Food safety covers the handling, preparation, and storage of food to prevent foodborne illness. Yes, food can cause harm to your body if you’re not careful. Are you wondering how? Unsafe food tends to destroy or cause severe damage to many people.
Foodborne illnesses are a burden on public health and contribute significantly to the cost of health care. Therefore, we should make an effort to safeguard our foods and drinks from farm to table. We can say that food is safe if the food can not cause any harm or disease to the consumer.
Food safety simply means handling, preparing and storing foods or drinks in the best way. A way that reduces the risks of consumers becoming sick from foodborne diseases. Food poisoning occurs when food becomes contaminated by bacteria, viruses and other germs, resulting in consumers illness. Food poisoning can be treated at home. However, It can sometimes be severe and require urgent medical attention.
Knowing how to protect consumers from food poisoning is essential. Hence, the food safety principle. This principle aims to prevent food from becoming contaminated and causing food poisoning.
Food safety is quite essential at home, restaurants, retail stores and factories. So, you and I play a vital role. Every nation defines and establishes its laws and enforcement practices for food safety regulation. These regulations may vary from country to country and domestically from region to region. Bringing a food product to a foreign market requires compliance with that nation’s regulation—also, consumer protection laws and its regional governmental authorities.
Generally, every individual is responsible for observing the above fundamental pillars. In addition, the personal hygiene of food handlers also plays a significant role in achieving food safety.
Individuals handling foods should have a high standard of personal hygiene like:
Food safety is a global concern that covers a variety of different parts of everyday life. There has been an increasing awareness of food safety by the general public. Non-compliance to food safety principles could lead to:
Food safety problems are a leading cause of more than 200 preventable diseases worldwide. Each year, one in ten people suffer from foodborne illness or injury. The CDC recently estimated 48million people get sick from foodborne illness, and about 420,000 die worldwide each year.
Therefore, to avoid loss of life and promote good health, it is imperative for food safety to be implemented throughout the food chain.