pretreatment
6.1 Introduction: food safety and quality
This chapter discusses use of the hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) system of food safety management with particular reference to the growing and post-harvest pretreatment of fruit and vegetables. It is not the intention here to review the processes involved in the growing and pretreatment of named fruit and vegetables in the context of food safety, or to examine specific food safety issues relating to fruit and vegetables. The purpose of the chapter is to bring a broad understanding of HACCP sufficient to guide the reader in the development of food safety management systems, in relation to products of their choosing, designed to protect consumers from foodborne harms arising from the growing and basic processing of fruit and vegetables.
Today, food businesses of all kinds recognize that food quality and safety are critical to continued consumer satisfaction, competitive advantage and profit. In this, the food businesses that constitute the fruit and vegetable sectors of the food supply system are no different from any other. Like all other food businesses they need their own particular understanding of food quality and safety and they have had to come to terms with consumers’ changing perceptions of food quality and increasing awareness of food safety issues.
Among the factors that affect the way consumers understand concepts of food quality and safety, the multiple food retailers, or supermarkets, are significant. As more food produce is moved through a reducing number of supermarket chains the power of supermarkets over food supply businesses grows. What consumers
believe to stand for quality has become more closely aligned to the supermar-kets’ own definitions of quality, of which food safety is a part. Consequently, as greater numbers of consumers shop in supermarkets, suppliers are forced to adjust their own understanding of quality in line with that of supermarkets if they are to stay in business. At one time variation in the size and shape of a given fruit or vegetable, or the presence of a scar or blemish, did not denote poor quality. The apples placed in a bag by a greengrocer were all allowed to be a little different.
Potatoes, carrots and parsnips came in different sizes and with residues of earth that indicated their origins as products of the land. In the modern consumer food marketplace the supermarkets have taken control of the education of consumers in matters of food. Now fruit and vegetables of the same kind have to appear all the same size, colour and shape, and with no obvious defects, if consumer expec-tations are to be met and continuous satisfaction is to be achieved. But although the supermarkets may influence consumers’ understanding of food quality, con-sumers’ awareness of food safety issues has, in recent years, been influenced sig-nificantly by the media reporting of food safety problems and food scares.
Consumers now perceive quality, and consistency of quality, to be an important factor in guiding food choices and in demonstrating value for money in their pur-chases. They also know that whatever the standard of quality in the products they buy, the foods must be safe to eat, and they expect both growers and retailers to ensure this.
The term ‘quality’ can encompass many aspects of a food product and, indeed, the services that a food business provides in association with that product. Many definitions of the word quality exist. Crosby (1984) states that quality ‘has to be defined as conformance to requirements’. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO, 2000a) defines quality as ‘The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements’. Clearly, consumers are able to appreciate the quality of food products but their assessment of quality tends to be subjective. They usually judge the quality of, for example, an orange or a lettuce in subjective terms, as bad, poor, good or excellent. A food producer, on the other hand, must understand quality in objective terms and this normally leads to identifying and quantifying quality parameters in order to measure and describe quality. If quality cannot be measured it cannot be controlled and quality para-meters must be established in order to achieve the control needed to ensure that quality conforms to or fulfils requirements. Food safety is bound to be a quality requirement of any food product. The fact that a food product is unfit to eat because it has spoiled means that it is not of the right quality, but this does not necessarily make the food unsafe to eat. In contrast, if a food product is not safe to eat, for whatever reason, the food is then not of the right quality. Logically, it follows that food safety is a subset of quality.
There are sound commercial reasons why food businesses should manage aspects of food quality other than food safety in ways that will ensure customer and consumer requirements are met at all times. In matters of food safety commercial perspectives apply, but, undeniably, all food businesses have moral and legal duties to provide consumers with foods that will cause no harm.
Indeed, though laws may state requirements for, and set limits on, certain kinds of conduct by food businesses for the safety of consumers, what is considered to be ethically right ought not to be defined entirely by the law.
Though maximum residue levels (MRLs) may be set by law to limit agrochem-ical residues associated with fruit and vegetables (as well as other food crops), it can be argued that working to the limits specified in law is an abdication of moral duty to the consumer in favour of the grower’s interests as protected by the law.
Legislation can be subject to bad judgement, political bias and lobbying by parties intent on protecting their own interests. Laws can be wrong and fail to protect those who ought to be protected. In the application of agrochemicals, conduct by the grower ought to reflect what is right, in the broad interests of consumers, and not just what the law requires. The minimum use of approved chemicals to achieve the required degree of crop protection, and not just use up to legally per-mitted levels, is considered the right thing to do by enlightened agriculturalists.
Such thinking is now being reflected in the developing philosophy of integrated farm management.
In matters of food safety, recognition of both the moral and legal duties of food producers is important. In the United Kingdom (UK) the Food Safety Act 1990 offers the concept of the ‘due diligence defence’ as the acceptable defence in the event of a food business being prosecuted under the Act. Section 21 of the Act states that ‘it shall be a defence for the person charged to prove that he took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence by himself or by a person under his control’. The term ‘reasonable precautions’ is interpreted to mean the implementation and maintenance of a system for food safety management, while ‘due diligence’
means that the system should be operated effectively to ensure the production of safe food. While UK law proposes, in effect, that the use of an effective food safety management system can provide demonstration that the law has been complied with, this may not be so in all countries. But all food businesses in all countries ought to operate such a system in recognition of their moral duty to consumers, irrespective of whether or not this requirement is framed in national law. Sadly though, without the encouragement of legislation, some food busi-nesses will give insufficient weight to their moral duty to protect consumers and deny adequate expenditure on formal food safety management systems.
The UK’s Food Safety Act 1990 does not advocate a specific approach to food safety management. The European Union (EU) Directive 93/43 on the hygiene of foodstuffs states the approach to food safety management required to be taken by all food businesses in the EU. It requires the implementation of five of the seven principles defining the HACCP system for food safety management.
Because it is stated in an EU directive this requirement is interpreted in the UK’s Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995, though the regulation is sometimes erroneously understood by food safety practitioners to state only a requirement for hazard analysis, without recognition of the need to identify and maintain critical control points. Although EU and UK laws require that food safety management systems embody only the first five HACCP principles, many
food businesses utilize all seven. Indeed, food businesses supplying major food manufacturers and supermarkets are almost certainly bound to be required to operate complete HACCP systems. Also, this will be a clear requirement for any business accredited to standards such as the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Technical Standard for Companies Supplying Retailer Branded Food Products, or the European Food Safety Inspection Service (EFSIS) Standard for Companies Supplying Food Products which are revised periodically (see section 6.9.1 for contact details).