Novel approaches for food safety management and communication

Abstract

The current safety and quality controls in the food chain are lacking or inadequately applied and fail to prevent microbial and/or chemical contamination of food products, which leads to reduced confidence among consumers.

On the other hand to meet market demands food business operators (producers, retailers, resellers) and regulators need to develop and apply structured quality and safety assurance systems based on thorough risk analysis and prevention, through monitoring, recording and controlling of critical parameters covering the entire product's life cycle.

However the production, supply, and processing sectors of the food chain are fragmented and this lack of cohesion results in a failure to adopt new and innovative technologies, products and processes.

The potential of using information technologies, for example, data storage, communication, cloud, in tandem with data science, for example, data mining, pattern recognition, uncertainty modelling, artificial intelligence, etc., through the whole food chain including processing within the food industry, retailers and even consumers, will provide stakeholders with novel tools regarding the implementation of a more efficient food safety management system.