Why Prioritize On Food Safety?

To be safe is all that we want, when we talk about being sheltered, protected or being healthy. To top the list, food safety is one such priority that everyone desires. We are in an era where we look for food safety to avoid expenses that come with treatment for consuming something that hampers our health and to avoid fatal incidents.

Animals depend on their instincts regarding food safety. They have basic food safety parameters such as food appearance, odor and texture which they carefully examine to avoid fatality. But, what about humans?

Why Prioritize Food Safety?

As described by World Health Organization,

“Food safety refers to limiting the presence of those hazards whether chronic or acute, that may make food harmful to the health of consumers. Food safety is about producing, handling, storing and preparing food in a way as to prevent infection and contamination in the food production chain and to help ensure that food quality and wholesomeness are maintained to promote good health.” Source

Did you know? India is facing a growing food- and water-contamination crisis with only 148 food-testing laboratories. In other words, each laboratory serves 88 million people. Source

Adding to this, few of the risks as noted by the Food Safety Standards can be caused by physical, chemical and biological agents present in food that can have severe health effects. To avoid such incidents, prioritizing food safety is a must!

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Food safety incidents are a regular part of newspaper headlines, one such incident was that of Mary Mallon, “Typhoid Mary”, a New York City cook who was a carrier of typhoid fever and infected approximately 50 people in the first years of the 20^th century. Another incident which took place before the “Typhoid Mary”, was the swill milk scandal of the 1850s as per the article by The New York Times.

Cows were fed residual mash or “swill” from local distilleries, this led to the cows producing contaminated milk, which claimed the lives of more than 8,000 children. These are two of the many misfortunes that happened because food safety standards were not followed.

Solution?

Several rules and standards have been set up to check the presence of contaminants that can be a threat to our health. Food which contains all the necessary nutrient can also contain harmful agents when not prepared, handled and stored properly. Keeping in mind the need to educate food handlers on their responsibilities, WHO introduced Five Keys to Safer Food Production.

1. Keep food surfaces clean
2. Separate raw food from cooked food
3. Cook food thoroughly
4. Keep food at safe temperatures
5. Use safe water and raw materials

Every person wants to lead a safe and healthy life. Every person deserves safe and healthy food. Prioritizing food safety is the only way. Zizira wishes to create unique and healthy food products from the pristine hills of Meghalaya and make it available to you through our store.

We rigorously follow strict food safety standards and create products hygienically for you. Do you have any concerns, questions or experiences on food safety? Share it with us in the comment section below.