Widespread and continuing concerns over food safety.

This chapter highlights the foods (cereals and nuts, vegetables and fruits, seafoods, meat, eggs, milk and dairy products, supplements and additives, and miscellaneous food products such as soya sauce, spices, canned vegetables, olive pomace oil, Turkish helva, dried vine fruits and coffee) that present a risk now and are likely to do so in the foreseeable future. Food legislation is considered from a holistic point of view, with the aim of suggesting further statutory controls over pollution and specific contaminants (bacterial, viral, fungal, and plant toxins). Food allergy, processing (irradiation, freezing and curing) and packaging of foods, effects of environmental pollution, and food labelling are also discussed. This chapter also includes a review of recent alerts and cases of contravention of legislation, and ends with a summary of future research priorities in key areas of food safety.