Food Safety and Hygiene

Food quality control is necessary to ensure that food aid supplies are safe, of good quality and available in adequate amounts, in time, at affordable prices to ensure an acceptable nutritional and health status for all population groups.

Food quality control includes all activities carried out to ensure the quality and safety of the food at all stages of the food supply chain from primary production or purchase, through processing and storage, to distribution and consumption. 

Making food safe is an effort, involving the suppliers, the production plant or factory, and all of us to protect the beneficiary's health. The main risks are a contamination by micro-organisms, toxins, foreign matters, chemical contaminants, and excess of moisture content, a degradation of the nutritional value, or a pest infestation.

Most of these risks can be easily prevented or mitigated by a better knowledge of the risk factors for each commodity, by safe handling of food, by a careful inspection and possibly analysis, in short by a better management of food commodities.