Inspection
 National governments have a mandate to ensure the health of the population,
including the provision of a sufficient and safe food supply. A national food
safety and quality control system thus needs to be in place that includes a
modern and effective legal and regulatory base addressing safety and quality
issues in food production, handling, storage, processing, and distribution,
whilst also protecting the consumer against fraud.
A mechanism must also exist for enforcement. As the overseer of the safety
of the food supply and enforcer of food safety regulations, the regulator must
have adequate procedures for inspecting, sampling and auditing the food safety
and quality assurance systems put in place by food producers, suppliers and
processors to ascertain that these systems do, in fact, result in safe food
products.
To a large degree, national food control systems rely on food inspection to
ascertain that food safety and quality regulations are being complied with.
However, in many countries, the underlying concept of regulatory inspections
has not yet progressed from being reactive and product-based to a preventive
and process-based type of food control system based on risk. Furthermore, the
food control system of many countries is not centralized but comprised of multiple
institutions having diverse agendas. These institutions can have their own
separate inspection systems, covering specific food sectors, with frequent
overlaps or gaps. Often they do not coordinate actions with each other and
use widely varying inspection procedures.
In order to facilitate the revision and harmonization of food inspection procedures,
whilst responding to the needs of developing countries, FAO is currently implementing
a Norwegian funded project to develop an integrated inspection manual for use
under multiple scenarios and for a variety of primary food handling operations
and food processing establishments. This manual will be available in mid-2007.
See also
Integrated food control systems > Laboratory quality assurance |
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