World Health Day: Food safety
3M: Food safety landscape changed dramatically
The firm said over the years major drivers have included consumers, regulation and retailers.
World Health Day is being celebrated today (7 April), with WHO highlighting the challenges and opportunities associated with food safety under the slogan of “From farm to plate, make food safe.”
Technology driving change
Kevin Habas, global scientific marketing and education manager, said the US Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) is now having an impact and the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) was an earlier driving force.
“The change has been because industry in the past few years has overseen more technology develop than ever before. There has been more change in the past five to 10 years than the prior 30,” he told FoodQualityNews.
“It is more competitive in the space and some of that is driven by consumer groups.
“These advocacy groups want fresh, local, organic and non-GMO food. Despite companies best efforts there are still global recalls and a few of the best companies in the world are sometimes implicated.”
Habas said people assume, and rightly so, that all food they eat is safe.
“It is the government’s obligation to ensure that and the FDA or the USDA or their equivalents around the world must have the systems in place to make sure,” he said.
“Retailers are involved as they have private label products that must be consistent and ensure uniformity and they are driving more standards around audits.”
3M Food Safety provides indicator tests, sample handling, pathogen detection, hygiene and time temperature monitoring.
The firm has worked with Dr Martin Wiedmann at Cornell University on quick time to results.
Quicker reaction time
Habas said it is possible to respond in one-tenth of the time than previously detect where any problem is coming from, isolate it and find the cause to get it out of the marketplace.
“They are the age-old challenges, pushing time to result, sensitivity of the test and limit of detection but the performance of systems needs to be at a price point that is affordable so you can have precision and accuracy without making it too costly,” he said.
“A newer issue is information overload as there is so much data, you need the right data and in the right amounts. It is more of an issue as digitalised to find the important information and information to track.
“Things such as temperature, line speed and pressure are monitored as well as all the chemical and microbiological test results and you need to make sense of it all.”
A ‘one size fits all’ approach does not apply to food safety, according to Habas.
“Food safety is not viewed as public health until a recall as there is no hard link,” he said.
“Critical control points include sanitation schedules and robust hygiene monitoring plans, incoming raw materials and food contact surface testing.
“It is extremely important to increase awareness of issues globally, to promote best practice sharing and elevate the conversation.
“Food quality can be used as a competitive advantage by some plants but not food safety, so days like these are helping to get the message out.”
