Editorial

Citation

Griffith, C.J. (2005), "Editorial", British Food Journal, Vol. 107 No. 10. https://doi.org/10.1108/bfj.2005.070107jaa.001

Editorial

Food is essential to life but if contaminated can cause illness, permanent disability, or even death. Fortunately the latter only happens in a minority of cases, although the morbidity associated with millions of cases of food related disease has significant and economic consequences. The FSA itself estimated in the year 2000 there were in the order of 1.3 million cases a year in England and Wales at an estimated cost of £1.5 billion (FSA, 2005).

Food safety has probably been practiced for over 50,000 but has been improved by the greater study of food microbiology over the past 150 years (Griffith, 2005). However, food safety does not happen by accident and requires management and failures in food safety management have contributed to the present unacceptable high levels of food poisoning (Griffith, 2000). The past 35 years have seen the introduction of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP), a risk based food safety management system that has been shown to be successful in producing better microbiological quality food (Little et al., 2002, 2003).

After its initial introduction, the HACCP concept and underlying principles have continued to evolve, leading to a much greater emphasis on, and requirement for, its implementation. Part of this evolution (see Figure 1) is how the principles will be adapted for other sectors, including food service and even clinical applications. However, this does mean evolution and research on HACCP in food manufacturing has ended and further work is needed to refine its application. This issue of the BFJ contains the first two papers of a series of four, examining aspects of HACCP within food manufacturing and will be of benefit to readers worldwide.

Figure 1

HACCP evolution

Christopher J. Griffith