Food safety and quality represent a major concern worldwide, not only for the potential risk to consumers’ health but also for the economic losses occurring in food industries. A complete quality system involves raw matter, environmental conditions, production processes, storage and distribution, taking into account the purpose for which the end product is intended. Appropriate analytical methods combined with good hygiene practices are essential to ensure a safe food supply and/or to minimize the occurrence of foodborne outbreaks due to the consumption of food contaminated with pathogens such as bacteria, fungi and parasites. On the other hand, the lack of measures able to detect quality deterioration, spoilage, authenticity and adulteration, as well as texture, rheology and sensory properties of food can affect the food industry economy and reduce consumer confidence. The use of rapid analytical methods can benefit food companies in saving time and cost, indicating the importance of developing new reliable assays for good and fast control of products throughout the whole food chain.
This book focuses on the food safety challenges in the vegetable industry from primary production to consumption. It describes existing and innovative quantitative methods that could be applied to the vegetable industry for food safety and quality, and suggests ways in which such methods can be applied for risk assessment. Examples of application of food safety objectives and other risk metrics for microbial risk management in the vegetable industry are presented. The work also introduces readers to new preservation and packaging methods, advanced oxidative processes (AOPs) for disinfection, product shelf-life determination methods, and rapid analytic methods for quality assessment based on chemometrics applications, thus providing a quantitative basis for the most important aspects concerning safety and quality in the vegetable sector.
Food safety regulators face a daunting task: crafting food safety performance standards and systems that continue in the tradition of using the best available science to protect the health of the American public, while working within an increasingly antiquated and fragmented regulatory framework. Current food safety standards have been set over a period of years and under diverse circumstances, based on a host of scientific, legal, and practical constraints. Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food lays the groundwork for creating new regulations that are consistent, reliable, and ensure the best protection for the health of American consumers. This book addresses the biggest concerns in food safetyâ€"including microbial disease surveillance plans, tools for establishing food safety criteria, and issues specific to meat, dairy, poultry, seafood, and produce. It provides a candid analysis of the problems with the current system, and outlines the major components of the task at hand: creating workable, streamlined food safety standards and practices.
This book addresses the basic understanding of food contaminants and their sources, followed by the techniques to measure food safety and quality. It is divided into four parts: Part A - sources of contaminants in foods, their associated health risks, and integrated management and alternative options to minimize contaminants; Part B - Technological assessment of conventional methods and selected advanced methods for the detection, identification and enumeration of microbial contaminates; Part C - Technological assessment of different chemical measurements techniques; and Part D – Technological assessment of different instrumental techniques to assess sensory properties of foods. Food safety is a growing concern due to the increase in food-borne illnesses caused by food adulteration, excessive use of pesticides, use of chemical preservatives and artificial fruit ripening agents, microbial contaminations, and improper food handling. Chemical contaminants in food could be transferred from environmental or agrochemical sources, personal care products, and other by-products of water disinfects. In addition, microbial food safety can be threatened due to the presence of many pathogens, such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Clostridium botulinum, Staphylococcus aureus, and Listeria monocytogenes in foods. Globally, strict regulations are imposed to limit the potential contaminants in foods. Development of accurate, rapid, and inexpensive approaches to test food contamination and adulteration would be highly valued to ensure global food safety. There are existing processes to ensure safety of food products from chemical and microbial contaminants. Apart from the existing measurement technologies, varieties of new techniques are also being emerged and these could be potential to ensure food safety and quality. In addition to chemical and microbial properties, sensory properties such as texture, mouth feel, flavor, and taste, are among the most important attributes of food products to ensure their acceptability by consumers. Two approaches are available to evaluate sensory properties of food products, namely subjective and objective analyses. The responses are perceived by all five senses: smell, taste, sight, touch, and hearing. The approach used in sensory evaluation varies depending on the types of foods and the ultimate goal of the testing. Sensory attributes are the most important quality parameters after ensuring the safety of foods.
In recent years, cases of food-borne illness have been on the rise and are creating a significant public health challenge worldwide. This situation poses a health risk to consumers and can cause economic loss to the food service industry. Identifying the current issues in food safety practices among the industry players is critical to bridge the gap between knowledge, practices, and regulation compliance. Food Safety Practices in the Restaurant Industry presents advanced research on food safety practices investigated within food service establishments as an effort to help the industry pinpoint risks and non-compliance relating to food safety practices and improve the practices in preventing food-borne illnesses from occurring. Covering a range of topics such as food packaging, safety audits, consumer awareness, and standard safety practices, it is ideal for food safety and service professionals, food scientists and technologists, policymakers, restaurant owners, academicians, researchers, teachers, and students.
"There is an ever-increasing need for rapid methods and instrumentation in the field of food and feed quality. Key issues dealt with in the food and feed industry include: monitoring of processes at all stages; showing due diligence in the control of food and nutritional quality; achieving rapid results for detecting (micro)biological, chemical and physical deterioration of food and feed; and finally, detecting rapidly and reliably food authenticity and/or adulteration. Developments in analytical techniques have led to the emergence of a wide range of rapid methods to complement the traditional methods. Faster results, higher productivity, lower costs and increased sensitivity are key concepts for all those involved in writing this book. Key topics include: - emerging rapid technologies; - rapid monitoring of food and nutritional quality; - rapid testing of quality deterioration and spoilage; - rapid testing of authenticity and adulteration; - quality tracking & tracing and rapid testing. The methods and techniques presented here, in their varying degree of complexity, will be a valuable resource for researchers and professionals from the food and feed industry as well as from the scientific community. This book is an ideal supplement to 'Rapid Methods for biological and chemical contaminants in food and feed' as published in 2005."
How safe is our food supply? Each year the media report what appears to be growing concern related to illness caused by the food consumed by Americans. These food borne illnesses are caused by pathogenic microorganisms, pesticide residues, and food additives. Recent actions taken at the federal, state, and local levels in response to the increase in reported incidences of food borne illnesses point to the need to evaluate the food safety system in the United States. This book assesses the effectiveness of the current food safety system and provides recommendations on changes needed to ensure an effective science-based food safety system. Ensuring Safe Food discusses such important issues as: What are the primary hazards associated with the food supply? What gaps exist in the current system for ensuring a safe food supply? What effects do trends in food consumption have on food safety? What is the impact of food preparation and handling practices in the home, in food services, or in production operations on the risk of food borne illnesses? What organizational changes in responsibility or oversight could be made to increase the effectiveness of the food safety system in the United States? Current concerns associated with microbiological, chemical, and physical hazards in the food supply are discussed. The book also considers how changes in technology and food processing might introduce new risks. Recommendations are made on steps for developing a coordinated, unified system for food safety. The book also highlights areas that need additional study. Ensuring Safe Food will be important for policymakers, food trade professionals, food producers, food processors, food researchers, public health professionals, and consumers.
The food industry, with its diverse range of products (e.g. short shelf-life foods, modified atmosphere packaged products and minimally processed products) is governed by strict food legislation, and microbiological safety has become a key issue. Legally required to demonstrate 'due diligence', food manufacturers are demanding analytical techniques that are simple to use, cost effective, robust, reliable and can provide results in 'real time'. The majority of current microbiological techniques (classical or rapid), particularly for the analysis of foodborne pathogens, give results that are only of retrospective value and do not allow proactive or reactive measures to be imple mented during modem food production. Rapid methods for microbial analysis need to be considered in the context of modem Quality Assurance (QA) systems. This book addresses microbiologists, biochemists and immunologists in the food industry, the public health sector, academic and research institutes, and manufacturers of kits and instruments. This volume is an up-to-date account of recent developments in rapid food microbiological analysis, current approaches and problems, rapid methods in relation to QA systems, and future perspectives in an intensely active field. P.D.P. Contributors Public Health Laboratory, Royal Preston Hospital, PO Box F.J. Bolton 202, Sharoe Green Lane North, Preston PR2 4HG, UK. D. M. Gibson Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Torry Research Station, 135 Abbey Road, Aberdeen AB9 8DG, Scotland. P.A. Hall Microbiology and Food Safety, Kraft General Foods, 801 Waukegan Road, Glenview, Illinois 60025, USA.
Food safety and quality are key objectives for food scientists and industries all over the world. To achieve this goal, several analytical techniques (based on both destructive detection and nondestructive detection) have been proposed to fit the government regulations. The book aims to cover all the analytical aspects of the food quality and safety assessment. For this purpose, the volume describes the most relevant techniques employed for the determination of the major food components (e.g. protein, polysaccharides, lipds, vitamins, etc.), with peculiar attention to the recent development in the field. Furthermore, the evaluation of the risk associated with food consumption is performed by exploring the recent advances in the detection of the key food contaminants (e.g. biogenic amines, pesticides, toxins, etc.). Chapters tackle such subject as: GMO Analysis Methods in Food Current Analytical Techniques for the Analysis of Food Lipids Analytical Methods for the Analysis of Sweeteners in Food Analytical Methods for Pesticides Detection in Foodstuffs Food and Viral Contamination Application of Biosensors to Food Analysis
