3 replies to this topic

[Simon]

Concerns over food safety have led to an overemphasis on detecting minute quantities of chemical additives at the expense of preventing thousands of cases of food poisoning caused by caterers not washing their hands.

The quote is from this short article:

Personal hygiene 'is key to food safety'

Do you agree?

On a slightly different track I always found it strange that food packaging manufacturers must wear hainets and supermarket deli counter staff don't.

Regards,
Simon

[just me]

Food safety should always be throughout the food chain, one break on the chain will result in compromising the safety of a food product.

It is not just odd that a packaging manufacturer is required to dorn on hair net while an institutional staff is not, it is not right.

But IMO, it is something that hopefully time will remedy as the awareness and the enforcement is not quite there.

What happens is the manufacturer may be doing something to assure food safety, but the next person down the line is not, such as the distributors and retailers. And we are putting much attention on the manufacturers...easier targets perhaps, everything should start with them perhaps.

I came across a spice supplier who would ask their customers to store the spices at a certain temperature, but they themselves are not practising it in the warehouse.

The public would shake their heads and refrain from buying products from a certain manufacturer whose products have been linked to a case, but then turn to frequent local roadside stalls that hang by the rule of one multipurpose wiping towel...

Just comes back to the one possible solution, public awareness and public call for such minimum requirements to be inplace, right now, many of the public are just not bothered.

[Charles.C]

Dear Simon,

The specific chemical in question appeared to be dioxin occurring in fish oil. Rings a partial bell. Wonder where the dioxin came from ? Something to do with lack of control of people or just environmental ?
The article seems to be attacking the principle of high technology becomingly increasingly effective as a resource for detecting unacceptable contamination (the correctness of its stated unacceptability [zero tolerance ?] is a different question I think). Sorry, I don't agree although various sporting personalities would no doubt have a different opinion.

Regarding the difficulty in getting people to wash their hands etc, is this supposed to be a new problem ? Maybe so but the evidence is lacking in the article. Nonetheless, I can perhaps supply some additional support here -

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3473728/


Rgds / Charles.C


Added - this link on the same news item (I guess) gives a slightly more reasoned commentary perhaps -

http://www.tes.co.uk/2278270

Edited by Charles.C, 06 September 2006 - 03:49 PM.

[Simon]

I suppose we can only do our bit and hope everyone else does theirs. Right now we know they don't always, but that's no reason for us not to - although it is frustrating. Like JM says a combination of education (food handlers and public) and enforcement are the keys to driving improvement and over time things will get better, but we'll never get to perfection, not unless 'bug free' robots start serving us.



Thanks guys.

Simon