Standardization legislation and regulation of food and food products
Food contamination can be physical, chemical, and biological means. Improper and unhygienic food production and storage lead to biological and physical food contamination by microbes and toxins. The immersing new food production methods expose food to contaminants, pesticide residues, veterinary drug and hormone residues, heavy metals, food processing-induced toxic chemicals, and food additives that can harm humans. In addition, dishonesty in the preparation and marketing of food and food products, food adulteration, and false nutritional and health claims are areas that call for food regulation guidelines and food legislation to protect populations from harm and to assure the safety of food.
The influence of globalization, leading to the import of food with unknown safety and quality levels and, unfortunately, inevitably deliberately tampered food, exposing the population to health hazards, also calls for food import regulations and legislations.
Factors affecting food production methods include population growth, animal health, economic growth, and climate change. These factors increase the demand for fast, low-quality, unhealthy food production methods that negatively affect the safety of the food supply.
Food standardization, regulation, and legislation are thus crucial to achieving food safety, which is a central part of food security. Such regulations should include regulations of hygienic, production, processing, manufacturing, transport, labeling, and storage practices for individual foods or groups of foods. In addition to the protection of the health of consumers, sound science-based food standardization, regulation, and legislation can facilitate clearance through food trade barriers, assuring fair trading practices.
At the international level, there is a collection of food standards, codes of practice, guidelines, and other recommendations known as Codex Alimentarius.
To develop and update the national standard and follow the international Codex Alimentarius standards and ensure that they are consistent with current knowledge, food-related scientific and technological research, and state-of-the-art analytical instruments, knowledge in risk assessment and evaluation based on sound scientific analysis are vital. Hence, the importance of a research and analytical laboratory in implementing and following national and international food standards is unprecedented.
PS the Code of Practice for the Reduction of Acrylamide in Foods (CAC/RCP 67-2007) in the Codex Alimentarius is based on the discovery of Dr Eden Tareke