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Food Safety Essay

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Food is an essential constituent in human life. Nevertheless, some foods can be detrimental to a person’s organism by causing life-threatening diseases. For that reason, food safety comes into play. Food safety is a scientific discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent illness. This includes a set of laws that should be followed to stay away from potentially severe health hazards. Food can transmit disease from individual to individual, and also serves as a growth medium for bacteria that can cause food poisoning (Roberts, 2001). Debates on genetic food safety include such issues as the impact of genetically modified foods on the health of further generations and genetic pollution of the …show more content…

Common illnesses that can occur are salmonella and trichinosis poisoning resulting from improper handling of chicken, eggs or pork (Jardin, 2009, para.2). Diseases such as: campylobacteriosis, cholera, and listeriosis also make the list of illnesses (Jardin, 2009, para.1). These diseases are the versions of food poisoning, which can be life-threatening. According to the World of Health article published in 2007,
“In the United States of America, for example, around 76 million cases of food-borne diseases, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, are estimated to occur each year.”

For that reason, some serious decisions need to be made as soon as possible in order to challenge that estimation.
Secondly, food- testing is a procedure required for food safety. Food- borne illness can be a serious public health hazard. For this reason, some kitchen workers are required by law to have knowledge of food safety procedures. Food-testing procedures should follow clear methodologies that can be reproduced under similar circumstances. When testing the flavor of a food with a focus group, methodology might involve blind taste testing, and then asking test subjects to evaluate the food's flavor on a numerical scale (Gartenstein, 2010, para.7). As for food-borne pathogens, it might involve culturing and counting the number of microorganisms present in a

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