MICROBIOLOGICAL QUALITY AND SAFETY IN DAIRY INDUSTRY

Module 1. Concepts of quality, safety and food laws

Lesson 2
CONCEPTS OF QUALITY CONTROL, QUALITY ASSURANCE AND FOOD SAFETY

2.1 Introduction

With the rising liberalization of agro-industrial markets and thus the world-wide integration of food supply chains, the assurance of food quality and safety has become a major concern. Following serious and repeated incidents such as mad cow disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis–BSE), Dioxin, Aflatoxin and most recently, Sudan Red consumer protection has become a priority in policy making in the large consumer markets. The recent occurrence of serious food scares and food contamination events – such as Salmonella contagion of peanut butter in the US, melamine contamination of milk in China and high pesticide content of aerated drinks manufactured in India – has significantly enhanced the concern for food safety and its impact on health, marketing and foreign trade. Protecting consumer health from food borne hazards has become a compelling duty for policy makers across the globe. Consequently, regulatory frameworks and standards are being developed wherein trade and health issues are being addressed by prioritizing consumer protection over freedom of trade. Thus, it has become imperative for the Indian industry and policy makers to adopt strong practices of food safety so as to remain sustainably competitive both in domestic and export markets. In this context, it is essential to have a close look at the recent changes in food safety regulations adopted in India which if effectively implemented will not only protect domestic consumers from food contamination hazards, but also become instrumental in making India meet international standards of food safety.

Hence, legal requirements for quality assurance systems and food control along the entire food chain, from seed and agricultural production, through food processing and the distribution system, up to the consumers’ table, are increasing considerably. Major prerequisite for ensuring food quality and safety is that all stakeholders in the food supply chain recognize that primary responsibility lies with those who produce, process and trade food and that public control should be based on scientific risk assessment (Fig. 2.1).

Fig. 2.1 Food supply chain and operators’ responsibility for food quality and safety
(Source Will and Guenther, 2007)

GAP = Good Agricultural Practices
GDP = Good Distribution Practices
GMP = Good Manufacturing Practices
GHP = Good Hygienic Practices

Operators’ responsibilities cover the whole food supply and marketing chain from primary production to final consumption and encompass all actors in exporting and importing countries. Public and private standards are subject to continuous changes as a result of on-going process of liberalization of the world trade to establish cost-effective supplier-buyer linkages and to gain a competitive edge. Globalization of the food supply chain, the increasing importance of the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the obligations emerging from the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements have resulted in unprecedented interest in the development of food standards and regulations and the strengthening of food control infrastructure at the country level.

2.2 Food Safety, Quality and Consumer Protection

Food safety provides an assurance that food will not cause harm to the consumer when it is prepared and/or eaten according to its intended use. Safety is a component of quality. In fact, many experts have argued that safety is the most important component of quality since a lack of safety can result in serious injury and even death for the consumer of the product. Safety differs from many other quality attributes since it is a quality attribute that is difficult to observe. A product can appear to be of high quality, i.e. well colored, appetizing, flavorful, etc. and yet be unsafe because it is contaminated with undetected pathogenic organisms, toxic chemicals, or physical hazards. On the other hand, product that seems to lack many of the visible quality attributes can be safe. Obvious quality defects can result in consumer rejection and lower sales, while safety hazards may be hidden and go undetected until the product is consumed. Since assuring safety is vital to public health, achieving safety must always take precedence over achieving high levels of other quality attributes. Food safety is not limited to microbiological safety. As recent history has demonstrated with bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), anaphylactic shock from eating peanuts, dioxins entering the human food chain via animal feedstuffs, benzene in mineral water and glass fragments in baby food, food safety also includes chemical contamination and foreign bodies. Prions, the cause of BSE and vCJD, are an entirely new source of food-borne disease. Food-borne viruses are becoming recognized as significant to public health. As the examples of benzene and dioxins demonstrate, food safety is not necessarily about real risk to public health, but also about perceived risk.

2.2.1 New quality and food safety approaches

The aspects of liberalization of the global trade and the fact that the consumers in the industrialized countries are more and more demanding food to be not only economical, but also healthy, tasty, safe and sound in respect to animal welfare and the environment, are changing the so far quantity-oriented food production, guaranteeing the nutrient supply for a nation, into an international quality-oriented food market where commodities, production areas, production chains and brands compete with one another. The competitiveness of food production will soon be more dependent on the reliability of the safety and the quality of the food and acceptability of the production procedures than on quantity and price. In contrast to the quantity-oriented markets that are often subsidized and producers can always sell everything they produce, quality-oriented markets are market-driven or demand. Thus, apart from the steady increase of the national and international standards for food safety and public health, there is a growing influence of the consumer's demands on the production, its allied industries, advisers, consultants and marketing bodies. All of this means that the agricultural supply of food production is facing remarkable changes in the years to come, which is both challenge and opportunity for food producers, packing plants and processors as well as for the dairy and food profession.

2.2.2 Necessities for new approach

There are five major reasons for this need:

1. Despite the generally recognized achievements in making food safer over the decades with the mandatory inspection and the principles of food hygiene being the most successful means in protecting the consumer against food-borne health risks, there are still deaths due to food-borne disease in man. Furthermore, the consumer's confidence in the safety of food is getting sceptical;
2. Modern agriculture is contributing to the increase of drug-resistant pathogens in humans, and, thus often being attacked by the medical society and consequently by the public;
3. Food safety issues can easily become non-tariff trade barriers and are increasingly used as marketing tools, nationally and internationally;
4. The consumer has the tendency to ask more and more for fresh and naturally raised products;
5. The traditional mandatory inspection still is indispensable, but unable to control and prevent the emerging food-borne pathogens that nowadays pose risks to human health.

2.3 Quality Control and Quality Assurance Concepts

Quality is defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ―the totality of features and characteristics of a product that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs/ or the operational techniques and activities that are used to satisfy quality requirements. A food industry quality management system is an integrated set of documented food quality and food safety activities with clearly established inter relationships among the various activities. The objective of a quality system is to provide a food company with the capability to produce a food that fulfills all quality and safety requirements (Fig 2.2).

Fig. 2.2 Quality assurance concept in relation to changes in global food safety standards

2.3.1 Quality control

Quality control is the evaluation of a final product prior to its marketing, i.e. it is based on quality checks at the end of a production chain aiming at assigning the final product to quality categories such as "high quality", "regular quality", "low quality" and "non-marketable". Since, at the end of the production chain, there is no way to correct production failures or upgrade the quality of the final product, the low-quality products can only be sold at lower prices and the non-marketable products have to be discarded. Their production costs, however, had been as high as those of the high and regular quality products. Thus, quality control has only a limited potential to increase the quality and efficiency of a multi-step production procedure.

2.3.1.1 Rules of quality control

1. The dominant raw material(s) are selected for priority of attention
2. The selected raw materials are tested in relation to their contribution to product quality.
3. The raw materials tested are released from the stores only after the test results have been properly recorded.
4. Process control must relate the processing results to the raw materials test.
5. Define the critical points in the process and concentrate on these.
6. Finished product inspection should be reduced to the minimum level compatible with the confidence justified by the raw materials and process control.
7. Quality control is effective in proportion to its degree of integration into the overall organization of the factory.

2.3.2 Quality assurance

The ISO definition reads: "the assembly of all planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product, process, or service will satisfy given quality requirements." Quality Assurance, in contrast to quality control (Table 2.1), is the implementation of quality checks and procedures to immediately correct any failure and mistake that is able to reduce the quality of the interim products at every production step. Thus, the desired high quality of the final product is planned and obtained.

2.3.3 Quality control versus quality assurance

Table 2.1 Comparison between quality control and quality assurance