Innovation, food safety and regulation.

ABSTRACT

The food chain from producer, processor, retailer and consumer is highly interconnected and dynamic. In the midst of this environment, cooperative linkages between government, industry and the consumer are critical to ensure the delivery of safe, healthy and nutritious food. Robust safety assessment of products is a proven system that helps keep our foods safe and enhances international trade. While advances in science and technology offer food production many potential benefits, developments must be guided by appropriate safety assessments and regulation (as appropriate) if risks are to be minimised and technologies developed in a socially acceptable way.

Keywords: food safety, innovation, regulation

INTRODUCTION

Participants along the food chain continuum, whether primary producers, manufacturers, retailers or caterers, are continually challenged to remain competitive either in the global and/or their local marketplace(s). Innovation is considered a key element to success in this endeavour through the development of new products, processes, services and markets.

The food industry has a long history of innovation that often is linked with or a consequence of the prevailing social and economic trends of the day. For example, in western countries since the Second World War there have been some significant changes in the foods we eat and the way food is delivered (See http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/ healthydiet/seasonsandcelebrations/howweusedtoeat/ 21stfood/ for a summary of food history in the United Kingdom). This is a result of the dynamic interactions between changes in society such as food availability, demographics, economy, migration and travel, work and leisure patterns, married together with the food and related industries making the most of innovation opportunities to meet societies evolving needs and desires. This is achieved by applying developments in disciplines such as medical science, food science and technology, various disciplines of engineering, information technology and transportation.

Post World War II, consumers in western countries emerged from years where the food supply consisted mainly of rationed staple foods that were locally produced and available seasonally. Until all households had refrigerators for food storage, food was procured daily. Since then, the availability and variety of food in the marketplace has changed with increased family income, acquisition of facilities for chilled and frozen food storage, the emergence of the self-service supermarket and super store retailers with multi-level car-parks, globalisation of the supply chain, and now internet shopping. Underpinning these changes are innovations that provide product diversity and differentiation and those that enhance food stability and extend shelf life, provide new packaging shapes and functions, and more sophisticated refrigeration engineering.

Changes in the traditional family structure, a baby boom, greater liberty for women and economic demands during this time have contributed to increasing single person households; both parents or house partners spending most of the day away from their residence at work and travelling to and from work. This has resulted in a need for easier to prepare and convenient so-called ready-to-cook or ready-to-eat and eat-on-the-go meals and snacks. The innovations that have been applied in response to this are endless. These includes developments in technologies for rapid cooking (microwave), food formulation, food preservation and packaging, and the introduction of systematic food safety management systems to name a few.

Consumers at the same time have become more diverse in their tastes, more conscious of the health implications of food consumption, more aware of the composition and origins of their food, and express concern about environmental impacts of food production and packaging. The food industry has been rapid to respond to a desire for 'fresher' and less processed foods, to re-formulate food to have lower levels of sugar, salt and fat and to find innovative ways to increase the nutrient value, the functionality of foods, and the pleasure of eating.

The above provides some examples of the innovation that has taken place in the food supply over the last sixty years in developed countries. Some of the innovation is obvious to the consumer (the microwave oven, a biodegradable package, bread fortified with omega 3 fatty acid, genetically modified soy), much is not (processing methods, food safety management systems based on risk). While food is our major source of nutrients it can also be a major source of exposure to health hazards such as chemicals, microorganisms and pharmacological agents. Food safety is compromised and human illness occurs when four essential elements come together:

* a susceptible consumer

* a hazard in a form able to cause illness and in sufficient concentration

* a food substrate that will support the transmission and in some cases amplification of the hazard, and

* an environment (eg temperature or atmosphere) that supports the specific hazard's transmission and in some cases amplification

Given the amount of food consumed globally and the number of cases of food-borne illness reported these factors do not coalesce so often. However, the incidence is unacceptably high in some communities (WHO 2007). In other countries, despite efforts to control food-borne illness there are reports that some specific illnesses remain static in incidence or continue to rise (Anon 2008). While the outcome of food-borne illness following consumption of a food is determined by the interaction of the above key elements, the epidemiology of food-borne illness is further influenced by prevailing socioeconomic influences, food production practices and technological developments, public health infrastructure and environmental factors that shape these key factors at any point in time. In all communities the risk can be minimised by attention to the major contributing elements listed above (WHO 2007).

It is not surprising then that the factors that lead to compromises in food safety have evolved together with the evolution of food history and society. In some cases our knowledge of food safety hazards and their control is acquired as a result of innovations along the food supply chain either because a hazard has been anticipated or it has been consequential to the incidence of food-borne illness in the community. A classic example is the introduction of pasteurisation of milk that was an innovation led by the food industry in response to increasing attribution of raw milk to the disease burden in the community at the time.

In the USA, before widespread adoption of milk pasteurisation, an estimated 25% of all food-borne and waterborne outbreaks of disease were associated with milk. By 2001, the percentage of such outbreaks associated with milk was estimated at <1% (CFSAN 2002). Similarly in Australia between 1920 and 1945 many health authorities reported enormous reductions in infant mortality from diseases caused by the consumption of cow's milk. The reduction was not due to a higher degree of 'purity' in the milk supplied, but directly attributed to the increasing practice of heating the milk prior to consumption either in the home or at the processing plant (Government of Victoria 1943). For these reasons, the introduction of pasteurisation is viewed as one of the most significant food safety management milestones of the past 100 years and is prescribed in regulation in many countries.

Innovations in the food chain, consensus on the potential food safety risks and acceptance of risk management approaches by all stakeholders is not always as clear cut. The pace of food innovation and related science may progress at a much faster rate than the food safety science required to underpin management of the possible risks and effective risk communication. A key example is the development of genetically modified plants, animals and microorganisms used in food production. The Institute of Food Science and Technology in a review of GM foods described the key concern in the GM food debate as 'the fundamental matter of the role of science and society in relation to new science based developments' (IFST 2004). In this paper we discuss food safety hazards from the perspective of the food industry and innovation, and approaches to risk mitigation and regulatory control.

FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY

Food safety is defined by the Codex Alimentarius Commission as 'assurance that food will not cause harm to the consumer when it is prepared and/or eaten according to its intended use' (FAO/WHO 2001a). Food safety is associated generally with hazards such as microorganisms, chemicals and toxins. Food quality on the other hand is a broad and ill defined term that may include the organoleptic characteristics, physical and functional properties, and nutrient composition of a food (Burlingame and Piniero 2007). Further it can encompass biosecurity and the social and political environment of the food chain and its links.

Recent innovations and evolution of the global food supply have resulted in a move to expand the concept of food safety and to include aspects of nutrition so that the two are seen as a continuum rather than separate (Burlingame and Pineiro 2007). Some current examples of innovations that raise human health concerns, rightly or wrongly, that have to be managed are the use of genetic modification to manipulate food production efficiency and food quality characteristics, the use of nanotechnology in agriculture, food processing and packaging, and trends to manipulate the functionality of foods. The food safety concept is increasingly seen as including these factors such as the nutrient components of food that are known to be risk factors associated with human chronic disease or nutrient components of food in the form of additives, functional food components or supplements.

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