Inglés

Safety in Food Processing (Opinion)
From our point of view, it is a fundamental requirement of any food process that the food produced should be safe for consumption. Obviously, themost important reason of this is to take care of people’s health avoiding diseases caused by contaminated food.
We are quite sure that there are some items that must be evaluated as portof the ‘safe Design’ process. To begin with, we think it is necessary to have knowledge about what kind of hazards may be present in food taking into account its ingredients and itsprocessing. This is in order to prevent the growth of pathogens and destroy them by controlling intrinsic factors, like pH and water activity. Also, to choose the corrects food processingtechniques which are involved in the removal of physical hazards and in the control of chemical hazards.
In addition, we consider that other points, such as type of packaging, productinformation, consumer awareness, maintenance and sanitation of buildings and vehicles which transport food should be contemplated so as to spare contamination.
Last but not least, there isa detail that we want to emphasize in because we think is very important for companies to evade problems and it is about personal hygiene and training. We feel very strongly that thecompanies should have standars and procedures in place to define the requirements for personal hygiene and staff responsibility; and staff should be appropriated trained. Training isessential to make personnel aware of their roles and responsibilities for food control. Companies should develop and implement appropriate training programmes including adequate supervisionand monitoring of food hygiene behavior.
To sum up, all the steps of food process must be controlled and staff should be trained with the objective of produce food safe for consumption.