Food Safety Management: A Practical Guide for the Food Industry

Book Preface

It is a pleasure to write this foreword, because of the importance of food safety for the food industry, governments and consumers alike. The frequent food safety incidents occurring globally illustrate that food safety management in the industry is a subject that badly needs attention. In recent years, we have seen many incidents that have made people suffer or even lose their lives; the victims also included children. Although in some cases this has been due to emerging threats, such as new pathogenic bacteria, in many cases these incidents result from the reoccurrence of previous failures.

With professional management of food safety, incidents and certainly their recurrence can be prevented. In the case of emerging threats, adequate management should also limit the impact of incidents. Food Safety Management: A Practical Guide for the Food Industry is a unique book and a reference for the future. For the first time, it gathers all essential and basic information that managers and professionals need to know about the management of food safety in the food industry and other related topics such as leadership, management of people, ethics and sustainability. It relays past experience to novice mangers. In line with the modern approach to management of food safety, it examines food safety management from the perspective of the entire food chain from “farm to fork.” Farm standing for the primary food production, i.e. animal husbandry, agriculture and fishery, discussing the hazards and risks during the very first stages of the production of food. The book also emphasizes that skills and training in hard sciences on their own are not sufficient; it is the integration of knowledge, skills and the attitude and mindset of all involved, including top management, that make the management of food safety possible. The guidance given in this book is applicable and relevant to all parts of the world and the book will be an invaluable resource and manual for training all present and future food safety managers or regulatory officials supervising food operations. The editors are the most outstanding food safety experts in the world, and I congratulate them for the successful completion of this remarkable undertaking. I recommend this book with full confidence to colleagues all over the world.

Foreword
Ping-fan Rao Prof. Dr.
Director, Institute of Biotechnology, Fuzhou
University, China,
Vice-president, Chinese Institute of Food
Science and Technology,
President, International Union of Food
Science and Technology