The importance of food safety

The importance of food safety is some thing that you probably do not think about much. In fact unless you have been struck down with food poisoning and by that I mean more that a little bit of an up set tummy, you probably are wondering what all the fuss is about.

It is very hard to say why it is but the fact remains that food poisoning is rising and the events that lead to it are normally always the same. But I will come back to them a little latter if I can. Food poisoning is on the rise for two reason one; we do not cook our own food. Now we eat more and more ready meals and les and less fresh prepared food. And second we are slowly becoming more and more less immune to the bacteria that brings us the food poisoning.

The fact that we go out shopping and perches more processed food then store it in our fridges at home means that we are trusting in the people who make them to make them safely. No as I work in the food industry at a manufacturing site you would think that I would think this was a grate thing . And in a way I do as it has give you the consumer the time to get out of the kitchen and in to other activates that you did not have time for. Liberating women from the stove and all of that social revolution that the modern age has brought us. Well I do not quite think that but you know what I mean after all who has not just come home from work and popped something in the oven to warm threw. The thing is you have to trust who has made it to make it in the way that is safe. But it is more than that the people who grow and then farm then supply the people who supply the manufactures. Who in turn supply the distributor who then supplies the shops. Now when you get a long chain of thing that rely on one thing going from one to another it can be like a game of Chinese whispers and what you get at the end is not what you expect. Now that is a problem.

So now we have a thing call HACPP. This stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. It is a safety system that was develop I believe by NASSA so that astronauts could get safe food in space and it does pretty much what is says. You analyze the hazards and then put in the control points in the process and that should make the food safe.

In my experience the only thing that lets this down is that the process is then run by us humans who for what ever reason just do not follow the rules that we have put in place to make it safe. Now most of the time that I have come across some one doing some thing that they should not is mainly the fact that they have not been trained to do the job that they are doing , or they thought that they was doing the right thing and was not . This is not so much of a problem as it is easily changed by a little training and that is that. What makes me shudder and it does happen every now and then, is when it was deliberate. If you at home take a piece of meat that is a day out of date and cook it and it is probably fine to do that. That is up to you. I am not saying that it is wrong to do so. If you come in to my kitchen at home you will find jars in the cupboards that will say chill after opening, vegetables past it sell by date and any number of other things as well. We all do that, but only we are affected. If you are a person who does it to save some money and not have that waste then you are taking a risk. The risk that could affect the people who eat it, the jobs of all the propel in the supply chain and any other number of issues that are just too big to go in to so that is why food safety is important. So that is why when you go to a proper food manufacturing site it will be a little like going into a different world and all the controls in place are to preventing any thing bad from happening .

But with all this control and sanitizing of the food to take away the bacteria that will harm us we are actually taking away the little resistance we have to most of them. We are living in such a clean environment we are actually making our selves more prone to getting what we are trying to avoid.
How do we get round this I do not know but I do know one thing I would prefer to have the controls in place than I would wish to have food poisoning. A thing I know from bitter experience. When I was a young lad I used to like to get the odd pie from the butchers on the way to and from work. One day I got one and the lad behind the counter warmed it in the microwave and handed it to me. I watched him do it and did not think any thing about it. He had been handling raw meat and had not washed his hands. The most basic and fundamental rule in any kitchen. The result I had salmonella and was of work for some three weeks . It was a hard lesson but after that I have always Paid attention to how I handle food as being on the receiving end I would not like to think I was responsible for any thing like that.