Abstract
Food safety has gained global attention due to rising issues of food-borne illnesses, adulteration, and increased consumer awareness about food safety worldwide. It is a challenge for the governments and the food industry itself to maintain food safety throughout the food and supply chain. There are several systems and processes adopted by various countries to ensure food safety, and the food safety audits are one of the indispensable tools to achieve the goals of food quality and safety. Rising trends of consuming processed foods, eating out in restaurants and cafes, home deliveries of food from outside worldwide have made the auditing process very essential to ensure that the food products are being manufactured, stored, and sold in compliance with national and international standards. This chapter aims at providing an overview of the food audit processes, scope, importance, challenges, and future trends.
TopIntroduction
The global food industry has witnessed large expansion in productions and markets due to globalization. Besides that, the increase in the education level of consumers; the health and awareness campaigns run by various national governments and international agencies like WHO; and the top of it the advertising industry have made the consumers worldwide very health conscious. These days consumers consider it essential to have a look at the label of the food product not only to know its cost but also to know about its nutritional value as well as whether the product quality and safety are being audited/certified by any national or international agency or not. Therefore, consumers want food packed, high nutrition, ready to eat, longer shelf life, but not at the cost of food quality and safety.
Food quality is a holistic concept that includes all the factors that will influence consumers’ acceptability of any product including positive attributes such as nutritional value, cultural value, color, taste, flavor, texture as well as negative attributes such as spoilage, contamination, adulteration, and food safety hazards. On the other hand, food safety means the assurance that a given food will not cause any adverse health effect, toxicity, or injury to the consumers as it has been handled, prepared/manufactured, and stored in compliance with the food standards laid down by various governments and international bodies and it is free from any contaminants and adulterants or any non-permitted additives (The National Council of Educational Research and Training [NCERT], 2021-22).
As food safety has gained utmost importance, the food manufacturers, processors, retailers, and regulatory agencies across the globe are increasingly turning to the food safety auditing process to assure their consumers base about the safety and quality of their products. The auditing process involves the inspection of the food business unit, starting from the raw material to the manufacturing processes and systems; the manufactured products and throughout the supply chain till it reaches the end consumer, in a very detailed and systematic manner by a trained individual (auditor) possessing the experience, education, and knowledge of the above disciplines, but they must also have skills in conducting auditing in a systematic, objective and professional way (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India [FSSAI], 2006). For the food industry the auditing process has become indispensable as it effectively ensures food quality and food safety in several ways:
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The given food products, processes employed and the systems involved comply with national and international standards.
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The audit programs find deficiencies and non-compliances in the audited elements thereby create room for further improvement in the operations, processes, and systems of a food manufacturing and processing unit.
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Food safety and quality audits are used to evaluate management systems in the food industry followed by prioritization of management actions.
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Audits help a business unit to obtain certifications to certain food safety and quality standards.
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Audits increase the credibility of the auditees (the business unit on which audit is to be performed) for consumers in the global marketplace and thus help them to stay and compete for the betterment of food safety and quality.
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Audits give the consumers the necessary satisfaction and trust in a given product.
Therefore, this book chapter has been written to impart readers a detailed overview of the food audit processes, basic principles of auditing in the food industry, the scope of auditing in food systems, the importance of conducting audits, skills and knowledge required for auditors, challenges in auditing processes and systems, recent and future trends in food audit systems.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Audit Agenda: The audit agenda is the time-table schedule for conducting the actual audit and sent to the auditee (business unit being audited) well in advance of the audit to enable the auditee to make sure that the required personnel and documentation of each section/unit (purchase, production, quality) to be audited are ready when the auditor conducts the audit.
Management System: It refers to the set of interrelated, interconnected, or interacting elements of an organization that are involved in establishing the organization’s structure, roles and responsibilities, planning, operation, policies, rules, objectives, and the processes to achieve those objectives addressing single or multiple disciplines, e.g., quality management, financial management, or environmental management or the entire organization.
Audit Scope: The scope of food audit refers to the details regarding coverage of the audit activity such as the physical and virtual location of the unit, products, and processes, time, etc.
Food Quality: Food quality is a holistic concept that includes all the factors that will influence consumers’ acceptability of any product including positive attributes such as nutritional value, cultural value, color, taste, flavor, texture as well as negative attributes such as spoilage, contamination, adulteration, food safety hazards.
Food Standard: The food standards are laid down by various governments and international bodies for manufacturers/suppliers in the food industry to ensure that safe and quality foods are reaching the consumers. These consist of a set of criteria and specifications regarding various physical, chemical, and microbiological parameters such as raw materials used during manufacturing, chemical composition, color, permissible food additives, and maximum bacterial content, etc. that a particular food product must meet to ensure that consumers get safe food and value for money.
Audit Conclusions: Audit conclusions refer to the overall outcome of an audit program provided by the audit leader or the audit team after a thorough evaluation of audit results. The checklist findings and all the data and information gathered during the process of auditing should be reviewed by the auditor against the reference standard.
Food Safety: Food safety means the assurance that a given food will not cause any adverse health effect, toxicity, or injury to the consumers as it has been handled, prepared/manufactured, and stored in compliance with the food standards laid down by various governments and international bodies and it is free from any contaminants and adulterants or any non-permitted additives.
Adulteration: Food adulteration refers to the process of lowering the quality of the food either by substituting the main product wholly or partly and either by the addition of inferior quality material or by extraction of valuable ingredient and the added substances may be injurious to health, e.g., removal of fat from milk and selling it as full cream milk is adulteration.
Food Auditor: A food auditor is a trained person having multi-disciplinary knowledge about the manufacturing processes, standard operating procedures, risk assessment, monitoring, human resources, food quality and safety, microbiology, chemistry, toxicology, engineering, and so on with the competence to conduct an audit in a systematic, independent, and documented manner for obtaining the audit evidence, and thereafter evaluating it objectively to assess the extent of compliance to national and international food safety standards.
Audit Criteria: Audit criteria refer to the range of requirements or standards against which the audit is conducted. These requirements can be related to one or more management system standards, technical standards for a given product, statutory and regulatory requirements, or any other requirements specified by relevant interested parties. The food safety and quality audit may be conducted against the above-mentioned audit criteria, separately or in combination, including but not limited to these.