department of Agriculture need mandatory HACCP programs for juice and meat as an effective approach to food ...
... safety and protecting public health.
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 permit both industry and government to assign their resources competently by establishing and auditing safe food production practices. In 1994, the organization International HACCP Alliance was established, initially to assist the US meat and poultry industries with executing HACCP.
Food Safety Hazards:
There are four main categories of food safety hazards to consider: biological, chemical, physical, and allergenic. Understanding the risks related with each can dramatically decrease the potential of a foodborne illness. Each have their own unique characteristics, but all can be avoided through a robust food safety management system.
Biological Hazards:
Biological hazards are considered by the contamination of food by microorganisms. Found in the air, food, water, animals, and in the human body, these extremely tiny organisms are not integrally unsafe – many provide advantages to anatomy. Despite this, foodborne illness can happen if harmful microorganisms make their way into the food eat. There are many types of microorganisms, each of which can negatively impact health: bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
Biological Hazards Prevention:
The best way to prevent biological hazards from affecting consumers is to implement robust processing and storage strategies. Kill steps used prior to packaging is essential, such as cooking carefully and purification of milk and juices. Use of packaging technologies during processing like vacuum sealing hinders bacterial growing. Proper temperature management for storage can dramatically decrease microbe growth. Finally, operative sanitation practices throughout the supply chain will decrease cross-contamination of food products.
Chemical Hazards:
Chemical hazards are known by the presence of harmful substances that can be found in food naturally, or accidentally added during processing. Some chemical hazards contain naturally occurring chemicals, such as mycotoxins, intentionally additional chemicals, with the preservative sodium nitrate, and unintentionally added chemicals, like pesticides.
Chemical Hazards Prevention:
Comparable to preventing biological hazards, appropriate cleaning procedures and sanitation requirements are the best methods of prevention. Training employees to follow strict guidelines is important in preventing a chemical hazard. Moreover, limiting the use of chemicals to those generally recognized as safe, and confirming that chemicals are stored in designated areas separated from food products.
Physical Hazards:
Physical hazards are distant objects that are found in food products. They are either naturally found in the specific item, such as stems in fruit, or not normally part of the food item, such as hair or plastic. Unnatural physical hazards are usually more dangerous to health, whereas natural physical hazards can be harmless.
Physical Hazards Prevention:
Prevention of physical hazards focuses primarily on full inspection of food, and strict obedience to food safety regulations, such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP). Organizations can preventive steps to eliminate potential sources of physical hazards in processing and storage areas. Inspect raw materials and food ingredients for field contaminants, such as stones in cereals that were not found during receiving. Install an effective detection and elimination system for physical hazards.
Allergenic Hazards:
The last, and possibly the deadliest, are allergenic hazards. Allergies are the leading cause of chronic illness in the U.S., with many people suffering from allergies each year. Allergic reactions occur when the human body produces an irregular immune response to precise proteins found in food.
Allergenic Hazards Prevention:
Inappropriately, there is no way to prevent allergies, but it is possible to decrease the risk of an allergic reaction. So long as companies embrace proper sanitation techniques and present possible allergenic ingredients visibly on product packaging, allergic reactions will be minimized. Preventing an allergic reaction falls chiefly on the customer, but they can only do so efficiently if businesses do their part with effective sanitation and labelling of ingredients.