What Is Food Safety?

Food Safety, a scientific method or discipline, refers to the handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways to prevent food-borne illness. If two or more cases of a similar illness result from the ingestion of a common food, it could be a food-borne disease outbreak.

Most times food travels from one place to another. In the process of food transportation from farm to factory to fork, food is prone to getting contaminated. The supply chain needs to ensure that safe food handling practices and procedures are implemented at every stage of the food production life cycle in order to curb any risks. Ensuring Food Safety controls and prevents harm to consumers.

As an academic discipline, food safety draws from many fields including chemistry, microbiology and engineering. The knowledge from each of these fields intersect to ascertain food safety at different levels of food production, food sourcing, manufacturing units, and retail food stores. Food safety, thus, is a systemic approach to hygiene/sanitation and accountability that concerns every aspect of the global food industry.