Food Safety

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Food is essential for nourishment and sustenance of life. But many times, the food that you eat to stay healthy can make you sick. It might be due to the presence of microorganisms, due to improper food handling right from the farm to the table, etc. Food safety is a scientific discipline describing the handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent food borne illness. This includes a number of routines that should be followed to avoid potentially severe health hazards. The action of monitoring food to ensure that it will not cause food borne illness is known as food safety.
Food safety is an increasingly important public health issue as food borne diseases take a major toll on health. Food safety encompasses actions aimed at ensuring that all food is as safe as possible. Food safety policies and actions need to cover the entire food chain, from production to consumption
Ensuring food standards—The Codex Alimentarius To ensure the quality of foods that we consume, the World Health Organization created the the Codex Alimenatrius, a set of food standards and guideline in 1963. The Codex Alimentarius is a collection of written codes of international food standards for use by all nations. The term ‘Codex Alimentarius’ is a Latin word meaning ‘food code’.
The main purposes of this Program are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and nongovernmental organizations.
Benefits for the consumers Food commodity and general standards The Codex Alimentarius gives the highest priority to consumer interests in the formulation of commodity and general standards. It ensures that the consumers receive products that are of a minimum acceptable quality, are safe and do not present a health hazard. Codex Standards cover all the main foods, whether processed, semi-processed or raw. In addition, materials used in the further processing of food products are included to the extent necessary for achieving the principal objectives of the code. Codex provisions concern the hygienic and nutritional quality of food, including microbiological norms, food additives, pesticide and veterinary drug residues, contaminants, labeling and presentation, and methods of sampling and risk analysis. Codex formats provisions for commodity standards, including the name of the standard, its scope, description, weights and measures and labeling and are intended to ensure that the consumer is not misled and to induce confidence that the food item purchased is what the label says it is. The provision covering essential composition and quality factors ensures that the consumer will not receive a product below a minimum acceptable standard. The provisions concerning food additives and contaminants and hygiene are aimed at protecting the health of consumers. The Codex Alimentarius contains more than 200 standards in the prescribed format for individual foods or groups of foods. In addition, it includes the General Standard for the Labeling of Prepackaged Foods, the Codex General Guidelines on Claims and the Codex Guidelines on Nutrition Labeling, all of which are aimed at ensuring honest practices in the sale of food while also providing guidance to consumers in their choice of products. It also maximum residue limits for pesticides and veterinary drugs and maximum limits for food additives and contaminants have been established to ensure that consumers are not exposed to unsafe levels of hazardous materials.