Food safety – a key to healthy life

Food safety is related to the presence of all those foodborne hazards, which makes food unsafe to consume and injurious to health, if consumed. Food safety is a basic need but there is a danger that it may be overlooked for process efficiency and economy. Food reaches to consumers via supply chains consisting different types of organizations. A critical issue in improving the level of food safety is an integrated approach of controlling the safety of food during the entire food chain i.e. right through farm to the consumer’s table, but little is known about the characterization of safe food, the nature of food safety hazards, the establishment of acceptable hazard levels, the strategy of food safety improvement and the methods for valuating the improvement. The increasing incidences of foodborne diseases and its resultant social and economic impact on the human population have brought food safety to the forefront of public health concerns. The considerable increase of illness caused by consuming unhygienic food in both developed and developing countries has provided substantial impact on financial costs besides causing health hazards. This has necessitated the need for the development and introduction of new food safety standards and regulations to reach a higher level of food safety.