Importance of food safety during Covid-19
Globally, we are facing a truly unprecedented situation. COVID-19 has already changed the way we interact and produce food. The potential for food borne transmission is a worry with every new emerging infection. As per the current evidence, COVID-19 seems to spread as human to human transmission, through respiratory droplets, close contacts, or indirectly through contaminated surfaces that contain viruses and there are no reports of COVID-19 pandemic has been linked to transmission through food. In case of COVID-19, the main risk involved in human to human transmission during food handling is from close contact with infected food handlers or customers.
Proper cleaning and disinfection of food handling environment is more important than ever. It is mandatory for all the food processors to implement Good Hygiene practices (GHP) and Good manufacturing (GMP) as recommended by FSSAI to ensure food safety and food hygiene in food establishments. Implementation and Compliance to these food safety and food hygiene practices can be strengthened by having Environmental monitoring programs, which are the key trends to ensure Food Safety and Food Hygiene. There is increasing recognition that food processing facilities’ environments, as well as other built environments used in food production and distribution (e.g., retail food handling spaces, restaurants or packing houses for produce) can be important sources of biological agents, chemical compounds and physical hazards that may negatively affect food safety and quality.
The spread of COVID-19 has impacted the health, nutrition, livelihoods, and wellbeing of India’s most vulnerable populations and will have lasting effects on people. Nutrition is the backbone of human development and wellbeing. The Nutritional, environmental and economic impact are the main concern of changing consumer preferences in food safety. There is also increasing awareness of the linkages between food demand and dietary choice, global food security, and environmental outcomes such as water use and climate change. There is a need to understand how consumer preferences for food and beverages are changing and what the implications are for the future. Unsafe food caused an estimated 600 million illnesses and 420,000 premature deaths in 2010, according to the World Health Organization, undermining people’s health and nutritional security. Unhygienic food can cause poor nutrition. Hence manufacturing safe and hygienic food is important ensure good nutrition.
Indian food safety standards and guidelines in food industry are evolving and are getting updated to match the Global food safety standards. In this current Covid-19 crisis, it is important to increase the microbiology testing of the environment, food processing surfaces, personnel hands, to ensure safe food processing environment. Environmental monitoring programs and environmental sampling activities can serve multiple purposes such as for verification of cleaning efficiency and detecting the presence of spoilage or pathogenic organisms in the environment. In practice, environmental monitoring programs often encompass a range of tests – from ATP and indicator organisms to pathogens, spoilage organisms, and allergens – conducted on a variety of samples collected throughout a facility at various time points and with varying frequencies.
Key programs such as Pathogen environmental monitoring and Environmental hygiene monitoring must be encouraged across all food industries. Indian food standards need to focus on microbiological methods along with chemical method. The conventional microbiology testing takes longer time for results hence it is time to shift to the Rapid methods which are AOAC® Official Methods of AnalysisSM (OMA) and AFNOR validated for faster results and faster decision making on food safety.
3M Food safety solutions help to monitor safe food from farm to factory reaching the dining table. Examples :3M Clean-Trace Hygiene monitoring provide fast and quick hygiene monitoring which is quantitative, sensitive with trend analysis solution that enhance quality control systems, along with 3M Petrifilm plates & 3M Molecular Detection system range of microbiological techniques aiding fast, time saving, sensitive and sustainable solution for detection of indicator organism & pathogen in food and environment.
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2. Patralekha Chatterjee, India sees parallel rise in malnutrition and obesity Published: 14 December 2002 doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(02)11943-X.
3. Contaminated weaning food: A major risk factor for diarrhoea and associated malnutrition. 4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14759352 5. https://www.fda.gov/ 6. https://www.mohfw.gov.in/ 7. https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/food-safety-us/resources/education/environmental-monitoring/ 8. https://fssai.gov.in/cms/coronavirus.php 9. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html#anchor_1584386553767 10. http://www.fao.org/3/ca8842en/CA8842EN.pdf 11. https://academic.oup.com/aepp/article/40/1/5/4863687 12. https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/how-nutrition-can-protect-peoples-health-during-covid-19 13. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2020/03/25/food-safety-nutrition-and-wellness-during-covid-19/
