Consumers believe that food is safe – is it?

Consumers simply expect that the food they buy will be safe for them and their families to eat. It is just an intrinsic belief and faith in the food industry.

So  food businesses are required to meet certain food safety controls to ensure that food is always safe for people to consume, right?

Generally this belief is well founded as the vast majority of food businesses of all types make food safety one of the priorities and do what they can to ensure that their food is safe.

The truth is that no matter what controls a food business puts in place and how well they maintain them, there is always a risk that food will not be safe for consumption.

The only way to make sure that all the food a business supplies is safe to eat is to test everything that is made and not actually allow the food to be sold or eaten. That would not make business sense, as it would mean no sales and the business would rapidly go out of business.

So in manufacturing we have intensive tailored food safety programs in operation and then sample according to our sampling plan and test for the micro-organisms or chemicals or other substances we  have worked out we need to test for, and then release the production based on that testing program and hope that we have sound results which reflect what is in the whole batch.

However if our sampled container does not contain the specific microbe, but it was in the next container, we will never know until we find out about the case of food poisoning and all that comes with it.

In the hospitality and retail sectors we should have our required food safety controls and training in place and monitor these stringently, however anything can happen and sometimes does. At the end of the day the owners of these businesses can only hope that everything they have in place with the staff they have are enough to protect them, their business and their consumers. However even that great café with brilliant food safety can still have a food poisoning problem.

Yes, HOPE based on scientific principles and recognised food safety controls is what we rely on to ensure that the food we make is safe for people to eat.

So as it is now becoming much clearer to all in the industry, there is no such thing as absolutely no risk when it comes to food safety. This is  now one of the big focuses in the food industry in trying to find ways of continuing to minimise the risk  and allow the consumer to continue to believe that their food is safe to consume, whilst doing it in ways that means businesses don’t go out of business doing it.