Food Safety. Commodity Science Point of View

The paper addresses "food safety" and 'food quality' from the position of commodity and food science rather than economy. The various descriptions of both terms in literature are reviewed in connection with customer/supplier ability to evaluate food safety and quality by examination of various characteristics. Food safety has been described as opposite to food risk. Differences in perception of food risk by customer, producer/supplier and official agencies are discussed in this paper. The objective safety (and quality) of food can be evaluated using three categories of food risk (biological, chemical and physical) measured on a seven step intensity scale by producers and official agencies but not by customers. This leads to formulating food safety policy which has been described as a set of voluntary, obligatory and supplementary systems under inspection of official bodies. The efficiency of this formulation has been examined and described for Wielkopolska region of Poland. The results indicate sufficient analytical performance of laboratories in industry and some gaps in co-operation with official food safety control institutions.