engleski

Food safety regulations based on science

It is generally assumed that food for its intended use for human consumption is safe. To protect the consumer many food safety regulations have been devised. But, food safety and regulatory measures should not unnecessarily hamper the availability of human food or hamper the introduction of novel processing methods aimed at retaining the natural healthy properties of food. Substances that had harmed humans were listed as toxic and therefore considered unacceptable in food. At the time that most of the regulations were developed analytical techniques were not well refined yet and absence of toxic substances usually meant less than a few milligrams per kg of product. Unintentionally, absence has got a different meaning with time as with time, the detection limits went down and currently many substances may be detectable in nano- or even picograms per kg of product. In practice this means that where absence of substances is required, the concentration must be between a million or a billion times lower than at the time the regulations were established. Governments have a duty to ensure that the law is maintained and so must food safety inspectors. This may have fundamentally unacceptable consequences, such as consumers being denied essential nutrients and food needlessly being destroyed because it contains harmless concentrations of legally forbidden substances. This happens while it is known for 500 years that toxicity is a matter of concentration. To ensure the global availability of safe and wholesome food products for all consumers it is of outmost importance to achieve consensus on the science of food regulations and legislation.

food safety; detection limits; food safety regulations

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