Total food chain safety: how good practices can contribute?

Consumer concern about treats associated with food is growing. Due to recent food crises in Europe, food quality and food safety have become a hot topic in mass media. “Food safety” is a broader term, which means an assurance that food will not cause harm to the consumer when it is prepared and/or eaten according to its intended use. Today we master food safety with different good practices which are the consequence of human culture, history and lifestyle. If we analyse good practices in the broad spectre of food area we could arrange them in three categories. First category of good practices is directly connected with food technology (i.e., Good Manufacturing Practice – GMP). Second category is indirectly connected with food issues (i.e., Good Research Practice – GRP, Good Educational Practice – GEP, Good Training Practice – GTrP). Third category deals with all the activities regarding consumers' food handling (Good Housekeeping Practice – GHKP). Consumers are not connected to food supply chain according to chain principles. Consumer behaviour and attitudes toward food safety have shown that the levels of understanding, motivation and trust need to be further cultivated. It has been shown that present maintenance of food safety in food supply chain can be easily broken down, because of different kind of barriers or simple misunderstanding. Therefore a new approach called “Good Nutritional Practice” (GNP) was coined to manage food safety. It is important to reconstruct the existent food safety system with GNP which includes consumers, and is based on a model that covers subsystems from other good practices. Food safety point of view should be focused on knowledge, constant education and exchange of information. “From Farm to Table” approach is a philosophy with an important goal: safe and healthy food for all consumers. With this aspect in mind, we are building foundation for Good Life Practice.