Food safety in our time

International organisation, national government and industrial stakeholders have placed much emphasis on food safety for many years from field to fork, including animal and public health and environmental issues (One Health). Legal instruments have been updated and extended and new procedures introduced as well as a long list of guidance documents on general use.

The outcome of all these efforts is difficult to measure due to a long list of variable to be considered such as change in feeding and farming practises, industry technology, general immunity of the consumers to mention just a few.  In general terms however the result appears to be uncertain since food borne disease such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria and many others are still frequent having far reaching consequence at personal and communal level.

We could ask ourselves if all these efforts have been in vain or would the situation be even worse without these efforts?  We could also ask ourselves if the measures introduced were the correct ones or are they in fact the right ones but they were not properly enforced?  All interesting question which are worth discussing; I am sure there also are many others.

Please feel free to comment; I look forward to your points of view. Please note you can also send my an email in case you prefer not to comment directly. See contact page on this webiste.

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