Food Poisoning

Introduction:

Every year millions of people suffer from food poisoning due to uncontrolled application of agricultural chemicals, environmental contamination, use of illegal additives , microbiological hazards and others but as a result of increasing awareness of consumers and their demands to provide them with safe, wholesome and high quality food have force many food premises to carry out a broad assessment and re-organize their systems of food control in turn to improve efficiency , rationalization of human resources and harmonizing approaches.

This assessment of food control system has resulted to shift from the traditional approach which depends mainly on the final product sampling and inspection and move forward toward the implementation of a preventative safety and quality approach based on risk analysis. (FAO, 1998)

Risk based approaches has been developed by World health organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and it is called risk analysis .(WHO,2011)-website

Moreover, risk analysis is a combination of three interconnected elements which are Risk management, Risk assessment and Risk communication. (FAO/WHO training manual, 2006)

Risk assessment is a scientific evaluation of risk associated with hazard either qualitatively or quantitatively .Risk management is the process where the relevant information of risk including risk assessment results are used to make decisions on how they will control the risk and implementing proper options.

Finally risk communication which may define as the process by which exchange of information occur between risk assessors, managers and concerned parties.

(http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/ae922e/ae922e04.htm)

Government officials:

In order to prepare a food products that is safe for human consumption and trade within the country or worldwide as well as maintain public confidence the government officials has a major role in this issue, yet it is clear that the government has no role in the production of food and cannot by itself to make safe or unsafe food.

However, the government does play two important roles to reduce the risk of foodborne illness.

The first major role is to create food standards and implement it through laws, regulations, inspection, and compliance procedures.

These standards range from setting legislation to prevent food adulteration toward defining limits on the levels of pesticides residues as well as levels of pathogenic bacteria, food labelling, preparation and packaging of food.

As a consequence, USDAs in recent times implemented HACCP system for meat and poultry to reduce harmful contamination and the risk of food borne illness.

The second role is to address food safety problems that are beyond the control of any person participating in the food chain, which require more than a regulatory solution like for example E.