The concept of food hygiene

作者：admin  点击次数：20  发布时间：2025-03-24

At present, the difference between food hygiene and food safety is not well understood in China, which brings confusion to management, scientific research and teaching. In the general provisions of Chapter 1 of the Food Hygiene Law, the first article is "This law is formulated to ensure food hygiene, prevent food pollution and harmful factors from harming the human body, protect the health of the people and enhance the physical fitness of the people." In the general provisions of Chapter 1 of the Food Safety Law, the first article is "This law is formulated to ensure food safety and protect the health and life safety of the public." Therefore, food hygiene is the science of studying food hygiene quality and preventing harmful factors that may appear in food from damaging human health. Food safety is also an interdisciplinary field that specifically explores ensuring food hygiene and food safety during food processing, storage, and sales, reducing disease risks, and preventing food poisoning. Food hygiene is a science that aims to improve food hygiene quality, study harmful factors that may exist in food and threaten human health and their preventive measures, and protect the safety of consumers. Food hygiene uses food analysis, microbiology, toxicology, and epidemiology methods to study harmful substances that may appear in food and their mechanisms of action, and provide a basis for improving food hygiene quality, taking corresponding preventive measures, and formulating food hygiene quality standards. In 1955, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined food hygiene as: all efforts made to ensure the safety, integrity and quality of food raw materials from production, processing, manufacturing to final consumption.
In 1996, WHO further defined food hygiene as: all conditions and measures that must be taken at all stages of the food chain to ensure the safety and suitability of food.
Research content of food hygiene
The main research contents of food hygiene are:
(1) Food contamination and its prevention, including the types, sources, properties, effects, content levels, monitoring and management, and preventive measures of contamination;
(2) The main hygienic problems of various types of food;
(3) Hygienic evaluation and management of food additives;
(4) Food poisoning and its prevention as well as food hygiene supervision and management:
(-) Food contamination and its prevention
Food contamination is the main factor causing food hygiene failure. It mainly refers to the process in which toxic and harmful substances enter food during the breeding, processing, storage, transportation and sales of food raw materials, causing changes in food safety. It mainly includes three aspects: biological contamination, chemical contamination and physical contamination.
1. Biological pollution of food
Biological pollution of food can cause food to spoil, deteriorate in quality, reduce nutritional value, cause diseases and parasites to harm the human body, and damage human functions by factors. Since there are nutrients needed for the growth and development of bacteria, viruses and parasites in food, these organisms contaminate food through various channels, and can survive and even proliferate in food, thereby endangering human health.
2. Chemical pollution of food
Chemical pollution of food refers to the pollution of food by various chemical substances, such as heavy metals, pesticides, insecticides, fertilizers, synthetic detergents, feed additives, food additives and other toxic compounds. These pollutants include environmental pollutants, unintentional and intentional pollutants, and toxic and harmful substances produced during the food production process. At present, the most serious hazards are chemical pollutants such as pesticides, harmful heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and N-nitroso compounds. Pollution by pesticides and industrial harmful substances is a common chemical pollution of food. At present, there are more than 1,400 kinds of pesticides in various countries in the world, and about 40 kinds are used as basic varieties. According to their chemical composition, they are divided into organochlorine, organophosphorus, organofluorine, organic nitrogen, organic sulfur, organic arsenic, organic mercury, carbamates, etc. Most of them enter the human body through contaminated food. In addition to causing acute poisoning to the human body, most of the pesticides will cause chronic harm to the human body. The main ways for pesticides to contaminate food are as follows: First, pesticides used to prevent and control crop diseases and insect pests directly contaminate edible crops after spraying; second, absorption by plant roots; third, pesticides volatilized in the air fall with rain and snow; fourth, enrichment in the food chain; fifth, mixing during transportation and storage. The pollution of food by industrial hazardous substances has also attracted more and more attention. Industrial hazardous substances mainly refer to methylmercury cadmium, lead, arsenic, N-nitroso compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc. The main ways for industrial hazardous substances to contaminate food are environmental pollution, pollution of food containers, packaging materials, production equipment, tools, and pollution during food transportation. Among them, environmental pollution is the main source of chemical pollution of animals and plants. Detection of radionuclides, etc.
(II) Food poisoning and its prevention
Some animals, plants and microorganisms can cause food poisoning. Some animals and plants have natural toxins, such as tetrodotoxin, shellfish toxins, colchicine, ricin, solanine, etc.; fungi can also produce toxins, such as aflatoxin, ergot toxins and ochratoxins. Foodborne pathogens, viruses and parasites, such as salmonella, Escherichia coli 0157, Streptococcus suis, hepatitis A virus (HAV), rotavirus, etc. contaminated in food are the culprits of food poisoning. Epidemiological studies on the biological effects of these pollutants (such as carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity, etc.) or biological markers of damaged body structure and function as the endpoints of action will deepen the understanding of the hazards of these pollutants, and then formulate more mature limit standards and corresponding control measures.
(III) Food additives and their management Food additives refer to substances that are added to food by adding, mixing or soaking during the processing, storage and transportation of food in order to prevent food from spoiling or increase the nutrition, color, aroma and taste of food, and are not intended for consumption, such as preservatives, sweeteners, emulsifiers and coloring agents.
Food additives basically have no nutritional value, and most of them have adverse effects on the human body. For example, nitrite can cause methemoglobinemia and make hemoglobin lose its oxygen-carrying function, and can also be converted into nitrosamines in the body, which have carcinogenic effects. However, food additives play a great role in improving food processing properties and food preservation. Therefore, food additives will not be banned due to certain adverse effects. The task of food hygiene is not only to find out which additives have adverse effects on the human body, but also to make a correct evaluation of these adverse effects, and to stipulate their scope of use and maximum usage. Food additives must undergo a strict food safety toxicology evaluation process.