Foods characteristics suitable for human consumption

The composition and the chemical nature of the food components affect all aspects of food quality. Some of the essential characteristics that individually or in combination, identify and designate materials as foods suitable for human consumption are:
*Harmless
*Edibility (acceptable flavor, ease of chewing and swallowing)
*Nutritiousness
*Ease of digestion and social acceptability
*Palatability or pleasantness draws both on factors related to edibility and on aspects of social acceptability.

Textural characteristics that render a food difficult to control in the mouth are likely to cause it to be rejected. Fish with many small bones, e.g herring, exemplify the problem. On the other hand the texture of cod, in which soft, juicy flakes of flesh come away easily from the cooked fish, is an example of a food for which oral control is easy.

Some of these quality characteristics are covered in food laws and regulations. For instance, failure of a food to meet regulatory requirements relating to a standard of identify, the declared quantity, declared ingredients or label claims, can be considered as misinterpretation, misbranding or fraud.

Unacceptable levels of foreign matter or extraneous materials that are not necessarily harmful to health or do not cause injury can also be considered as failure to meet food quality requirements.
Foods characteristics suitable for human consumption

Specifications in food safety program

All manufactured ingredients and products have defects no matter how well a organization attempts to prevent product defects. Food safety program is to ensure compliance with laws and regulations in the development of food specification.

A specification is an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product or service. Should a material, product or service fail to meet one or more of the applicable specifications, it may be referred to as being out of specification.

Finished product specifications of ingredient/product manufacturers are more easily established because the manufacturer should develop the internal specification and provide it to the user in order to enable their compliance to the product purchased.

Nonconforming materials and products may be considered any material or product that does not meet specifications or that for whatever reason (damage, leaking, code date, etc) is not acceptable for use or shipment to the customer.

These items must be clearly labeled as hold and stored in a segregated area that protects them from inadvertent use or shipment.
Specifications in food safety program

Requirements for Hygienic Practices

Requirements for Hygienic Practices
Management must establish a protocol to ensure hygienic practices by employees.

Supervisors and managers should set an example for employees by their own high levels of hygienic and food health while conveying the importance of these practices to the employees.

They should provide proper laundry facilities for maintenance of cleanliness though clean dressing rooms, services m, and welfare facilities.

Management should require employees to have a pre-employment physical examination to verify that they are in good physical, mental and emotional health.

This is an excellent opportunity to impress the important of good hygienic habits on a new employee and to emphasize how employees “shed” Salmonella and Shigella.

Furthermore, those with skin infections may be identified before they handle food. All employees who work with food should be checked regularly for signs of illness, infection and other unhealthy conditions.

Several countries have a legal requirement for pre employment health examinations and require than they be repeated at regularly intervals.

However, this regulation has been challenged because of the expense of routine medical examinations, the difficulty of administering these plans, and because a clear relationship between food handlers and food disease has not been established.
Requirements for Hygienic Practices

What is the 10 point Safety Program?

What is the 10 point Safety Program?
10 point Safety Program is based on one actually in use by a major cereal food company

Point 1.Specifications
Specifications are the means of providing complete descriptions and requirements of ingredients, storage conditions, process and process parameters, packaging and its component, the label, storage, handling and distribution requirements, and instructions to the customer.

Point 2. Safety Analysis
This is the hazard analysis which is properly conducted will determine the hazards in the food system used to produce a particular product. This is the basis for establishing the control points.

Point 3. Purchasing Requirements
All ingredients and equipment should be bought to rigid specifications from approved supplier.

Point 4. Good Manufacturing Practice
The HACCP system incorporates GMPs. This area covers the basic minimum of hygiene, sanitation, and good housekeeping, in receiving, processing, packaging, and shipping areas as well as in employee and public facilities and in the condition of ground and building.

Point 5. Physical Systems Hazard Control
This is a schematic of the actual flow of the product in production which delineates the equipment used, the piping, and the interrelationship of accessory equipment such as storage tanks.

Point 6. Recall System
Products should be coded and invoices handled in such that all products can be traced through the distributor system. The lots of ingredients used in any production code should be recorded.

Point 7. Contract Manufacturing
Contract manufacturing must be adhere to the same requirements the contracting company requires of it’s plant, including implementation of HACCP.

Point 8. Facilities Auditing
All facilities must be audited on a periodic basis to ensure that they are operating to company standards and that all of the CCPs are being monitored as required, with all deviations and dispositions of deviations recorded.

Point 9. Customer Complaints
Customer complaint often relegated to a consumer response group must be monitored by the chairman of the review committee and the review committee and the QA managers of affected business on regular basis.

Point 10. Incident Reporting
All deviations from the normal operations must be reported on a prearranged plan to selected people. Incident may range from a plant inspection by the government to a deviation in a CCP. It is not always possible for plant people to appreciate the enormity of a problem that might occur. It also allows the review committee to have an overall view of how well the operations are functioning depending on the incident rate.
What is the 10 point Safety Program?