A great many hazards of different types may enter the food supply, making the food potentially harmful when consumed. Product development teams, food safety managers, and the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) teams must be aware of these hazards when developing products and processes and when conducting hazard analyses so that proper control measures can be established as necessary.
5.1.1 What is a food safety hazard?
A foodborne hazard is 'a biological, chemical, or physical agent in, or condition of food with the potential to cause an adverse health effect' (Codex, 2003). The definition is focused very sharply on food safety considerations. This chapter describes and explains foodborne hazards according to this globally accepted Codex definition.
Biological hazards include pathogenic bacteria, fungi, viruses, prions, protozoans and helminthic parasites. Manifestations of these hazards typically involve foodborne illnesses with symptoms including gastrointestinal distress, diarrhoea, vomiting and sometimes death.
Chemical hazards include allergens, mycotoxins, heavy metals, pesticides and cleaning and sanitation chemicals. When ingested, these may cause gastrointestinal distress, organ damage and immunological reactions that may result in death. The long-term ingestion of foods containing toxic chemicals can lead to chronic effects, including cancer.
Physical hazards typically include materials that enter the food throughout its production chain, such as extraneous vegetable material, stones, bone fragments, wire pieces, broken glass and wood splinters. Their presence in food may result in choking, or oral or internal cuts, but rarely result in death.
5.1.2 What is not a food safety hazard?
Many types of quality and regulatory defects that occur during food processing are not considered to be food safety hazards because they would not produce an adverse health effect if such foods were consumed. Therefore, these defects are not identified as significant hazards during a hazard analysis, and they are not included in the HACCP plan. Rather, they are controlled by the use of prerequisite programmes, as described in Chapter 10, as well as specifications and quality control