Food Hygiene, also known as Food Safety, can be defined as the processing, preparation and storage of food or beverages in a way that best reduces the risk of consumers getting sick from foodborne illnesses. 

Food safety principles aim to prevent food from becoming contaminated and causing food poisoning.

With this in mind, ensuring that food is safe for human consumption is probably the most critical part of the food preparation process. This ranges from farm to fork, that is, from farms to your plate.

This means that food hygiene is as important at home as it is in the restaurant, retail store or food factory.

There is a growing awareness of the public about food safety, and news agencies are reporting on food recalls and outbreaks more often.

Reviewing current statistics, the CDC estimates that 48 million people fall ill from a foodborne illness each year, 128.000 are hospitalized, and 3.000 die from food poisoning.

Food hygiene is important for the following reasons:

• If the food or drink is not safe to eat, you cannot eat or drink. The easiest example of this is safe drinking water. We never drink water that does not come from a reputable source. The same principle applies to food.
• Every day, people around the world get sick from the food or drink they consume. Bacteria, viruses and parasites found in food can cause food poisoning.
• Because you can't see, taste, or smell anything different from normal, there's no immediate way to tell if food is contaminated.
• Food poisoning can lead to gastroenteritis and dehydration, or potentially to more serious health problems such as kidney failure and death.
  This risk is especially important for those in the high-risk category: young children/infants, expectant mothers, the elderly and immunocompromised people, especially HIV infections and cancer patients.
• Food hygiene and safety prevent microbes from multiplying in food and reaching dangerous levels.
• It ensures daily healthy family life.
• Keeping someone healthy and avoiding the additional cost of purchasing drugs and medical checkups. This is especially important in business. Companies around the world lose billions of dollars each year due to staff cuts.
  Hand washing accounts for 33% of all related food poisoning cases. Therefore, it is important to maintain good personal hygiene practices. This is something we were taught in our childhood, but hand washing is still a critical issue in the kitchen.

Cross-contamination is a major cause of food poisoning and can transfer bacteria from one food to another (usually from raw food to ready-to-eat food).

It is very important to be aware of how it spreads so you know how to prevent it. 

Therefore, good food hygiene is essential for food factories to produce and sell food that is safe to eat. The first step is for management and staff to have knowledge and understanding of what food hygiene and food safety is.

You can contact our impartial, independent and internationally accredited organization to obtain more detailed information about food hygiene and food safety system and to apply. Our experts will be happy to answer all your questions.