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Ensuring safe food

Reznikova O.S. – Ph. D. (the doctor of philosophy in economics), the manager by faculty of applied mathematics and economic cybernetics, assistant of dean of economics faculty of National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine South Branch «Crimean Agrotechnological University».

The summary The nation's agriculture and food marketing systems have evolved to provide food to a growing and increasingly sophisticated population. Complex processes built on advances in science and technology have been developed to evaluate and manage the risks associated with the changing nature of the food supply. Well-established systems control many food risks, but serious hazards to public health remain.

Key words: Food safety, ensuring safe food, food safety system, food supply, food risks.

Introduction Protecting the food supply from harmful agents and thus promoting the public health is an important activity of government. The current system for food safety is a complex and multi-layered activity that depends on multiple players that include the federal government, state governments, local governments, universities, the news media, and, of course, the public itself, both as preparers and handlers of food and as consumers. These varied roles which each segment plays in food safety, with their many complexities and charges, must be integrated within the equally complex and changing system of the food supply from production to final consumption. Though the federal roles of guidance, research, surveillance, enforcement, and education are extremely important, they represent only one part of the food safety system [1].

Statement of the task The mission of an effective food safety system is to protect and improve the public health by ensuring that foods meet science-based safety standards through the integrated activities of the public and private sectors.

Protecting the safety of food requires attention to a wide range of potential hazards. Food safety is not limited to concerns related to foodborne pathogens, toxicity of chemical substances, or physical hazards, but may also include issues such as nutrition, food quality, labeling, and education. While the scope of this study includes all of these components, this committee's immediate concern focuses on food-related hazards.

Recommendations are made on steps for developing a coordinated, unified system for food safety. Ensuring safe food will be important for policymakers, food trade professionals, food producers, food processors, food researchers, public health professionals, and consumers.

Results The Current System for Food Safety:

- has many of the attributes of an effective system;

- is a complex, inter-related activity involving government at all levels, the food industry from farm and sea to table, universities, the media, and the consumer;

- is moving toward a more science-based approach with HACCP and with risk based assessment;

- is limited by statute in implementing practices and enforcement that are based in science;

- is fragmented by having 12 primary agencies involved in key functions of safety: monitoring, surveillance, inspection, enforcement, outbreak management, research, and education;

- is facing tremendous pressures with regard to:

1. emerging pathogens and ability to detect them;

2. maintaining adequate inspection and monitoring of the increasing volume of imported foods, especially fruits and vegetables; maintaining adequate inspection of commercial food services and the increasing number of larger food processing plants;

3. the growing number of people at high risk for foodborne illnesses.

The committee defines safe food as food that is wholesome, that does not exceed an acceptable level of risk associated with pathogenic organisms or chemical and physical hazards, and whose supply is the result of the combined activities of Congress, regulatory agencies, multiple industries, universities, private organizations, and consumers. The mission of a food safety system should be stated as an operational charge that uses and reflects that definition. After reviewing the missions presented by some of the lead federal agencies involved in the food safety system, the committee defined an overall mission.

The attributes of a model food safety system can be summarized in five major components.

First, it should be science-based, with a strong emphasis on risk analysis, thus allowing the greatest priority in terms of resources and activity to be placed on the risks deemed to have the greatest potential impact. Adjusting effort to risk depends on being able to identify hazards, evaluate the dose-response characteristics of the hazards, estimate or measure exposures, and then determine the likely frequency and severity of effects on health resulting from estimated exposure. Hazards are properties of substances that can cause adverse consequences. Hazards associated with food include microbiological pathogens, naturally occurring toxins, allergens, intentional and unintentional additives, modified food components, agricultural chemicals, environmental contaminants, animal drug residues, and excessive consumption of some dietary supplements. In addition, improper methods of food handling and preparation in the home can contribute to increases in other hazards.

The limited resources available to address food safety issues direct that regulatory priorities be based on risk analysis, which includes evaluation of prevention strategies where possible. This approach enables regulators to estimate the probability that various categories of susceptible persons (for example, the elderly, or nursing mothers) might acquire illness from eating specific foods and thereby allows regulators to place greater emphasis and direct resources on those foods or hazards with the highest risk of causing human illness. Risk analysis provides a science-based approach to address food safety issues. Comprehensive human and animal disease surveillance must be an integral part of any risk analysis in order to estimate exposure.

The second component in a model system is to have a national food law that is clear, rational, and comprehensive, as well as scientifically based on risk. Scientific understanding of risks changes, so federal food safety efforts must be carried out within a flexible framework. This is a major step toward a science based system, but other steps remain critical. An ideal system would be preventive and anticipatory in nature, and thus designed with integrated national surveillance and monitoring along with education and research required to support these activities woven into the fabric of the system. A reliable and accurate system of data collection, processing, evaluation, and transfer is the foundation for scientific risk analysis. Research should have both applied and basic components and be targeted at the needs of producers, processors, consumers, and regulatory decision-makers and other scientists.

Third, a model food safety system should also have a unified mission and a single official who is responsible for food safety at the federal level and who has the authority and the resources to implement science-based policy in all federal activities related to food safety. This would allow for effective and consistent regulation and enforcement. Similar risks require similar planning, action, and response. Thus the intensity, nature, and frequency of inspection should be similar for foods posing similar risks. A central voice is critical to effective marshaling of all aspects of the food safety system to create a coordinated response to foodborne disease outbreaks. Control of resources is also critical in order to encourage movement toward science-based food safety provisions and to ensure that research and education are targeted toward efforts that will produce the greatest benefit for a given cost of improving food safety.

The fourth essential feature of an ideal federal food safety system is that it be organized to be responsive to and work in true partnership with nonfederal partners. These include state and local governments, the food industry, and consumers. The food safety system must function as an integrated enterprise. It must be agile, fluid, connected, integrated, and transparent, with well-defined accountability and responsibility for each partner in the system. It must frame approaches to risk management that recognize the importance of public perception of risks as well as assessments conducted by experts.

Finally, an effective food safety system must be supported by funding adequate to carry out its major functions and mission-to promote the public's health and safety. Moving toward science-based risk analysis as the underpinning of the system should allow reallocation of resources to areas identified as critical to an integrated, focused effort to ensure safe food.

Statutory revision is essential to the development and implementation of an effective and efficient science-based food safety system. Major aspects of the current system are in critical need of attention in order to move toward a more effective food safety system. Food safety lacks integrated Congressional oversight, allocation of funding based on science, and sustained political support. Statutory impediments interfere with implementation of a more effective food safety system. More than 35 primary statutes regulate food safety. Statutory revision is essential to the development and implementation of an effective and efficient science-based food safety system. The meat and poultry inspection laws mandate a form of compliance monitoring that is largely unrelated to the magnitude or the types of risks that are now posed by those foods. This diverts efforts and perhaps resources from actual risks and other hazards. Inconsistent food statutes often inhibit the use of science-based decision-making in activities related to food safety, including lack of jurisdiction to evaluate food-handling practices in countries of origin for some types of imported foods.

Conclusions An Effective Food Safety System

Should be science-based with a strong emphasis on risk analysis and prevention thus allowing the greatest priority in terms of resources and activity to be placed on the risks deemed to have the greatest potential impact;

- is based on a national food law that is clear, rational, and scientifically based on risk;

- includes comprehensive surveillance and monitoring activities which serve as a basis for risk analysis;

- has one central voice at the federal level which is responsible for food safety and has the authority and resources to implement science-based policy in all federal activities related to food safety;

- recognizes the responsibilities and central role played by the non-federal partners (state, local, industry, consumers) in the food safety system; and receives adequate funding to carry out major functions required.

Recommendations Needed to Improve the Food Safety System:

I. An effective and efficient food safety system must be based in science.

II. To achieve a food safety system based on science, current statutes governing food safety regulation and management must be revised.

III. To implement a science-based system, reorganization of federal food safety efforts is required.

The literature

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