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New approaches to food safety management: IDF Bulletin
New approaches to food safety, implemented through the use of state-of-the-art food safety metrics, were presented at the joint IDF/FAO Symposium “A Revolution in Food Safety Management; Practical implementation in the dairy product chain”, in Bali, Indonesia in 2008.
Dairy companies should start taking advantage of these opportunities in their practical operations and not wait until they are well established in the minds of all stakeholders, concluded the symposium participants.
Opportunities in food safety management including Food Safety Objectives (FSOs), Performance Objectives (POs), and Performance Criteria (PCs), and a further developed HACCP-based approach to implement the new metrics in the HACCP context of individual food businesses are presented in these Symposium proceedings.
New approaches, based on controlling risks, enable the establishment and communication of quantitative limits for hazards along the food chain that is directly linked to the risk for the consumer. They also pave the way for predictive modelling to demonstrate hazard control.
Claus Heggum, the symposium programme committee chair, stressed that “these revolutionary approaches will be an opportunity for governments and food business that are capable of applying them. In industry, application will be driven by the need to improve confidence in food safety systems and by the cost saving potential connected with the flexibility permitted by the approach. The overall international framework for implementing these approaches is in place.”
He also added that “this ‘revolution’ in food safety requires that well-established paradigms are abandoned, good risk communication skills are available, and that good data on prevalence and levels of hazards along the food chain are provided. Not least, in order to be implemented in small and medium-sized businesses, it requires easy access of user-friendly software tools designed to make predictive modelling workable for non-modellers.”
Source: The International Dairy Federation
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