Food safety
Food security is a topic that is deeply felt by the population, especially in this period that saw the Japan earthquake as a protagonist. The safety of what you eat is in fact closely linked to the healthiness of the food, its goodness, and consequently to the health of the person.
Earthquake in Japan
The damage suffered by some of the nuclear reactors of the Fukushima plant following the earthquake of 11 March 2011, caused the "food security" alarm, not only in the East, but also in Europe: fear is the common thread and represents the risk for possible contamination by radioactive isotopes.
The approach with which the food-security alarm must be addressed is to wait for the Japanese authorities to ascertain the damage caused: in Italy, border controls on vegetables and animal foods derived from Japan will have to be strengthened.
Quality of food
More specifically, "food safety" is synonymous with hygienic-sanitary, nutritional and organoleptic quality of what we eat, but not only: we must also focus on all those processes of production, transformation, preparation and consumption of food, which serve to give a guarantee regarding the quality of the food itself. In fact, if only one of these processes undergoes a hitch, it is no longer possible to guarantee the healthiness of the food, causing possible complications in the human organism.
HACCP and ISO standards
The current technology of industrialized countries has gone so far as to guarantee the almost absolute safety of what you eat: in fact, there are some rules that must be scrupulously respected before putting any product on the market. The rules that protect food safety are summarized in: HACCP, which represents all the necessary measures for the hygiene of a given food, and ISO Standards, essential for the traceability of the product within the food supply chains.
Food preservability
Furthermore, for the correct shelf life of a food put on the market and for food safety it is necessary to add other substances to that product, in order to improve its quality, making it more conservable: the addition of salt, sugar, alcohol and vinegar is an ancient practice, but still successfully applied today. Similarly, in order to preserve food safety, it is permitted to use some food additives, substances of natural or synthetic derivation that are intentionally added to the product in one of the phases of preparation, transport or storage of the same. Antimicrobials, preservatives, thickeners, gelling agents, flavor enhancers are just some of these additives allowed by law, to guarantee the healthiness of the food.
Contamination and pollution
But that's not all: sometimes there is the intervention of some unexpected phenomena (or unforeseeable, such as that of Japan), which put food safety at serious risk: in fact, even chemical contamination, biological pollution and various agents physicists can jeopardize the quality of products. To give an example, industrial activities can release substances that are dangerous for food (consequently, also for humans) into the atmosphere: heavy metals, dioxins, pesticides can create serious problems for producers and consumers.
With regard to physical agents, reference is made to all those substances or residues that are introduced voluntarily or not in one or more stages of food preparation, ranging from cultivation to packaging of the finished product. The biological problem is sometimes the most dangerous: Salmonella, Escherichia Coli, Enterobacter sakazakii are just some examples of pathogenic microorganisms that can compromise food safety. From here, it is understandable how the adoption of a food prevention and control plan is of primary necessity.
The problem of food security is growing exponentially in those countries affected by famine, where the risk of malnutrition, contagion and disease is very high: at the end of this, one can understand the seriousness of the Japanese case, when, in addition to the famine and the tragic moment, there is also the possible nuclear contamination.
