Food Quality and Safty - Case Study Example

Manufactures should embrace certain systems that ensure the integrity of the food in terms of health and quality. In order to do this they need to follow certain safety and quality assurance systems, which have been developed to safeguard the food quality. Some of them are obligatory while others are voluntary the obligatory ones are known as safety assurance systems. The difference between mandatory and voluntary systems is based on good Hygiene practices GHP as well as good manufacturing practices GMP (Sikora and Stranda 2005, p.85). Good hygiene practices systems will ensure the firms production process adheres to the highest standards of cleanness and food such as meat would never be exposed to contaminants or foreign particles such as plaster since it would be thoroughly examined before being released into the market.

The law does not require the other quality management systems although desirable to consumers and society such as having quality assurance control points, which are put in place strategically with the view of eliminating hazard (Sikora and Stranda 2005, p.85). Quality control points allow the manufactures to check the products in stages, for instance, in bread production; the manufactures can check the dough after it has been through the oven for soot burnt parts. If this were to be done at every stage of production, the hazards would be considerably reduced as well as the margin for error in the final product.

Hazard analysis and critical control points(HACCP) is considered to be the most important method of controlling safety hazards in food and drugs, its effectiveness is enhanced by the fact that, instead of inspecting the finished product, HACCP identifies the physical, chemical, and allergic hazards in the food during the production process, as such it is considered a preventive method. It can be applied in any