Significance Food safety and quality are important at the home level, but are critical in large scale food production and processing, and also where food is freshly prepared and served. In the past, many foods were processed at home. Advancement in technology and processing, higher per capita incomes and better purchasing power as well as increased consumer demand have led to a variety of processed foods, food for health / functional foods being manufactured. Safety of such foods needs to be assessed.
The quality of food stuff, raw as well as processed is of public health concern and must be addressed. In the past decade, safety challenges faced globally as well as in India have changed significantly and issues related to food quality and food safety have gained tremendous importance. A number of factors are responsible for this: With fast changing lifestyles and eating habits, more people are eating outside their homes. In commercial settings, foods are prepared in bulk handled by many persons, thus there are more chances of food getting contaminated.
Further, food items are prepared many hours in advance, and may spoil if not stored appropriately. There are many processed and packaged foods. Safety of these foods is important. Spices and condiments, oilseeds were processed at home in former times and purity of these were not a concern.
In today’s world, pre- packaged individual spices, condiments, spice powders and mixes are in demand, especially in cities and metros. Quality of even raw food stuff besides processed foods is of public health concern and must be addressed. Logistics governing transport of bulk food is complex and there is a long gap between processing and consumption. Thus risk assessment and safety management during mass production and mass distribution is critical.
Microbial adaptations, antibiotic resistance, altered human susceptibility and international traveling have all contributed to increasing incidence of food-borne microbial diseases. Nearly half of all known food-borne pathogens have been discovered during the past - years. There are still many food borne illnesses of unknown etiology. This is an issue of global public health concern and there is a